People & Business

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the IMF and World Bank shindig now winding down in Hong Kong is just one long round of cocktail parties, it is actually very hard work (so our correspondent there tells me).

Meeting after meeting, seminar after seminar. Honestly. So much so that after one 7.30am breakfast round table chin-wag on European Monetary Union, a nearly empty mini-bar bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label was found under the table. EMU-talk is enough to drive anybody to drink, but the finger of suspicion has been pointed - no doubt unfairly - at our own dear Kenneth Clarke. Just because his breakfast seemed to consist of a cigar ...

The security around the Hong Kong convention centre for the visiting Chinese premier has been remarkable even by the high standards of these international gatherings. One or two tranquil demonstrations, where police outnumber the demonstrators by about three to one, have been allowed. But the security blanket is tightest of all in the Grand Hyatt Hotel where most delegations - including the Chinese - are staying.

When the Premier, Li Peng, is in the hotel the doors are sealed and the lifts all stop operating. But Mervyn King, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, found himself in a moving lift on one of these occasions. As the doors opened he was joined by the Chinese premier and two soldiers armed to the teeth. Mr King reached his destination safely - but said he had decided not to reach for his mobile phone.

Fun and games at a fund raising bash the other night for the Crocus Trust, a new charity to raise awareness of and find treatments for colon and bowel cancer. The bidding for a couple of first-class British Airways tickets to any destination in the US was opened by Richard Branson at a deliberately insulting price of pounds 1. What a wag.

There followed an awkward couple of minutes when Mr Branson's even more generous donation, free travel anywhere in the world courtesy of Virgin, looked as if it wouldn't even make the BA reserve. Relief all round as the tickets were finally knocked out for pounds 8,000.

The entertainment continued as the auctioneer, Chris Tarrant, Capital Radio's star DJ, found himself adjudicating over a bidding war between his own wife and Mr Branson for a morning with Capital Radio's Flying Eye. Since Mr Tarrant's wife was sitting in Mr Branson's lap at the time, it was not easy to see who had actually won this coveted prize. It is only possible to speculate on why either of them wanted this special treat. Was it mere bravado on Mr Branson's part or do I sense a merger coming on?

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has appointed a new fundraiser, Jeremy Bayliss, a chartered surveyor and senior partner of Gerald Eve. Mr Bayliss has been a surveyor for 37 years and now becomes chief executive of Kew's Foundation, in order to raise funds for one of the world's greatest botanic gardens. Kew's director, Sir Gillean Prance, paid tribute to the "fantastic job" done by the previous chief executive, Giles Coode-Adams. The latter had raised more than pounds 16.5m for Kew. "He has excelled my wildest dreams," Sir Gillean tells me.

Martin Sorrell has finally merged the media buying operations of WPP's UK advertising subsidiaries, J Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather. As with all mergers, however amicable, there are winners and losers. And it looks like JWT's Dominic Proctor has come out on top, with the title of chief operating officer of MindShare (the new merged body) and chairman of MindShare UK.

O&M's Mandy Pooler, one of the most powerful women in advertising and with a reputation for tough talking, becomes merely managing director of MindShare UK.

As far as I understand it, "media buying" means buying advertising space. According to MindShare itself, the newly merged operation will "leverage its size to buy share of voice in the most cost-effective way possible". So now you know.

Cortecs, the Isleworth, Middlesex-based drugs company, has poached Dr Phil Gould from Glaxo Wellcome UK to be its new director of research and development. Dr Michael Flynn, president and chief operating officer at Cortecs, is delighted to have hooked such a big fish. Dr Gould is Glaxo's head of new product introduction and product technology, overseeing 340 technical staff. The newcomer "will take on responsibility for managing and leading all our R&D projects" at Cortecs, says Dr Flynn. This will consist mostly of developing new "pharmaceutical delivery systems", in other words pills to cure osteoporosis and the like.