City Diary: Gulf Keystone lawyer keeps a lid on litigant funding details Caring's love of the bottle merchant It reads like something out of Mills & Boon. I don't remember the first time we met. However, Gary [Boom] assures me it was at a shoot hosted by a mutual friend in Devon about ten years ago. And that's really how we got to know each other. Who is this charming Gary? Richard Caring's wine merchant of course, as revealed in a feature on "the special alchemy of the collector-supplier relationship" in the glitzy How to Spend It magazine. Gushes the restaurateur behind J Sheekey, Scott's and Le Caprice: "What's great about Gary is that he doesn't just put me into the trophy wines such as Petrus, Sassicaia and Haut-Brion. He'll also make sure I have enough of other favourites too: Pol Roger and Grand-Puy-Lacoste. I can't think of an occasion where he's got it wrong. Long may the love-in continue! Not even Vince Cable can make the markets do his bidding. As the business secretary spoke out at the second anniversary of the 30% Club at the London Stock Exchange on why the City must boost the number of women in boardroom roles, shares in Chilean copper miner Antofagasta - one of the eight remaining companies in the FTSE 100 with an exclusively male board - went up. The mystery of the $1bn dealmaker Don't shoot the messenger. Except, perhaps, when that go-between has signed a billion-pound gas deal with no authorisation to sign on the dotted line whatsoever. Such is the fiasco that is causing great embarrassment in Ukraine, after the government signed a contract with an unauthorised representative of Spanish energy provider Gas Natural Fenosa to build a natural gas terminal by the Black Sea. The ink was scarcely dry on the "agreement" to build the $1.1bn facility than Gas Natural denied all knowledge of mystery signatory Jordi Sarda Bonvehi and said the contract was invalid - never mind that the document was signed in the presence of Ukraine's prime minister Mykola Azarov and energy chief Yuriy Boyko. "This person [Bonvehi] does not represent the company," said a spokesman for Gas Natural. School ties net profits Small schools and small racing yards produce the goods, claims one City mole. His proof? The fact that Allen & Overy partner-turned racehorse trainer Anthony Humphrey, whose modest stables enjoyed a "solid triumph" at Newbury recently, is an alumnus of the tiny Douai Abbey school, as is ex-HSBC chief Michael Geoghegan, the late UBS corporate financier Brian Keelan and MML Capital founder Rory Brooks. Douai Abbey, it should be noted, closed in 1999 due to "a lack of pupils." Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao looks for "variety of experience and interests" when assessing new recruits to his multinational telecoms empire. But then Colao is no stranger to a colourful CV himself. His London office displays a picture of his younger self in ceremonial uniform as an officer in the Carabinieri, Italy's national military police. "It perhaps implies I am a bit militaristic in my management style," says the man overseeing 500 job cuts at Vodafone's Australian operations.