Dashwood: Are you smart enough to win Silicon Valley investment dollars? Centrica chief plans cut-backs Forget the row over consumers" escalating energy costs. Sam Laidlaw, the Centrica boss, has problems closer to home. Ongoing tree problems in the grounds of his Oxfordshire mansion, the site of Laidlaw's much-discussed proposed lily pond, to be precise. Laidlaw has to ask permission from the council for any radical gardening, since his home sits within a conservation area. So, following an issue with diseased sycamores in June, Laidlaw has filed his second tree-pruning planning application within five months. This time, to cut back 16 specimens - one of which is very old and needs to be felled completely. The city planners" decision, like those aged branches marked for the chop, is hanging in the balance until mid-December. Some City parents with a son who has made a rumoured £20m by the age of 18 might decide it was time to put their feet up. But not Lou Montilla, the father of Nick D'Aloisio-Montilla, the wunderkind behind the mobile app Summly who has Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire, on speed-dial. Montilla senior is one of the four commodities traders recently hired by Glencore Xstrata to help it muscle in on the energy majors" liquefied natural gas turf. No doubt Aloisio is delighted to see his old Dad getting on in the world.