Banker who failed to check his account

He was one of the City's legendary power brokers, a man who pulled off the biggest hostile takeover in corporate history. But today Scott Mead's reputation lies in tatters, destroyed by the revelation of an extra-marital affair accompanied by financial carelessness.

This financial whizkid with a personal wealth of more than £100million, has been sentenced to ridicule for failing to safeguard even his own bank account from his PA's greed.

Until Joyti De-Laurey stole more than £3 million of his fortune from behind his back, Mr Mead's credentials had been impeccable - a self-made multimillionaire with a large, stable

family who donated millions to charity and who had an unblemished banking history.

He is said to have forged his fearsome City reputation with the help of the simple mantra: "You either hunt or be hunted."

But at Southwark Crown Court Mr Mead met his nemesis in the form of De-Laurey's barrister, Jeremy Dein QC, armed with his client's secrets about the private life of her former boss.

Within hours Mr Mead was transformed in the public eye from the hapless victim of a serial fraudster to a gullible love cheat.

De Laurey claimed that he frittered away massive sums of money paying her to lie to his trusting wife while he staged trysts with his mistress.

He claimed she stole the money from his account - his fortune earned him 268th place in The Times 2001 Rich List - without him noticing.

Either way he looked more than foolish.

EDWARD Scott Mead was born in June 1954 into a wealthy Pennsylvanian family. His father was a local newspaper publisher who gave him a keen interest in politics.

Educated at America's Eton, the Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, as well as Harvard and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he trained as a lawyer.

It was at Cambridge in the early Eighties that he met the beautiful Suling Chan, a glamorous and sophisticated student from Singapore who would become his wife.

In 1982 he took a job with financial services firm First Boston and moved to Goldmans in 1986 - the same year as he married.

In his first European telecoms deal he advised the Spanish government on selling off its services, Telefonica, and moved to the client that was to make both his fortune and his reputation - Vodafone.

"He is an immensely determined man," said a former colleague. "If he sets a goal, in banking, sport or anything else, he goes for it and achieves it, or surpasses it."

In 1994 tragedy intervened and he was forced to put his banking career on hold for six months when his two-year-old son Alex was diagnosed with leukaemia.

After chemotherapy the toddler's cancer went into remission and he was given the all-clear.

But the illness had a profound effect on the parents and they set up the Scott and Suling Mead

Foundation, a charity supporting leukaemia research.

Returning to business life, Mr Mead masterminded Vodafone's £190.5 billion purchase of the German telecoms giant Mannesmann in 1999 - the biggest hostile takeover in corporate history.

The deal moved him from the ranks of "important" City players into a legendary dealmaker.

But after the deal he struck up a friendship with a woman he had met while working.

Soon the relationship became a full-blown, passionate affair. Mead's supreme self-confidence in his own abilities has led some to compare him to Sherman McCoy, the financial "master of the universe" who epitomised the arrogant, super-rich bankers of the Eighties, in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire Of The Vanities.

This mentality, which can affect the very rich and very successful, convinced him the affair could continue without Suling ever finding out.

But he had reckoned without De-Laurey, his efficient new PA, who knew exactly where the skeletons were buried.

She knew the lovers met during working hours and exchanged emails and letters, which Mr Mead locked in a drawer at his office. She was happy to lie for her boss but was astute enough to take copies of all the billetsdoux.

Not even the vastly expensive lawyers he used to try to hush them up could stop them being used in her defence when her crimes were discovered.

De-Laurey had joined Mead in

2001. He found her charming and their relationship grew after she told him that she had cancer.

After watching his son fight the disease, Mr Mead insisted that she was given flexibility at work to accommodate her treatment.

But the cancer was a hoax and the freedom that he offered merely gave her the chance to raid his bank account.

Mr Mead said he had never once discussed his unfaithfulness with his PA. He said she must have learned about it from stolen documents.

He readily agreed he had been wrong to stray from his marriage and said: "I made a big mistake. I take complete responsibility for it. I beg forgiveness of my wife. I apologise."

Although she had been "great to me beyond belief " he would "feel terrible" about what he did for the "rest of my days", he said.

Mr Mead left the bank and has now set up a prep school near his home in Notting Hill.