Voting has started for this year’s Thomson Reuters Extel Awards for best brokerages, the biggest such date on the City’s calendar and one where a high placing, when times are hard, can make all the difference. The fun will be seeing how many of the winners are no longer in their jobs when their name is called — a fair number this year, given the consolidation among middle-ranking brokers.
The news this year is that the survey on which the awards are based will include questions on ... electronic alpha capture programs. Don’t fret, I looked it up. Participants — about 9,000 fund managers and 2,500 analysts last year — will be asked for their views on the practice, which involves brokers using sophisticated systems to work out what their clients want to hear.
I think. Anyway, the awards take place on June 12 at its hallowed home at Guildhall, presented by Emily Maitlis of the BBC.
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• New Zealand is about to run out of one of its essential products. Sheep? Butter? Hobbits? No, Marmite. The only producing factory was closed by the earthquake last year, and the shops are running short as Marmageddon strikes. The nation is desperate ... no, actually half of it is. The other half can’t stand the stuff.
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• Shock news! Deutsche Bank demonstrated “a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility once again in 2011”, reports the Here Is The City website. “This is the message... in the bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report.” Yes, I can see how it might be.
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*This is the Flowerbench on Riverside Walk on the north bank of the Thames, the winner of a competition in 2009 to create new stone seating in the City.
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The competition is being held again this year for a new seat on Cheapside, open to all present architecture students, and the winning design will be built by trainee masons from the Cathedral Works Association and the Mason’s Company.
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In the blue corner Ed Richards
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The press office at Ofcom has experience in dead-batting persistent rumours that Ed Richards, its chief executive, may be set to depart. Richards, as a well-known new Labour luvvie, was expected to quit the media and telecoms regulator when the coalition took over.
Now speculation is rife that he will move to the seat of Director-General at the BBC — odds of 6-1 overnight at Ladbrokes. Such a move, which would have to be clarified immediately if true, given the sensitivities of his present role, could be controversial. Greg Dyke, a former Director-General, once described Richards as a “jumped-up Millbank oik”. We shall see.