Business diary: Not a badge to wear with pride

The City PR agency Finsbury and its founder, Roland Rudd, are used to being garlanded for their power and influence, but the latest award handed to the company is likely to go down rather less well. Survival International, a human rights group, wants to give it a gong for "PR Disaster of the Year" in recognition of its work with Vedanta Resources. The London-headquartered miner has had a tough time from such campaigners, who are critical of its plans to mine bauxite in the mountains of Orissa in India.

HSBC bets on Britain

It looks as if HSBC wants to scotch all the gossip about it not being committed to the UK – it has signed up to sponsor the British Lions rugby team until the end of 2013. Still, we can't help noticing that during the bank's sponsorship period, the Lions are to play their first ever match in Hong Kong, where so many of HSBC's senior staff are based. Maybe executives are still hedging their bets.

Spelling lessons for Johnson

Given criticism of the lack of economic experience of Alan Johnson, Ed Miliband's surprise choice as the shadow Chancellor, it might have been wise of the party to check and double-check all pronouncements put out in his name. Certainly, the Tories were delighted to discover yesterday that a Labour press release published by Johnson talked about "quantative easing" rather than "quantitative easing". It's not a mistake one imagines Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper would have made.

The real heroes of business

It's the last chance saloon for your favourite non-executive director: there are now just two more weeks until the deadline for the non-executive director awards – the trophies handed out to those poor souls who give up their time every couple of months in return for payments of only tens of thousands of pounds. You can nominate your favourite "ned" at www.nedawards.co.uk. Who couldn't fail to have been impressed, for example, by the work done recently by the neds who ran HSBC's board shake-up?

businessdiary@independent.co.uk