Finance

Robbie, as he’s known to his mates, kissed goodbye to £1 billion inside 24 hours. As someone far too wrapped up in the fortunes of Icelandic banks, he was forced to offload his stakes in Sainsbury’s and Mitchells & Butlers - as Kaupthing went into the gyre and then off down the Swannee.

If there was ever a car crash waiting to happen, it was Robert Tchenguiz’s various contract-for-difference vehicles, which he used to build stakes in pub groups and supermarkets. Armed with his derivatives, he’d then try to intimidate the companies into realising the value of their property assets - i.e. leverage themselves up to the hilt. For management teams, he was presumably a right royal pain in the the backside, since they'd spend vast amounts of time fending him off. I doubt if Justin King, the Sainsbury’s boss, will be sorry to see the back of him.

Robbie is said to be philosophical about things. An acquaintance quoted in the FT implied that these losses would just be water off a duck's back: 'These guys are mobile traders; they could be here, they could be gone tomorrow, they could move up to Los Angeles and start up again or head out to the Middle East.' Leaving the rest of us to clear up the mess.

I suspect one of the effects of the current maelstrom is that we all have a long, hard look at company ownership. A timely report has appeared this week from Tomorrow's Company and it makes worrying reading. Are companies like Sainsbury's just the easily-tossed chips of high-rolling roulette players like Tchenguiz? Or does stewardship imply something more permanent and with a different level of responsibility? And if so, to whom?

I met Tchenguiz briefly once amid a cloud of fag smoke inside his seriously tasteless Mayfair office. The setup was made all the more bizarre by the frequent presence of Robbie (and his brother Vincent)’s father, who would hold court in an anteroom. He was quite a character, and would make woeful observations about his son’s fast private life. The old boy even gave his tie to the MT photographer who had turned up to take his son’s portrait. Here’s what we wrote about Robbie way back in the good old days...

In today's bulletin:
Glimmer of hope for house prices
WH Smith fuels high street optimism
Iceland's frosty relations as Kaupthing falls
Editor's blog: Feeling Robbie's £1bn pain
MT's Little Ray of Sunshine: Google saves our email blushes