A tale of City intrigue

She is the tough, glamorous City fund manager with the power to make or break multi-nationals - but when she is implicated in a financial scandal, her personal life is dragged through the courts.

Sarah Armstrong is fictional - the heroine of a novel by former retail tycoon Terry Maher. But in personality she bears a striking resemblance to the Square Mile's Ice Queen, Carol Galley, whom many blame for Maher's downfall.

Could the book be providing sweet revenge for its author? When it is called Unfinished Business, many in the City might think so.

Maher was one of Galley's earliest victims, ousted as chairman of the Dillons bookshop empire. He was removed from the board after the group's rapid expansion ran into difficulties. Maher said he felt "stunned and betrayed" at the decision and accused fund managers such as Galley of "obsessive, homogenous shorttermism".

In the novel, fund manager Armstrong is described punishing a client for poor performance. Maher writes: "Sarah struck the table angrily. 'I've had enough. That bastard Gerald Howard runs Tudor as if he owns the company. Well, we are the largest shareholders in Tudor and we will show him who the real owners are.'" Before long Howard, like Maher, is fired.

But Armstrong gets her comeuppance when she is forced to stand trial accused of covering up a failing company's fortunes. Though there is no suggestion that either Galley or her company were involved in anything illegal, industrial giant Unilever accused her Merrill Lynch Investment Managers of mishandling its pension fund. In the end MLIM paid an estimated £70 million out-of-court settlement to Unilever, which was seen as a personal blow to Galley.

Maher, 67, denies using the book to get back at Galley or the City. He said: "It doesn't paint the City in a flattering ligh; it is a warts-and-all picture. It points to a number of things that go on in the City that concern me, such as the power of fund managers.

"I wanted to throw light on these problems using fiction but of course I drew on real people I knew and came across in the City. The character of Sarah Armstrong is an amalgam of people like Carol Galley and Nicola Horlick.

"She is very sharp and successful and behaves ruthlessly like the Carols and Nicolas of this world. The book ends optimistically for Sarah Armstrong, though things didn't turn out that way for Carol Galley."

Grammar-school-educated Galley built a fearsome reputation at MLIM for dismissing company bosses. Another of her highprofile victims was Sir Rocco Forte, ousted from his job as chief executive at Trusthouse Forte in 1997, after Galley threw her weight behind a hostile takeover bid.

Whether Galley feels the same is not known. Holidaying at her home in the south of France, she was unavailable for comment.