This Christmas the City is partying like it’s 2006 – but the firms would like to keep the largesse a secret

My Week: Party season is under way for the banks, with spending up to pre-crisis levels

Party season is under way for the banks, with spending up to pre-crisis levels (Jonathan Herbert)

The good times are back – and no one must know. In the City, the party season is under way and the level of spending has returned to pre-crisis levels.

But the world – and in particular its attitude towards bankers and other financial high rollers – has changed since then. So this Christmas there is celebrating galore, but it’s being kept under wraps.

Orders have gone out from worried bosses that there must be no signage outside a party – nothing to indicate who is inside. The name of the organising bank or City firm is absent; nobody must know who is partying. Across the City, discreet notices saying “private party” are popping up outside bars and clubs.

Once past the security, also low-key so as not to attract unwanted attention, the boys and girls can let their hair down. But no pictures, please, or at least nothing on social media identifying the host firm.

Taking the FTSE 100 by storm – very quietly

One company with good cause to high-five publicly this week is DCC, but it won’t because such behaviour is definitely not its style. Never heard of DCC? Well you’re not alone, but the chances are that as time goes on, you will more and more.

DCC is the Dublin-based distribution group that has just parachuted into the FTSE 100 at 80th with a £4.9bn market cap.

It has three divisions: energy, which covers oil and liquefied petroleum gas sales and marketing, and the supply of fuel to 3,000 petrol stations (it’s also the third- largest owner of unmanned forecourts in Europe, a rapidly expanding area); technology, where it distributes 350 brands to retailers, among them Argos, John Lewis and Amazon; and healthcare, where it is the number one supplier to GP surgeries in the UK and to hospitals in Ireland, and a manufacturer of health and beauty products for Body Shop and Molton Brown.

That’s quite a list, I said to the chief executive Tommy Breen when we met for a quiet cup of coffee in a tucked-away London hotel (forget a big, showy bash in a top venue, that’s not his style). He smiled, saying they were just the highlights – he could carry on. No, there was no need – I got the picture.

Mr Breen, 55, is a cautious character – a lifer at the company who, since taking charge in 2008, has steered it on the acquisition trail making numerous purchases, many of them from the big oil companies.

The result is an organisation that has seemingly come out of nowhere extremely fast. DCC shares have risen 60 per cent in the past 12 months, said Mr Breen. Over the past two decades its return to shareholders is a whopping 4,939 per cent – versus the FTSE 100’s 328 per cent.

The chief executive is not one to rest on his laurels. Indeed, he stressed, he’s nowhere near finished. He has a “war chest” ready for further opportunities and is looking to expand globally in the next two to three years.

There’s steeliness to him. Already DCC is higher up the FTSE 100 rankings than the much better-known Sainsbury’s, Hammerson and Royal Mail. As it entered the chart, two other household brands, Morrisons and G4S, exited. Other big names can also expect to be overtaken.

Luckily we didn’t have to sing for our supper

At the Soirée d’Or annual fundraising gala for the Royal College of Music, the biggest cheer of the night came when the college’s director, Colin Lawson, said how he wished the rich here would follow Mark Zuckerberg’s example and donate the bulk of their wealth to charity.

It was hard to tell whether the applause was ironic. Because gathered in the Raphael Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum – for the dinner, auction, performances from some of the college’s finest scholars and carol-singing – were many of the City’s highest rollers.

The leading banks, law firms, executive search and PR agencies all had tables. Organised by a committee chaired by Stephanie Carr, wife of Sir Roger, the BAE chairman, it has become a traditional Christmas curtain raiser and by some margin is probably the most stellar of the City’s charity bashes.

They may know how to make pots of money, but I can vouch they’re not the most tuneful of singers. The carols, shall we say, were more raucous than harmonic (and I include myself in that description). Still, belting out “we all want figgy pudding” at top volume with the City’s finest was terrific fun. At the end, there were plenty of seasonal greetings – but also, this being that sort of crowd, many refrains of “see you in Barbados”.

Developer moves on to another storey

To 10 Downing Street and a reception for the Patrons of Variety, held by Samantha Cameron. Put together by Harold Tillman, the fashion retail veteran, the Patrons is an offshoot of the charity Variety, aimed at attracting wealthy individuals to the cause.

It was a terrific occasion, and very moving, because several of the poorly and disabled children assisted by Variety were present in their wheelchairs and with their carers. Among those present was Irvine Sellar, builder of the Shard. Listening to him set out his plans for Paddington, I wondered, not for the first time, what it is that drives such people. You might think that the 14 years it took him to get Western Europe’s tallest building finished would be enough. Not a bit of it.

The LTA pays for turning up its nose

As I was leaving, I bumped into David Lloyd. I mentioned the press conference at which, fresh from winning the Davis Cup, Andy Murray and his team-mates rounded on the Lawn Tennis Association for not doing enough to help the sport.

We agreed that the LTA’s new National Tennis Centre, near where I live in south-west London, is an embarrassment. It’s in the wrong place, is hard to get to and is under-used (its facilities are being hired by coaches for private lessons for the children of local well-to-do parents – hardly its intended purpose).

Lloyd, the multi-millionaire tennis player turned leisure entrepreneur, said how he had once offered the LTA his tennis centre at Hendon. Complete with room for an on-site hotel, and close to Heathrow airport and the M25, it would have been ideal. So keen was he to see the game prosper in Britain and for juniors to develop their skills that he was prepared to sell it for a knockdown price.

But the LTA, which always regarded the outspoken Lloyd as a bit of a wheeler-dealer maverick – beyond the pale, in other words – was having none of it.

The rest, as Murray and co so scathingly described, is history.