Barfly

Hot Rod's in the charity frame

Biggar, known in the investment community as Hot Rod, is raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust after one of his colleagues, Sharon King, lost her only child, Zoe, to the illness in September. Barfly hears that Biggar has procured the signature of artist John Bellany, who has donated one of his paintings to the cause, to decorate the side of his car. Biggar said: "When I asked for a painting, I also said that, if successful, I was keen to carry his signature on the car.

Thus I got the painting, and the attached signature, which he painted on a sheet of his sketch- pad. It has been scanned and will be on the car. Very important for an art lover such as myself"

The painting will be auctioned at The Sportsman's dinner this Friday at Prestonfield in Edinburgh.

Equity spat gets catty

BUSINESS leaders who enjoy a good spat would do well to turn up to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on Wednesday when private equity bosses Jon Moulton and Simon Walker go head to head on a conference panel after an embarrassingly public fallout in Germany last week. Moulton, managing partner of Alchemy Partners, last week used his keynote speech at a global private equity event in Munich to publicly dress down Walker's organisation, the private equity lobby group BVCA, for using "dodgy statistics" in a recent report designed to highlight the benefits of the industry.

Walker later got his own back by likening his task at the BVCA, to "herding cats". We look forward to the next instalment.

Stewart nets Scotland.com duties

Stewart Kirkpatrick, the mastermind behind the Scotsman's online presence, is on the move again. Kirkpatrick, who left scotsman.com last year, having helped it become one of Google's top 30 world-wide news sources, is to leave his post as online communications director at Civic to set up his own company. Called w00tonomy, the online agency has been launched with a view to helping Scotland overcome its "digital deficit".

Kirkpatrick said: "We believe that Scotland's online ecosystem is five years behind London and 10 years behind where it could be. There are many very talented web and marketing professionals in our private and public sectors, but for one reason and another that pool of talent has not led to the digital landscape that Scotland deserves." He will be joined by Graham Jones and Tony Purcell.

Read the smoke signals – Osler's a big chief now

ANY former Scottish Executive – sorry, Government – PR man will know there's no smoke without fire, but will Martin Osler's messages be sent out by smoke signal rather than e- mail from now on? Barfly only asks because Osler has become Scottish director of communications firm Geronimo. ( Doesn't that name just cry out for an exclamation mark at the end?)

Clients north of the Border now include the National Lottery in Scotland, General Teaching Council for Scotland, Bòrd na Gàidhlig – the Gaelic development agency – learndirect Scotland and Highlands and Islands Architectural Design Awards.