Labour are making much of the Tories City backing, yesterday during their exchanges George Osborne kicked back mentioning Ed Balls receiving financial backing for his leadership campaign from a “Lehmans banker”.

This struck Guido as more than interesting, particularly as Ed Balls was the City Minister in government. A close look at the donations shows besides Ken Follett the one of the few individuals donating to Ed’s campaign was indeed a banker. Michael Sanzone worked at Lehman Brothers before becoming a director at RBS. He gave £2,500 on August 25 last year and then another £2,500 donation 2 days later on August 28. Oddly a Mark Robertson gave exactly the same amounts on the very same days and gives the same address as Michael Sanzone. So Balls received £10,000 from one address over 3 days divided into 4 smaller payments, making this one house in Islington a bigger source of funds for his leadership campaign than any trade union. It is almost as if someone wanted to disguise the total amount given and the source…

UPDATE: Comments point out that Trevor Chinn of private equity firm CVC gave £3,000 to Balls. Evil City backers anyone?