A new figure of ridicule has appeared on the City stage. Graham Wallace, the chief executive of Cable & Wireless, has achieved an unenviable record: he has now destroyed more shareholder value than Marconi's disgraced management duo of Lord Simpson and John Mayo. Simpson and Mayo obliterated £34bn of value at Marconi. Wallace has overseen a £35bn collapse in the value of Cable & Wireless, albeit over almost three years.
As I write, Wallace is battling to survive. The City bookies are offering a "spread" of 70-75 days on his survival. In other words, the typical City punter (yes, they will bet on anything) thinks Wallace will be sacked by the end of January.
You may think that sounds generous. Shouldn't the directors oust Wallace immediately? But as is so often the case, the board is equally culpable, having sanctioned every step of Wallace's disastrous strategy of selling tried and tested telephone companies that made money in favour of acquiring expensive internet assets which did not.
The scales fell from my eyes three years ago, when C&W sold its greatest jewel, the main phone company in Hong Kong, in exchange for shares in something calling itself Pacific Century CyberWorks, a ludicrously named concoction that could only have been created at the top of the technology bubble. The official document setting out the deal comprised dozens of pages of guff, gobbledegook and hype, which even at the time made me goggle. It was my "emperor's new clothes" moment, when I first seriously suspected the dotcom boom was the most abject fraud.
The non-executive directors, who gave the deal their unanimous blessing - the chairman, Sir Ralph Robins; the chairman-elect, David Nash; the eminent merchant banker Sir Win Bischoff; the businesswoman Dr Janet Morgan; and the former US ambassador Raymond Seitz - evidently had no such suspicions. And they are still running the company.
Things are descending into glorious farce at Citigroup, the world's biggest bank, where the legendary chairman, Sandy Weill, is fighting to save his reputation. The bank's investment banking arm, Salomon Smith Barney, is under investigation for alleged conflicts of interest. The smoking gun (well, it appeared to be smoking) was an e-mail from Jack Grubman, the now-disgraced but then highly influential telecoms guru, alleging that Weill pressed him three years ago into upgrading his recommendation on AT&T stock from "hold" to "buy".
The allegation is that Weill wanted to curry favour with AT&T in the hope of winning a lucrative advice mandate that would have showered fees on SSB. This would clearly have been unacceptable if it had influenced the advice on stock-picking given by SSB to its clients.
Weill emphatically denied that he asked Grubman to change his recommendation but admitted he did urge him to "take a fresh look" at AT&T. Some might say that even this could have been interpreted by Grubman as a hint to upgrade. But Grubman has now snatched back the smoking gun, saying his e-mailed allegations were a fabrication. "Regrettably, I invented a story in an effort to inflate my professional importance and make an impression on a colleague and friend."
I now don't know what to think. Things have come to a pretty pass when a stockbroker tells you he was lying, and you still can't decide whether to believe him.
For the first time in 47 years, McDonald's is in retreat. The burger chain is closing 175 restaurants in ten countries, notably the poshed-up one in Hampstead High Street - the focus of an unsuccessful 13-year resistance campaign led by the local MP, Glenda Jackson. Jackson has had a change of heart about the dreaded yellow arches. Since her campaign, she says, "McDonald's have proved to be good neighbours and useful employers, as well as selling affordable meals."
The shares, however, are at a seven-year low. BSE fears and worries about children's obesity overshadow the company. At home, the group is grappling with accusations about dirty restaurants and rude service. Abroad, some of its restaurants just don't pay any more. It is also fighting a vicious price war with the British-owned Burger King.
Meanwhile, the brand looks tired and the marketing (Donald Trump is the choice of frontman for a TV campaign promoting its $1 Big 'n' Tasty sandwich) out of touch.
The management can't decide whether it should alter a brand that is supposedly more widely recognised than Coca-Cola. Suddenly, McDonald's looks indecisive and weak. The anti-globalisation protesters need to find a new bete noire.
Patrick Hosking is deputy city editor of the London Evening Standard
