First Sir James Sassoon. Then Baroness Shriti Vadera. Now Robin Budenberg. It seems Gordon Brown cannot formulate a grand financial plan without the aid of a UBS, Swiss banker.
Budenberg, a high flying UBS merger and acquisition fiancier, advised Gordon Brown on the £500bn bank bail-out
This perhaps partially explains why the taxpayer has no voting rights or a seat on banks' boards despite effectively saving them from ruin.
The 49-year-old also helped the government sell off British Energy to the French.
It seems strange that Brown goes to the European bank with the biggest exposure to US sub-prime. A bank that is also in the midst of a potentially devastating US investigation concerning allegations that its US division was in the centre of a huge tax evasion scam. UBS is helping the US tax authorities to reach a settlement.
Brown, though, has a long history with UBS. Sir James Sassoon, until last month, was his link man with the City. Sassoon has now defected to the Tory cause.
Shriti Vadera – known to civil servants as 'Shreeky' for her habit of shouting at officials - was last year ennobled and is now a key member of the cabinet.
With friends like these, it's a fair chance that meaningful reform of the City – offshore tax havens, auditing, transparency – will be fudged.
