The Guardian (UK): This is what they said: “Niall Fitzgerald, chairman of Unilever, on other bosses: "The crooks should be driven out, tried and put in jail. The incompetents should be taken from their responsibilities and allowed to do something else" Shell's exploration boss Walter van de Vijver to chairman Sir Phil Watts about the company's stated reserves: "I am becoming sick and tired of lying" (ShellNews.net) 30 Dec 04

Dec 30, 2004

Niall Fitzgerald, chairman of Unilever, on other bosses: "The crooks should be driven out, tried and put in jail. The incompetents should be taken from their responsibilities and allowed to do something else"

Shell's exploration boss Walter van de Vijver to chairman Sir Phil Watts about the company's stated reserves: "I am becoming sick and tired of lying"

Martin O'Neill, chairman of the Commons trade and industry committee on the restructuring of Rover Group and the so- called Phoenix Four directors: "The scale of your industrial achievement is being undermined by what appears to be a financial sleight of hand"

When the six-month trial of Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Schwartz was declared a mistrial because of the intransigence of one elderly female juror (who had given the defendants an "OK" signal in court), a fellow juror described her view as "when things went to hell at Tyco, the Ivy-League-educated, waspy board of directors closed ranks and served up, in her words, the 'Polack and the Jew'"

Lord Kirkham, chairman of furniture group DFS, rejected suggestions he was making the company look like a dog in order to take it private: "If it was a dog it would be a fucking Crufts champion, I can assure you"

New WH Smith chief executive Kate Swann tried to buy a computer accessory only to find they were out of stock. She said: "By the time I had been around five departments . . . I had begun to lose the will to live"

Express owner Richard Desmond told Jeremy Deedes of the Telegraph what he thought of Conrad Black: "After three years dealing with a bunch of crooks I am starting to enjoy this. You sat down with that fucking fat crook and did nothing"

M&S chief executive Stuart Rose: "If it looks like a duck and quacks like it's a duck, then it's a duck, right? That's how I operate. I am not going to take the duck's bloody footprints, send them away for DNA analysis and find 10 weeks later that it is a duck, by which time it's flown away"

A member of staff at Duhamel Place, billionaire Philip Green's Jersey HQ, in response to questions from the Guardian: "I can neither confirm nor deny anything, but you cannot quote me on that"

Ex-Parmalat finance director Fausto Tonna to journalists: "I wish you and your families a slow and painful death"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1380774,00.html