M&S CHAIR BROADENS OLD-SCHOOL EDUCATION
SCHRODERS, Barclays Wealth, Deutsche Bank, Killik & Co, JP Morgan – the former pupils of Rugby School seem to have gotten everywhere in the City.
And on Wednesday night, 190 Old Rugbeians reunited at Eversheds for an evening in aid of the Arnold Foundation, the trust named after Rugby’s progressive headmaster Dr Thomas Arnold that provides a full education at the private school for disadvantaged children.
Leading the call for pledges to top up the £10m fund was star ex-pupil Robert Swannell, chairman of M&S and chairman of Rugby’s governing body, who reminded guests of the school’s Olympic connection – its sportsmanship inspired Pierre Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, to present Rugby with the Olympic Cup in 1919.
Which is why Lord Moynihan, chair of the British Olympic Association, skipped a three-line whip at the House of Lords to present a replica of the Olympic Cup to Rugby’s headmaster Patrick Derham.
“Education is widening the opportunities for children to attend schools like Rugby,” said Eversheds senior partner Anthony Arter. “If more children are given these chances, it will be game-changing.”
INSIDE KNOWLEDGE
WHEN YOU are trying to apologise for your part in a currency scandal that ended your husband’s career as head of the Swiss National Bank, doling out your top tips for insider trading is perhaps not the smartest move.
Alas, no-one told Kashya Hildebrand, wife of the toppled Philipp, who yesterday set out her “version of events” as she dealt in fine art at a Singapore fair. “If I had wanted to engage in insider trading, here’s what I would have done differently,” she informed Swiss-German broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen.
“Don’t contact compliance, don’t have the account in your name, and don’t do [the trade] three-and-a-half weeks before the event.” One final tip: “Why not trade the targeted currency?”
She sounds like a pro – but no, Kashya is strictly an amateur currency dealer, she maintains. “[My husband] should never have let me do that transaction, and upon reflection that transaction should have been reversed.” Something that’s not possible for the above video “apology”, unluckily, which will live on the internet forever.
RING TONE
EVOLUTION’S Adrian Bell may be the distinguished former chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada and the former deputy chair of Hambros. But he is not above having a novelty ringtone – his mobile is set to the peals of Big Ben.
“Well, my name is Bell, isn’t it?” said Evolution’s head of debt advice and origination as he fielded a couple of calls from an individual called Warren. “Very juvenile.”
Bell was on the line to The Capitalist to explain why the broker’s RPI-linked ten-year retail bond, launched yesterday on behalf of social housing provider Places for People, is the sensible option for retail investors.
The £50m-£75m inflation-tracking bond – Evolution’s third, following bonds for National Grid and Tesco – pays one per cent over inflation, giving investors “total capital protection plus a very small return”, says Bell. The first payout is set for 30 January.
HARD TIMES
BILLIONAIRE Alexander Mamut clearly gave the apostrophe he cruelly sacked from his book chain Waterstones yesterday no pay-off with its P45 (The Capitalist, 12 January). Not even a job teaching grammar at Mamut’s investment fund A&NN Capital.
As one concerned mole said when he spotted the down-and-out punctuation mark (left) on Oxford Street on his way to work: “It’s not looking too well.”