Pembroke: A market emerges in Lamont trust shares

CAN IT BE that some institutions do not have much confidence in Norman Lamont? Less than a week after it was announced that the former Chancellor was joining the emerging markets fund First Philippine Investment Trust as a non-executive director, one of the main shareholders has sold its holding.

Regent Pacific, a Hong Kong institution, unloaded its 17 per cent stake on Friday afternoon.

But weep not. Someone else has faith. The entire shareholding has been bought by a British institution which clearly feels that Mr Lamont will deliver the famous green shoots of which he once spoke, even if they do turn out to be in the Far East.

BUT THERE ARE some signs that the recovery is picking up; people have started raising money for bar and restaurant openings again.

Latest to pass the hat around the Square Mile is David Cleave, who set up the City-based Colony wine bar and restaurant in 1982. Now he is raising pounds 850,000 via the Business Expansion Scheme to set up a new chain called Cafe Poppy.

Not the best of names, you might think, but Mr Cleave is planning up to seven of the cafes, initially in the more well-heeled areas of south London such as Fulham, Wandsworth and Battersea. The idea, it seems, is to try to replicate the success of other Continental-style brasseries such as Cafe Rouge and Cafe Flo.

'We will be more fun,' Mr Cleave insists. 'The cuisine wil have an oriental influence and we will to try to create a light, airy atmosphere at lunchtime and a candle-lit ambience in the evening.'

Mr Cleave has been networking like mad among friends and friends of friends who he hopes will chip in pounds 1,000 or more each. 'I'm pretty confident we'll make it,' he says. 'We've had a good response so far.'

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AN EYEBROW-RAISING guest at the Plymouth School of Architecture last week. Speaking on the knotty question of The Cause of Modernism was one Robert Maxwell.

THERE WAS A flurry of activity down at Brunswick, the City PR firm, last week when one of its clients, the computer company Azlan, was launching its pathfinder prospectus. The Topic screen, the system used by the Stock Exchange to publish company announcements, flashed up the information with the name of a Brunswick contact, the oddly spelled Daren Simmonds, for further details.

Brunswick's Karen Simmonds (for it was she) was not impressed. She promptly rang the Stock Exchange and firmly requested a new announcement on a separate page.

A COPY OF a new book claiming to be 'an essential guide to the wonderful world of work' lands on Pembroke's desk.

An amusing tome, presumably launched with Yuletide in mind, The Office Manual offers a guide to what some of the more run-of-the mill business jargon really means.

Here are some from those job ads. Account manager (clerk), administrative assistant (secretary), no experience necessary (extremely low pay), self-starter (someone who needs money badly). And, from the business pages: entrepreneur (someone likely to belly-up at any time, but with flair).

FOR ANYONE frustrated with salesmen who know their product back-to-front but can't imagine how you might apply it to your business, the results of a recent survey will come as no surprise.

According to Business Market Services, which spoke to 240 top UK companies, only 6 per cent thought that an understanding of business, or the client's business, was important in closing a sale.

What the researchers are proposing is a move towards partnership selling, where salesmen sell on service not price, and where chief executives and other directors go out and sell to customers.

How long, then, before we see Iain Vallance bombing around in a BT van flogging telephones? Or David Sainsbury selling groceries door-to-door?