BNY MELLON ANNOUNCES BOAT RACE MERGER
CHANGE IS afoot for one of the UK’s most traditional sporting fixtures, after Bank of New York Mellon yesterday stepped in to sponsor The Boat Race.
For the first time from 2015, the women’s event, whose sponsorship by BNY Mellon company Newton Investment Management remains unchanged, will leave Henley to take place on the same stretch of London river as the men’s race – a move that is “good for gender equality”, says chairman Gerald L Hassell.
BNY Mellon will not disclose a figure for its five-year deal from 1 May. But the bank’s backing steers the regatta into calmer waters, after the chief executive of incumbent sponsor Xchanging, which bows out after this year’s Boat Race on 7 April, quit shortly before the 2011 event, sending the share price crashing by almost 50 per cent.
Present at the Somerset House launch were Newton CEO Helena Morrissey, BNY Mellon’s vice chairman Curtis Arledge and EMEA chairman Michael Cole-Fontayn, and Robert Gillespie, the director general of the Takeover Panel and chairman of The Boat Race Company, who declared: “In BNY Mellon we have a sponsor who values the heritage of the race.”
So possibly not the best time for one source to remind Cole-Fontayn that the late Paul Mellon, a scion of the bank’s founders, was a renowned horse-racing enthusiast, but he did anyway. “Well, the Boat Race is a one-off, like the Derby,” came Cole-Fontayn’s reply.
RBS PLAYS CHICKEN
NO DANGER of birthday blues for traders at the RBS HQ in Stamford, Connecticut – the bank lays on a dance by a man dressed in a “dirty yellow” chicken suit.
The ungrateful could describe the birthday “bonus” as chicken feed – but reports of the sightings, the most recent of which was last Friday, suggest real value.
“I wish you had been here to witness the person in a chicken suit leading half the trading floor in the chicken dance,” supplies a mole from US blog Dealbreaker. “I only caught the tail end (pun intended), but a good chunk of the surrounding desks were clapping along in unison.”
Somebody bring this wonderful RBS tradition to the UK – and fast. The Capitalist can think of at least one top-level executive at the bailed out bank, due to turn 52 on 14 December, who could do with some cheering up…
BREWER’S DROOP
THERE WAS a 10p rise in the SABMiller share price yesterday, no doubt linked to the announcement that professor Katherine Smart will take over as group chief brewer on 1 June.
Smart is clearly well-qualified – she is a scientific adviser to several global corporates and has edited a number of books on brewing yeast – but does she know what she has let herself in for?
SABMiller has some potent brews in its stable, after all – Smart will be required to finesse the flavours of Peru’s “very sessionable” national ale Cristal; the Chairman’s Extra Strong Beer that is “hugely popular” in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the premium strength Amsterdam Maximator, last seen being exported by the truckload to the discerning drinkers of Kazakhstan.
The “sherry-like” Maximator has a “fiery taste”, notes SABMiller – and a blazing 11.6 per cent alcohol content to match.