Business diary: Was Stalin a Rothschild?

Edited by Simon Goodley
Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 25/05/2007

It's well known that the former Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, was such a good communist that he once worked for the Rothschilds, the banking and wine family. But now I stumble on a more sensational theory, which suggests the relationship was far more intimate.

In a lengthy piece on a personal website, one Clifford Shack argues that Stalin was fathered not by Vissarion Dzhugashvili but by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, who, he argues, could have met the tyrant's mother while visiting Georgia on a wine trip.

It's all a bit sketchy and at times the argument seems a trifle far fetched but it's easily settled via a DNA test (Stalin's daughter's still alive). Could I possibly impose and pluck a strand of chairman Baron David de Rothschild's hair, I ask an NM Rothschild spokesman?
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"I'll get back to you," he sighs.

Mind you do.

THE consortium looking to gazump Barclays and buy ABN Amro had announced that it would be making a statement on the deal tomorrow, only to shove out a press release yesterday saying that it would now speak on Tuesday.

So what's changed? Has the consortium leader and Royal Bank of Scotland boss, Sir Fred Goodwin, got something better to do on Sunday? I hear he's racing off to Monaco to watch the RBS-sponsored Williams team in the Grand Prix.

"Our statement clearly says that it's been moved because of a bank holiday," blocks a spokesman.

Hasn't there always been a bank holiday?

"Our statement's pretty clear," he sniffs.

I only asked.

WHAT adverts will the Post Office be showing on the telly this weekend? I ask because over the last bank holiday weekend, Sky Three broadcast a riveting programme called the Secrets of the Dead: Bombing Nazi Dams at 4am and during an ad break the Post Office took the opportunity to plug its winter sports insurance.

It's not an obvious show, time of day or season to be trying to flog that kind of product but I'm sure it was money well spent. Especially with a Post Office closure programme under way.