Behind the development of Isabel, the software package that will be launched at the end of this year, is the terrible story of his daughter Isabel’s collapse and near-death after a mis-diagnosis at a London hospital two years ago. (Now aged five, she is thankfully almost fully recovered.) Maude, 42, spent three years at AXA and was also managing director of Dillon Read Securities, but he is now taking a few months out of the City for the launch. “After that, ideally I would like to do some work as a part-time director or a company doctor,” he says. “Or a head of research somewhere — if anyone will have me.”

TIMES are hard for Mike Lynch, boss of Autonomy. He has been awarded a pay rise by the remuneration committee, the report and accounts notes, which takes his basic salary to £100,000. This is an increase of all of £47 since last time. Lynch will just have to fall back on his £120 million worth of Autonomy shares.

Forewarned

THOSE 500, or whatever, shock job cuts at Reuters may not have come as a complete bombshell within the organisation. I hear that someone accidentally posted a list of 150 names of staff on the company’s internal website, along with a strong indication that they might soon be seeking pastures new.

No one from Reuters is commenting, but it seems as soon as the mistake was spotted, it was taken off the site. But not before it was seen by at least some of those concerned.

IT WOULD have been so disappointing if the decision by Ronnie Frost’s Hays Group to put out a dire profit warning on election day, when attention was elsewhere, meant that this was overlooked by the market. Fortunately it wasn’t. Next time, try Budget Day, chaps. Or there’s always New Year’s Eve ...

Self-effacing

JOHN HUMPHRYS, grand inquisitor on the Today programme, has some typically bracing words for the whingeing self-employed. “I’m not sure whether the Government is doing enough for the self-employed — I employ an accountant who takes care of everything for me,” he admits.

“People like me, who have plenty of money, should be very grateful and just get on with paying their taxes. When I compare myself to the self-employed seamstress who is being exploited on a pittance, any grief I might have in my life is easy to contain.”

MY COMMISERATIONS to HSBC staff in London, who are being required to go on “diversity training” courses. This means they must take time off from their normal duties of watching paint dry on the markets to learn how to talk to women, gays, black people, merchant bankers and other oppressed minorities. The move has been sprung on them by the inevitable consultants, brought in from outside to make work for idle hands.

Market stall

AS NASDAQ arrives at the London Stock Exchange, I hear that Clara Furse, the Dutch-Canadian chief executive of the LSE, is borrowing at least one idea from the American high-tech market. Many years ago there was a shop at the Stock Exchange Tower selling memorabilia.

Nasdaq now has a similar outlet at its New York headquarters just around the corner from Times Square stocking teddy bears, T-shirts, coffee mugs and the like, and Furse is thinking of starting up again in London selling the same sort of tourist tat from the Exchange.

She may have one advantage, though: when the shop shut down it seems no one threw out the original merchandise, and it may still be stored somewhere, ready to be dug out again when needed.

city.diary@thetimes.co.uk