As the Lloyds share sale sweeteners that could get you £200 back on a £1,000 invested are revealed, we take a look at the bank - along with a fund manager's view that the UK will do well.

There are only five female chief executives of FTSE 100 companies and an even more derisory three chairmen. By contrast, 15 such jobs are held by men called John. The shortage of women in high-powered positions in Britain's boardrooms has led to calls for quotas in the some quarters.

Lagarde is the first woman to hold the job and she also has worked enormously hard to make the IMF appear to be a kinder and gentler institution. In the not so distant past it might have been impossible, for instance, for the IMF to holds its annual gathering in Latin America because of the sheer hatred among the populus of its policies.

We tend to think of AB InBev as the brewer with the Latin touch because of the dominant Brazilian presence. But SABMiller also has a big footprint in Latin America. Despite growing economic pressures in many Latin American nations, SABMiller's sales have been climbing in high single digits on this continent.

Poundland CEO Jim McCarthy lives his life by the mantra of extracting the last drop of value from everything which has helped the store become the largest of its type in Europe. The business floated in March 2014 when its shares jumped 19 per cent on their debut. Since then, annual profits have grown to £36m from £21m and the firm has expanded to 528 stores.

The commodities super-cycle that drove the shares of natural resource and mining stocks was almost entirely driven by voracious Chinese demand. The IMF's chief economist Maurice Obstfeld declined to rule out the possibility that the damage being done by China, particularly in emerging markets, could drive the world into recession.

People are deterred from putting their money in a pension plan because when they are young, retirement seems a long way off. If we are to get Britons saving for their old age, we need a root-and-branch overhaul of the complicated system and instead have one simple personal savings account with one simple incentive.

It will be 2018 before a line can finally be drawn under the PPI scandal. So we can look forward to a few more years of texts, emails and calls from claims managers offering to handle our complaints. Some will see a deadline as an unwarranted block on complaints. But in the case of PPI, we have long passed the point where common sense should have prevailed.

Phillip Monks is blunt. 'Engineers are crap at finance,' says the chief executive of challenger bank Aldermore - and an engineer by education - quoting advice he was given early in his career. The nugget of wisdom was proffered by Sir Austin Pearce, who was chairman of British Aerospace at the time. Monks wanted to run a business rather than remain at the drawing board. 'He told me: "You need to go and get some experience in finance and then you've got a chance of running an engineering business." So I went and joined Barclays. I then forgot to take the turning back into engineering.'