US-sponsored climate change talks have begun with representatives from the top 16 polluting countries joining in the discussion with the aim to find a global agreement to cap carbon emissions. However unlike the G8 Summit, caps discussed here will be voluntary.

It seems the conference was set up as a PR stunt rather than any real desire to tackle climate change, and was devised by George Bush as an antidote from the most recent G8 summit where he refused to sign any mandatory legislation – he, together with China and India, prefers a more voluntary route.

It is widely speculated that nothing will be achieved from this summit (many countries have sent junior ministers and civil servants as representatives). The message from America on tackling climate change seems misty, given that a month prior to the summit, 12 companies were deleted from the FTSE4Good index due to environmental reasons (JC Penny and Capital One) among them.

Queues have started to form outside branches of Northern Rock as panicked savers pull their cash out of the former building society. And you can hardly blame them - asking the Bank of England for emergency funding to continue financing its lending is hardly a vote of confidence.

Northern Rock has, it must be said, a rather aggressive funding strategy with a large proportion of its balance sheet being made up of short-term borrowings from the financial markets. It relies on having to refinance these borrowings more than most.

So, when credit dries up...

But is the company on the brink? Almost certainly not. The emergency fund is there for situations like this and Northern Rock making use of it is a sign of the financial markets working, rather than one of its members being in imminent risk of collapse.

Investors and savers may share a different view...

There goes another.

Barclays group finance director, Naguib Kheraj, is leaving the bank in search of something more hands on (in other words, making loads of money in either private equity, investment banking or hedge funds).

Jon Symonds, the former CFO of AstraZeneca, is due to start as managing director of Goldman Sachs this month.

And now its the turn of Fred Watt, the former FD of RBoS, who has agreed to join CVC Capital Partners as its chief operating officer.

We are facing a potential crisis. There simply aren't enough experienced directors willing to take on the top financial roles in public companies.

Discuss.

If only the Taxpayers Alliance had read Financial Director. In January we published the results of research we did among readers on so-called green taxes. A staggering 85% said that they believed revenue raised from the taxes would go towards other causes, besides environmental issues. In short, FDs think green taxes are really stealth taxes. (You can read the full article here).

Well, the Taxpayers Alliance agrees. It has done some research and claims that it should cost the government £11.7bn a year to tackle climate change. Yet, total revenue raised from green taxes reaches more than £20bn... Something doesn't quite add up.

It's a crude bit of research, not least because it includes fuel duty as a green tax, but it again highlights mounting suspicion of the government's green motives.