Martin Lukes was arrested for insider trading on 17 December 2007, very soon after becoming CEO. No further columns were published for a few weeks, with an "out of office" auto reply in the FT each Thursday.
The Financial Times carried exclusive, extensive coverage of Lukes' conviction on 24 January 2008, including direct editorial comment responding forthrightly to the reader suggestion that the paper should have publicly supported Lukes' plight, and accounts of the courtroom antics (and wardrobe) of Lukes' new wife Sherril.
On 3 November 2009, the FT posted a video announcing that Martin Lukes would be starting a blog from jail. The blog purports to be written by his wife Sherril, based on letters from Martin at FCI Coleman. Lukes reports having become a born-again Christian and having developed two new courses for his fellow inmates – Pros for the Cons, which teaches that all negatives can be made positive, and Incarimation Now!, which is part incarceration, part imagination, but better than both.
On Thursday 16 September 2010 the Martin Lukes column in the Financial Times contains potentially suicidal emails and Twitter from Martin Lukes and ends with an FT.com report of 15 September that a businessman had died in a sky-diving accident. However, the emails and Twitter are dated 15 September but the accident is reported to have happened on Tuesday, i.e. 14 September.
There was also some speculation amongst readers that Lukes' sudden absence may be explained by his being in discussions with Number 10 about rescuing Northern Rock – which may thereafter be renamed N-Rock or even Nörthern Röck.
By implication Martin Lukes might live. Or has Lucy finally had enough and pushed her hero over his Reichenbach Falls? Or will her second attempt to finish him off be as unsuccessful as her first. Is she just playing with her reader and Lukes will return Reginald Perrin style, with the body being Graham’s?
