Business Diary: WEF blacklists Gaddafi's boy

More bad news for Saif Gaddafi, the Libyan leader's son. As if the small matter of the uprising over dad's leadership isn't enough to worry about, the World Economic Forum, best known for its annual shindig of power brokers in Davos, Switzerland, has dropped him as one of its "Young Global Leaders". That means no more invites to Davos for the foreseeable future, which may come as something of a relief to the Swiss. Their relations with Libya have been strained since 2008, when the Geneva authorities briefly locked up Hannibal Gaddafi, Saif's brother, on charges of mistreating his servants.

Bankers doing Devil's work?

Looks like Bank of America needs to put its IT lawyers to work. It has long been the subject of rumours that WikiLeaks holds some unknown dirt on a bank, but while Julian Assange's mob keep us waiting for the details, some bright spark has decided to have some

fun at its expense. Anyone who typed www.bankofsatan.com into their internet browser yesterday would have found themselves redirected to Bank of America's website.

The stink from Lehman persists

Still on the topic of our American banking friends, there's an amusing legal exchange going on between JPMorgan Chase and the Lehman administrators. The former is suing the latter over the deal that saw Barclays buy much of the failed bank's US operation in 2008. To bolster its case, it is pointing to emails in which employees of Lehman appear to have described securities not sold to Barclays as "goat poo to be scattered in other people's backyards". The goat poo in question ended up with JPMorgan, you see.

Private sector has to return favour

Brickbats all round to the two-thirds of private-sector bosses who told market researchers that they weren't interested in taking on any of the 300,000 public-sector workers set to lose their jobs as part of the Government's austerity cuts. Putting aside all the jibes about the employability of those working in the public sector, why are these companies not embracing the world of the Big Society? After all, for much of the past 20 years, the state has had to take on all the staff they've laid off.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk