People & Business: An armadillo has taken control of the economy

Gordon Brown's an armadillo - official.

Accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward launched a Budget web site on the Internet this week to advise clients on the Budget's effects and included a questionnaire for owner-managed businesses.

The firm asked: "Considering the Budget's measures, has Chancellor Brown turned out to be (a) an `iron' chancellor; (b) a `marshmallow' chancellor; or (c) an `armadillo' chancellor?"

The result of this test as of last night was 95 votes for armadillo, 55 for marshmallow and 45 for iron. So, the Chancellor's shaped like half a rugby ball and comes from South America. I knew it all along.

There's another Gordon Brown who hasn't had quite so good a week; Gordon Brown the co-owner of Sunday Business, the newspaper, whose company, Group 2000, has gone belly up.

His dump truck to printers company was advertised for sale by receivers from Coopers & Lybrand this week. What will this mean for Sunday Business, which Mr Brown co-owns with thirtysomething entrepreneur Luke Johnson? Watch this space.

Christopher Haskins, chairman of Northern Foods, has been appointed by Dr David Clark, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, to chair the Government's taskforce on better regulation.

The taskforce is an independent panel set up "to advise the Government on action which improves the effectiveness and credibility of government regulation by ensuring that it is necessary, fair and affordable, and simple to understand and administer, taking account of the needs of small business and ordinary people".

Well, if it can do that, Mr Haskins will deserve a hereditary peerage at the very least.

Mr Haskins, 60, has worked for Northern Foods since 1962. He's a member of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, the CBI Presidents Council and the Hampel Committee on Corporate Governance, so he's definitely one of the "great and the good". He'll need all his experience for his new job, however.

You might not think of the law as a "fast-moving good" but City law firm Nicholson Graham & Jones thinks otherwise. The firm has just chosen drinks specialist Andy Nash to advise it on strategic business issues and he says he is looking forward to bringing "a totally fresh approach and some hard-hitting ideas from the world of fast-moving goods".

Mr Nash is an ex-managing director at Taunton Cider and became managing director at Matthew Clark Taunton when the latter bought the former.

It will be fascinating to see how a Square Mile law firm compares to a cider maker. The firm recently advised Mohamed Al Fayed on the acquisition of Fulham Football Club, and Wandsworth Borough Council on the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station as a giant cinema complex. No doubt NGJ's senior partners will soon be scrumping for apples.

Here's another unlikely connection between business and booze: Rio Tinto's new logo is red because "rio tinto means wine-coloured river in Spanish and vino tinto is red wine," according to John Hughes, a spokesman for the company. "It seemed logical to select a rich, red-wine colour for our logo," he writes in the latest company in-house magazine.

Bill Dacombe has seen a lot of water flow under the bridge since he took over Brown Shipley in 1991 in order to rescue the crisis-hit stockbroker. Last year he sold the company to Midlands broker Albert E Sharp, and now he is succeeding Simon Sharp as chairman.

Mr Dacombe's career before 1991 was in banking. He says that when he joined Brown Shipley he found that "everyone was miserable because British monetary policy was being run to satisfy conditions for the ERM. It was only with White Wednesday in September 1992 that people started to make money instead of losing it all the time."