London - Zeus seems to have chucked a stray thunderbolt at the financial titan that is former Barclays boss Bob Diamond. Will he and his Atlas Mara now have to hold up the heavens as punishment?
Well perhaps not. As thunderbolts go, an 8.95 percent vote against his re-election to the board of the Africa-focused financial services group he co-founded represents more of a squeak than a full-throated roar.
The issue appears to have been caused because Glass Lewis, a proxy voting firm, raised an issue about Diamond's role as a member of Atlas Mara's audit committee.
This violates what it - and I for that matter - consider to be best practice. Given the importance of its function, audit committee members really ought to be fully independent non-executive directors. Diamond can hardly be considered as that.
Privately, the point has been made to me that he does at least have experience of the field and so he took on the role in the company's early days when there were only a few directors to call on. Which is fair enough, I suppose. Setting up a business, even when you are a multimillionaire, is stressful, and involves a certain amount of squeezing square pegs into round holes until the show is fully on the road. His role on the audit committee may soon come to an end, because Atlas Mara has been busily appointing new directors with lots of experience in all sorts of relevant fields.
I'm told the issue wasn't actually raised by investors in the run-up to the vote, and that the company is a shade perplexed at the result. There is even speculation that a shareholder or two might have just handed their proxy forms over to Glass Lewis. The point being that at least they are doing something. At least they are hiring a credible voting adviser to help with decisions on issues like this if they lack the time and/or the resources to handle it in-house.
The levels of engagement by investors with the firms in which they invest are atrocious. It says it all that the vote against Diamond can be characterised as progress. But progress, of a sort, it is - and we should welcome that. Before we start pushing for more. Much more.
A Welcome Break and a £500 loss on the FOBT?
Did you think that his views on the BBC would be the only controversy that the new Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, would be engaged in, less than a week after his surprise appointment? Au contraire.
Whittingdale, it appears, is a fan of fixed odds betting terminals. Or he has at least spoken in support of them. FOBTs are a fixture in betting shops up and down the country and have, until recently, provided a very big earnings stream for the industry.
They bleep and they rattle, and they can detract from the pleasure of watching the racing at the local Ladbrokes. Particularly if the shop doesn't benefit from modern design.
They have also been described as the “crack cocaine” of gambling, because of their ability to extract large sums of cash from players in a short spell of time. It is because of this that it has been argued that they are highly addictive. No more so than fruit machines, the betting industry claims, not without justification. But that doesn't change the fact that they can be problematic.
It was as a result of the fuss around them that new restrictions were introduced by the old Coalition government. And new tax. That goes without saying in austerity Britain.
But it has since emerged that Whittingdale has previously supported calls for allowing more of them, and not only in betting shops but in bingo halls and other gaming venues. Even, maybe, those in motorway service stations. Stuck in traffic? Stop at your local Welcome Break for a Starbucks and a £500-hole in your pocket!
How about that for an advertising slogan? Perhaps someone should use that in a future party political broadcast.
But wait, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport says there has been no policy change with regard to the issue. Well, yes. Whittingdale has barely got his feet under the desk.
Apparently the betting industry lost close to £10m on the general election after a late surge in support for the Tories. Could Whittingdale win it back for them? He might yet prove to be their biggest winner of the campaign. No wonder the shares were ticking up yesterday. It's not just the banks that have grounds for optimism about the result.
It's still a bit too early to feel smug, guys.
Reasons to be cheerful: wages are still rising at a faster rate than inflation. After several years during which they were largely falling in real terms, they are now clawing back some of the lost ground. Unemployment is falling too, and tight labour markets make for higher wages.
Reasons for feeling less than cheerful: that zero inflation you've been enjoying? Try not to get used to it. The same goes for zero interest rates. They'll still be with us for a while, but an end might be in sight.
The Treasury will be happy. All this is good news. But it shouldn't be too smug. Too many of those jobs are low paid. Productivity is still far too low. The Conservative government's claim to economic competence won't truly be credible until these, and other structural issues with the UK economy, are addressed.
The Independent