With the great and good of the property world gathering in Cannes this week, London’s Mayor showed his usual attention to detail yesterday when charged with unveiling the first private sector residential development opportunity at the Olympic Park.
Seemingly briefed for the first time — as he took the stage — as to what he was actually meant to be doing at the MIPIM property industry jamboree, Boris Johnson appeared somewhat taken aback when told how long he was meant to speak. “Ten minutes,” he harrumphed, only to be quickly assured that it was really up to him.
Readers will not be surprised to hear he needn’t have worried, expounding ad lib and at length about how London was the best city to live in and that the Olympic Park really was the the place to be. All in all, not a bad sales pitch. If only he had read the memo telling him that CB Richard Ellis sponsored the event, it may have prevented him highlighting a report on London’s competiveness published by CBRE’s rival Savills. A little point that the chairman of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, Baroness Ford, could not help but pick him up on.
Annual reports from Bedlam Asset Management always offer a colourful take on the market. Jonathan Compton, its founder, concedes that Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty leading the People is more lurid than usual but the nod to the political unrest in North Africa and the Middle East is as fitting as ever, albeit coming after a good year. It is back in profit and again paying a dividend.
City Diary was probably not alone in wondering how the combined brain boxes at British Airways and Iberia dreamt up the startlingly dreary post merger name of International Consolidated Airlines Group. Thankfully, Willie Walsh was on hand recently to share the insight with members of private investor club Pi Capital. “If you are all thinking why we chose such a long-winded name, we deliberately did not want a name that might become a brand as we think the BA and Iberia brands are very strong so we excluded any marketing people from the meetings where we came up with the name.”
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Simon Walker, chief executive of the British Venture Capital Association, presided over his last supper as the human face of the Masters of the Universe on Monday night. Mr Walker, a former spinner for none other than the Queen, introduced the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban at the BVCA’s annual dinner at Claridge’s. “You’ll be giving me the best ever leaving present if you tell me what’s going to be in that red box in two weeks’ time,” Mr Walker, who masterminded the BVCA’s budget submisssion,” said. “If I told you that, I be arranging my own early departure,” was the response.
In the blue corner: Jon Pain
The shake-up in the City is yielding rich pickings for Britain’s biggest professional services firms, which are taking advantage of the uncertainty about the Financial Services Authority’s future to stack their financial services practices with experienced and well-connected regulators. The latest to take the lucrative leap into private practice is Jon Pain, the FSA’s former managing director of supervision. The former Lloyds banker, who sat on the FSA’s board and was responsible for oversight of banks and insurers, is joining the accountant KPMG in July after three months’ gardening leave. He follows David Strachan, the FSA’s former head of financial stability, who is joining Deloitte next month.