CHALLENGE FOR CITY FIRMS TO GO OFF ROAD
FOR frustrated finance workers who fancy themselves as a bit of a Bear Grylls-type come the weekend, CARE International’s Finance Adventure Challenge might be just the opportunity to show your colleagues what you’re made of.
City A.M. is supporting the Challenge this summer, giving City professionals a chance to ditch the suits and prove their mettle stretches further than the boardroom. It takes place in Exmoor on 25 June, and will see corporate teams from financial firms pitted against each other in a series of testing trials, including cycling, canoeing and hiking.
For real suckers for punishment there’s even a mystery bonus stage – an extra hour of challenges pitched to the most competitive members in the field.
But the more cerebral types shouldn’t be put off by the physical demands of the course – it also promises to test teams’ mental ability, and with fundraising targets set at £3,000 per team, companies will need to call on their best mathematical brain to make sure that all the effort is worthwhile.
Funds raised will support CARE International’s poverty-fighting work in over 70 countries, which includes microfinance projects and village savings and loans schemes.
Website: www.carechallenge.org.uk/finance
Tel: 020 7934 9470
SEAL OF APPROVAL
In the first six months following their launch in July 2010, tourists, commuters and
weekend daytrippers have cycled to the moon and back 13 times on their ‘Boris’ bikes ?–
and the distance is likely to skyrocket even further once the scheme is extended out towards Canary Wharf.
So the scheme’s 110,000 registered users will be delighted to hear that their chosen mode of transport is now also officially “cool”, having just been nominated for a Brit Insurance Design Award. Tagged as “the Oscars of the design world”, the awards recognise innovation in architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, products and transport. The bikes face stiff competition in their category, with the world’s first folding electric bicycle and the Riversimple hydrogen car also up for the prize, which will be announced on 15 March at the Design Museum.
But the blue bikes’ supporters will surely be heaving a sigh of relief that they’re not nominated in the “interactive” category alongside ultra-addictive iPhone game Angry Birds. Not even Colin Firth would want to be shortlisted next to a competitor like that.
GIFTS KEEP ON GIVING
If there were any doubt that the British entrepreneurial spirit lives on, a simple eBay search this morning would prove otherwise.
Just hours after the end of Sunday night’s Bafta ceremony, freebies from the heavily-sponsored goodie bags started appearing on the popular auction site.
Top of the search pile last night was a Bafta-themed Lancome skincare and make-up gift set in a red carpet box ?– yours for just £20 “brand new, unused and unopened” – proving perhaps that high-street products just aren’t enough to impress those more used to having private access to London’s best botox experts.
But The Capitalist sincerely hopes that no one whose other halves attended the ceremony received a Hotel Chocolat solid chocolate Bafta mask as their Valentines Day present.
There’s entrepreneurial, and then there’s just plain cheap.