City Diary: BP offers rich platform for comedy as student TV show heads to the careers fair FT shows no favour to BBC The Financial Times" leader column yesterday on the Savile crisis at the BBC was certainly "without favour," as the paper's motto at the top of the op-ed page declares. In a series of body blows to under-fire BBC director-general George Entwistle, the paper stated: "His performance did little to counter questions about his leadership qualities. Mr Entwistle needs to develop the nose for trouble that the BBC requires its leader to have. Where could such a scandal-sniffing frontman be found? Surely not at the FT, whose editor Lionel Barber was reportedly one of the four candidates in contention for the BBC's top seat this summer. At the time, Barber denied he was "mightily peeved" to have been passed over in favour of Entwistle. Perhaps this new show of Schadenfreude suggests otherwise? Singer downplays job cuts The merger of Singer Capital Markets and N+1 Brewin has gone "smoothly," says Tim Cockroft, head of the newly formed N+1 Singer. Does that mean the staff who were given their marching orders as fallout from the fusion went quietly? Between 10 and 20 employees have been laid off before the firm relocates to the City on November 10 or 11 - but N+1 Singer says the cull was always part of the deal. "In the league table of mergers, we would be right at the bottom in terms of impact on jobs," a spokesman consoles those relegated from the Singer squad.