People and Business

High-rise hero back home

DAN FRANK can boast that he supervised the construction of the tallest building in Europe - and then did the same with the tallest building in the world.

Mr Frank is a senior member of the Canary Wharf construction team, and is now heavily involved in the London Docklands development's latest splurge of building. In the 1980s he helped oversee the building of One Canada Square, which when completed was Europe's tallest building (now it's only the tallest in the UK).

In 1992 Canary Wharf went into administration, emerging three years later. Mr Frank spent the "quiet years' in Kuala Lumpur project-managing Petronas Towers, far and away the tallest building in the world.

Aboard at P&O

CONGRATS TO Baroness Hogg on her appointment to the board of the Peninsular and Oriental Navigation Company (P&O) as a non-executive director. How fitting that she should join a company chaired by that arch-Tory, Lord Sterling. She is, of course, married to Douglas Hogg, John Major's favourite agriculture minister during the BSE crisis.

As plain Sarah Hogg she was the first business and City editor of this very organ. She then became head of the prime minister's policy unit from 1990 to 1995, the era of the Citizen's Charter, and was in part responsible for the Cones Hotline, when angry drivers could phone up and complain about too many cones on the road.

Her other main claim to fame is that she bought her husband Douglas the floppy hat that he wore as a minister and which was much derided by the press.

She is also chairman of London Economics, the consultancy set up by John Kay, who went off last year to head up the Said Business School at Oxford University.

Baroness Hogg is the fourth new non-exec to be taken on by Lord Sterling over the past year. Two non-execs are standing down, Sir Peter Cazalet, a former deputy chairman of BP, and John Steele, a retired civil servant who was once director-general of the transport directorate of the European Commission.

Meanwhile Lord Sterling, 63, goes on and on. "There is no fixed date for his retirement," a P&O spokesman says.

Tony says ta

VISITORS TO the offices of Sherwood International, which supplies computer services to insurance companies, can see for themselves how highly esteemed the business is by New Labour.

Pinned to the noticeboard inside the offices at 120 Old Broad Street in the City is a recent letter from Tony Blair thanking Sherwood for its role in developing a "cow passport" programme.

The programme was needed to identify which cows had to be culled during the BSE crisis. Apparently the letter is chief executive officer George Matthews's pride and joy.

Trained boffins

THE VARIOUS eggheads, boffins and geeks who inhabit the life sciences industry are about to get a media makeover, if a new training consultancy has its way.

A firm called One Events Life Sciences has launched a media training master class for the men and women in white coats. The two-day programme will include "the secrets of successful crisis management", which would no doubt appeal to employees of British Biotech. Then there's "a case study on Dolly the Sheep, focusing on the strategic thinking behind the announcement".

Scots' lament

BUMP INTO any Scottish rugby fans, and they'll say that if Scotland had kicked their penalties against the Auld Enemy two weeks ago at Twickenham, they would have won. They'll probably add: "If only Gavin Hastings was still doing the kicking."

Mr Hastings now runs his own sports marketing company, Hastings International. Yesterday he joined Joslin Rowe Associates, a recruitment firm, as a non- executive director.

E-mail: j.willcock@independent.co.uk