Any Other Business – 22/11
With their palaces, titles and crowns, it can be tempting to assume that British royalty just aren’t like us. But the Queen herself proved otherwise yesterday as she took a trip to the View from the Shard to grab a bird’s eye view of London from the 69th floor of Europe’s tallest tower. After perusing the skyline Her Majesty did what any ordinary punter would do – and asked one of the building’s apprentices to point out her house. “Are you going to show me Buckingham Palace?” she said. Easier to spot than a two-bed flat in north London, one would imagine.
Much confusion at International Financing Review’s packed banking conference in Canary Wharf yesterday after delegates were faced with two panellists with the same name. Rather than being an agenda misprint it turned out both men – Andrew Burton and Andrew Burton – do indeed share the same name. And incredibly the same job title. Both are “head of liability management” at major banks, RBS and Credit Suisse. Both were sitting on a panel with fellow liability management executive John Cavanagh from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, leading to some confusion when questions came around about which Andrew was being asked. “I won’t even go there saying you look alike,” IFR editor-at-large Keith Mullin joked.