CITY WHISPERS: Will hacks keep mum as THG snaps up City AM?

Perhaps the Square Mile shouldn’t have been surprised when Matt Moulding’s THG bought freesheet newspaper City AM last week.

THG already runs a couple of publications through subsidiaries. 

And Moulding has been unimpressed, to put it mildly, by the negative news coverage that he and THG have endured since his company floated in 2020 – and some of that came from City AM.

Claim: THG’s Matt Moulding insists City AM will retain independence in terms of its content

From sceptical opinion pieces scrutinising his company’s use of garbled jargon to an article describing his ‘latest outburst’ following another rant about the stock market, the publication has not lavished him with praise.

His mother won City AM’s ‘Mum of the Year’ award after she telephoned Sunday Times journalist Oliver Shah and read the riot act on her son’s behalf.

Moulding insists the title will retain independence in terms of its content. But Whispers can’t help wondering whether Mama Moulding will have a hotline to the editor’s office.

Palaniappan swapping takeaways for toolboxes

We hear that a former Uber and Just Eats executive will be swapping takeaways for toolboxes. 

Jambu Palaniappan is set to run Checkatrade, a website that directs consumers to local tradesmen. 

While many of us might prefer personal recommendations, Checkatrade – a subsidiary of private equity-owned HomeServe – is betting this will change. 

Palaniappan, a Silicon Valley old hand, will be responsible for ramping up growth in the UK. 

New book from Varoufakis

Treacle-voiced heart-throb Yanis Varoufakis is releasing his new book in September, sadly too late for it to be a summer beach read for his many swooning admirers.

Called Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, the latest tome from Greece’s former finance minister promises to dissect how 21st Century capitalism was usurped by a ‘new economic system’ overseen by Big Tech and central banks.

‘With every click we labour like serfs to increase its power,’ one blurb teases, suggesting in another line we may not have noticed as we were watching cat videos on TikTok.

Varoufakis has yet to expand his arguments using, er, Big Tech, on his Twitter, Instagram and, yes, TikTok accounts. 

Cat got your tongue, Yanis?

Poachers make the best game keepers 

Former rogue trader Nick Leeson has spent the past few months as a private spy with the London-based Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, which investigates financial misconduct.

In his role at the group Leeson, the ex-derivatives trader who brought down 233-year-old Barings Bank in the 1990s, helps investors seek compensation in court when regulators are not able to help.

Now the word on the street is that a big Middle Eastern client has enlisted his help to conduct due diligence for potential investments – aiming to scrutinise potential transactions with the same forensic attention to detail that applies to Red Mist’s other research.

They say poachers make the best game keepers.