Shock as Mr Integrity faces share ramp probe

It is no surprise that a City firm has found itself accused of the kind of abuses commonly practised by Wall Street brokers during the dotcom madness. But it comes as a shock that the alleged perpetrator is Collins Stewart, the firm run by Mr Integrity himself, Terry Smith.

The claims by James Middleweek - that Smith ramped any share price that suited him, especially his own, that he browbeat analysts to go along with his scam, and then accused an heroic whistleblower of criminal action - are extraordinary. All the more so because of Smith's reputation for ruthlessly independent research and intrinsic-value brokerage.

This is the man, it should be remembered, who fell out with two previous employers for giving an opinion they found too candid for comfort, and who exposed dubious accounting practices in some of the FTSE's best-known companies.

There is a long way to go in this one, and the lawyers are already having a field day. The Financial Services Authority, as is its way, will take a slow and methodical look at the reams of evidence the case will throw up. Likewise the City police and the employment tribunal. But two pertinent facts should be recorded early on.

First, Smith has never sold any of his shares in Collins Stewart, which are worth many millions of pounds. Second, £3m is an awful lot of compensation for a man on a basic of £95,000 a year.

Wanted: rivals to outbid Sky

This is a great idea. All it needs is somebody to put up the money to back it. Here's the plan:

BSkyB and Brussels are apparently on a collision course over the £1 billion-plus football rights package the broadcaster recently signed with the Premier League. Competition Minister Mario Monti objects in principle to a deal that seems to him to have been constructed with the express intention of excluding all other bidders.

Broadcasters, and football investor Dermot Desmond, are up in arms about the deal too, but nobody it seems can afford to outbid Sky. The EU would love another bidder to enter the fray, but nobody has pockets deep enough.

Except the private equity groups, which seem to have masses of money and which are involved in every corporate situation around. You could argue that their efforts have kept the M&A market alive over the past three years or so. And they understand things like intellectual property and media rights.

Now, if there were an entrepreneurial financier out there who might be persuaded to top Sky's offer, Brussels would welcome them with open arms. Once they had the rights, with Monti's blessing, they could do a deal with European broadcasters that was to the liking of almost everybody (except Sky and the Premier League, of course). The big clubs, who secretly think they could do better if they were free to do their own TV deals, would jump at it. The smaller clubs could be bought off by the promise of a payment from a central fund, which the financiers would set up as a condition of their bid. And broadcasters would benefit from cutting out the middle-man, the Premier League.

The private equity backers might even think of setting up a truly free market in football rights - virtually a stock exchange for live games - which would maximise the return to the clubs. You could buy and sell futures and options in forthcoming games, depending on how crucial you thought they were going to be.

Ingenious, isn't it? Do you know, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody was working on such a scheme even as I write.

Grasso's $140m gross excess

At a stroke, Dick Grasso has undone all the good work of William Donaldson, Elliott Spitzer, and the other American regulators who have been doing their best to repair the tarnished image of Wall Street in the wake of Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing.

The head of the New York Stock Exchange has given himself a $140 million farewell pay packet. It knocks all their efforts into a cocked hat, and sends the message to the rest of the world that the home of modern capitalism is doing nothing to curtail the gross excesses that have given it such a bad name. That the payment should have come just days after Donaldson warned Grasso, and others, in writing, about the need to improve corporate governance merely rubs salt in the wounds.

Donaldson wants to know how Grasso could have amassed such an entitlement - which seems to have mostly been built up in the last eight years of his 36-year career at the NYSE, when Grasso was in a position to write his own pay cheque. Astonishingly, the payment is more than the combined last three years' income at the NYSE.

Americans are fond of punitive damages, so it would set a sound example if Grasso were stripped of all but the barest minimum sum to take into his declining years. It would be fitting for the rest to be paid into the compensation fund for victims of September 11.

Rangers kick into a money spinner

Even the most unrepentant Celtic fan (ahem) could not begrudge a small 'well done' to Glasgow's other football team, Rangers, for their midweek victory in Copenhagen. The game, as I wrote last Sunday, would have cost the heavily-indebted club £10m in lost revenue had they failed to qualify for the Champions League, but now they've been rewarded with money-spinning ties in the best draw of all, against Manchester United.

That should be enough to bring a smile even to the face of Ian Robertson, the HBOS executive who runs the Rangers account.