The laments of a transport group boss

FIRSTGROUP’S new chairman Wolfhart Hauser blew a breath of fresh air through Tuesday’s annual meeting in Aberdeen. He admitted to a frustrating experience on the group’s trains due to Network Rail engineering, (“I thought why did I go through that, I can do other things at the weekend”) and to being stuck on a bus in Aberdeen’s Union Street lamenting the group’s “horrible ticketing system”.

On lobbying the government, the chairman said he had finally met both the transport secretary and transport minister recently, adding: “Where are they now? I have to start all over again. That’s how easy it is.”

Branson signs for Man Utd

NOT CONTENT with a rumoured bid of £100 million for French midfielder, Paul Pogba, Manchester United have signed Richard Branson.

Or at least, they’ve done a deal with the Virgin Money founder that might pay Mr Pogba’s wages for half an afternoon.

Virgin Money has signed a four-year deal to become the official retail financial services partner of Manchester United in the UK.

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group said: “Virgin and Manchester United have very similar philosophies – we both want to change the game, not just play it. The two coming together under this new partnership with Virgin Money will create something really special.”

Mr Branson made no comment on whether he had the Man Utd Subbuteo team when he was a lad.

Scotland’s Henley

HENLEY-on-Thames is the most expensive place to buy a property on the UK rail network, with the average price £731,000, according to a ‘fun’ survey by estate agents emoov.

It says Treherbert on the Welshrail network has the lowest price point at £58,000, adding: “That’s more than 12 properties for the price of one around Henley-on-Thames, but you would have to forgo the yearly regatta. Although for the sake of a four-hour train journey and £40, you could still make the regatta and save yourself £673,000.”

Scotland’s Henley is North Berwick, at £387,000 a third more expensive than Edinburgh at £292,000, and its Treherbert is Wick at £103,000.

The perfect fit for shareholders

UPMARKET shoe maker – and by ‘upmarket’ The Bottom Line means eye-wateringly expensive – shoemaker Jimmy Choo has manged to have an electronic annual general meeting.

Lumi AGM Mobile facilitated the “meeting”, thought to be the first of its kind in the UK, which allowed shareholders from anywhere in the world to participate and vote, regardless of their location.

After accessing AGM Mobile, users reached a home page branded with Jimmy Choo’s logo which provided them with a single access point for the AGM presentation slides as well as a resolution by resolution approach to voting which was both flexible and legally robust.

Presumably, investing in the hi-tech system was cheaper than handing out goodie bags full of product to shareholders.

Spooky coincidence

A SNAPPY acronym can be useful for raising an organisation’s profile.

And there is perhaps no better example of this than the shortened name for the Chemical Industries Association – CIA.

Sadly, anyone arriving at its forthcoming conference in Manchester will find out more about performing root causes analyses than the US government’s special ops overseas. Or will they?