CELEBRITY TRADERS RAISE $12M ON BGC DAY
RONNIE Wood is clearly in the wrong job – his masterful handling of a €2bn interest rates trade at BGC Partners, as reported in yesterday’s Capitalist, helped the brokerage beat last year’s total of $10m to raise a record $12m for global charities.
Of course, credit should also be given to HRH Prince Harry, who made £10,000 at a stroke for Sentebale, the charity he founded to support orphans and vulnerable children in Lesotho – not to mention the efforts of the “hugely popular” wheeler dealers Harry and Jamie Redknapp, Chris Evans and Boris Johnson.
Brokers at BGC have given up their commission worldwide on the nearest trading day to 9/11 every year since the tragedy, to be donated to the families of the deceased and 79 charities worldwide.
But it was fitting the largest-ever total should be raised on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, said BGC’s former analyst David Buik, who said the unsettled global markets worked in the firm’s favour. “The level of volatility lent itself to a lot of brokerage being made, helped by the goodwill of our clients and the hard work of our celebrities.”
Back to reality on the BGC trading floor then… until the next time celebrities descend on Canary Wharf to cause “pandemonium”. “I would be very surprised if we don’t continue the charity day,” said Buik. “When you are doing good things for people, there is no reason to stop.”
A VINTAGE YEAR
WITH THE solo career of Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters to launch and Wham’s tour of China to manage, 1985 was always going to be a busy year for music impresario Harvey Goldsmith (right).
Just how eventful, however only hit him when Bob Geldof barged into his office and told him to “get on the case with Wembley”, Goldsmith revealed last night as the speaker at the Penfolds Vintage Years event at The Hospital Club.
So Live Aid was born – a three-continent event broadcast around the world that “changed the way the world looked at giving”. The only downside, said Goldsmith, was that the red-tops woke up to the fact rock stars could sell papers, and record companies took the bait and drove their artists to suit the tabloid press.
“Creativity went out of the window and the natural rebellious nature of rock stars disappeared,” he lamented.
WHAT GOES UP…
THE THREE Peaks Challenge is coming to the Square Mile, as Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike are replaced by the Heron Tower, Ropemaker Place and a third, as yet unconfirmed, building in the Lord Mayor’s Big City Climb.
Take in the 50,000 square feet of landscaped roof terraces at British Land’s Ropemaker Place and the panoramic views from the top of the 46-storey Heron Tower by signing up for the 9 October charity ascent at the website:
www.thelordmayorsappeal.org.uk/climb. Just make sure you are fit enough to climb 2,500 steps…
…MUST COME DOWN
MEANWHILE, Liberum Capital’s chief executive Simon Stilwell led a mass staff abseil off the side of the company’s twelfth-floor offices in Ropemaker Place.
Things haven’t got desperate at the investment bank – the 65-metre descent was organised by Liberum’s staff as a way of “giving back” on the fourth birthday of the company, with £150,000 raised for the company’s Liberum Foundation.