People: Last hurrah?

Followers of financial Houdini Andrew Greystoke are speculating as to whether his permanent ban by the Financial Services Authority will really mark the end of his business activities. A former Rothschild banker, one-time Westminster City councillor and admirer of Dame Shirley Porter, the Tesco heiress and controversial ex-council leader, Greystoke and his Marble Arch-based firm, Atlantic Law, were fined £200,000 each over their role in sanctioning a £3 million ‘boiler room’ share-peddling operation by unregulated Spanish brokers.

PLUS Markets, at which Atlantic Law was active as corporate adviser to a succession of notably entrepreneurial concerns, has suspended Atlantic Law from that role. But it is hard to imagine Greystoke, a lawyer by training, tending to his roses.

Known in the City as ‘Tarzan’ for his role over the decades in small quoted company controversies, he launched a new investment company, City & Westminster Group, some years ago with the declared aim of beefing up smaller companies. It ended fairly soon amid a welter of disputes over option deals and other issues.

Afterwards, he had run-ins with various institutions, from the Law Society to the Lloyd’s insurance market. Outwardly unfailingly cheerful, humorous and unflappable, more recently he set up Atlantic Law, but controversy soon returned.

Greystoke welcomed one PLUS Markets float client, Fluid Leader, a company set up by another City controversialist, Paul ‘The Plumber’ Davidson, to exploit a novel pipeline connection device, with backing from the ruling family of Sharjah. Not long afterwards, however, Atlantic Law resigned as adviser over some of the other people involved and the project ran into the sand.