CITY SPORT AWARDS TO GET LEASE OF NEW LIFE
SPORT fanatics in the City could be forgiven for wondering when their favourite event of the year is due to come around, now that the party season has entered full swing.
But I hear the ICAP Square Mile Sport Awards – which last year saw sporting stars such as cricketer Darren Gough, swimmer Mark Foster, Dame Kelly Holmes and former Olympic gold medallist Jonathan Edwards – has been cancelled for this year, much to the horror of its avid followers.
“ICAP are still very much interested in sponsoring the event, but after last year it was decided that the event should be restructured,” a spokesman tells me. “Selling tables just isn’t that easy at the moment, so we’re talking to another third party and we’re hoping to bring a very exciting different element to the whole thing…”
Dry your tears, gentlemen: this could get interesting. After all, what could really bring an exciting new element to an awards ceremony if not the introduction of some kind of activity-based element? Let us hope that when the long-overdue event makes its reappearance next summer, the City might see the birth of its very own mini-Olympics.
LOVE GAME
Ladies in the City, as we never tire of hearing, still have a tough time of it even in this day and age, so here’s some advice for breaking through the glass ceiling in a rather different vein.
The Capitalist chanced upon a book by US career expert Nicole Williams called “Girl on Top”, which takes the innovative approach of using tried-and-tested rules from the dating game in business.
“With her ingenious approach – taking the tactics used to land a man and applying them to your career – you’ll be able to handle any work situation and come out on top!” shouts the author’s website, which already appears to have established itself Stateside as the equivalent of Mecca for any aspiring career girl.
Williams will teach ladies how not to “give the milk away for free” (the dairy component, in this case, referring to their minds rather than their bodies), advise them to “play hard to get”, “follow your heart” and “keep the fire alive” – and no, we’re not talking after-hours frolics on a City desk, for the naughtier among you.
One for under the Christmas tree, perhaps?
BIG CAT BOUNCE
Andrew Ross Sorkin, the novelist who’s had the City gripped with his tales of Wall Street’s near-collapse in the recently-released Too Big to Fail, has come up trumps again.
On his blog, Sorkin, who’s recently ruffled the feathers of everyone from Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein to chancellor Alistair Darling, has got hold of what is, apparently, a bona fide copy of the cheque written out by Mitsubishi UFJ to Morgan Stanley when it provided the bank with a $9bn emergency loan last autumn.
The cheque – pictured below – may well keep its place as the largest ever written in the annals of history, if bank plans to abolish the outmodish form of payment come to fruition…
SILVER SCREEN
Green’s, one of the newest restaurants in the City, having opened recently in the grand old Lloyds banking hall on Cornhill, may soon be entertaining even more illustrious guests than the scions of the banking world.
Co-founder Simon Parker Bowles, one-time brother-in-law to Camilla, tells me he’s keen to make the best use of his baby’s stunning architecture and has been talking to various film companies about featuring the hall in upcoming silver-screen movies.
After Clint Eastwood himself recently visited the City to film some shots around Liverpool Street station, causing a furore among financial sector workers happily minding their own business, who knows which superstars might soon be descending upon us?
What’s more, Parker Bowles may well have an advantage in that his son, who lives in America, is a film producer. I understand his last project involved such grande dames of the showbiz world as Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, so we’d better keep our eyes peeled over cocktails.
TIPS FROM THE TOP
A call to arms for nominations for next year’s Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award, which – along with practically every self-respecting celebratory bash out there – considers itself to be the “Oscars” among female entrepreneurs and business bigshots. Entries can be made on the event’s website, but here’s a few nuggets of wisdom from last year’s winner, Gail Rebuck, chief executive of publisher Random House.
Rebuck, speaking at a recent gala dinner, told the audience this Christmas would remain unpredictable at best, but proffered three solutions. Firstly, take bad decisions early and quickly. Second, try to unleash as much creativity in the workplace as possible. And, last but not least, make big strategic decisions – “this is not a time for shrinking violets”, she quipped.
You can’t get much ballsier than that, now can you?