PRINCE TO ADDRESS ARK GALA’S 900 GUESTS
DETAILS of this year’s Ark dinner, the annual hedge fund extravaganza attended by the biggest names from the City, the arts and politics, have been harder to obtain than a banker’s super injunction.
But The Capitalist can now reveal that the celebrity-filled affair will take place next Thursday 9 June at Perks Field near Kensington Palace, conveniently located for the gala’s guests of honour: the newly wed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Prince William (pictured right with Kate) will give the keynote speech after dinner to the 900 guests, and the sponsors of the gala – now in its tenth year – are Bloomberg, BlueCrest, Marshall Wace and Espirito Santo Investment Bank.
So expect to see Espirito Santo’s co-chief executive Nick Finegold dressed in his finery, as well as Ark’s socialite founding chairman Arki Busson and Marshall Wace co-founders Ian Wace and Paul Marshall.
As for the entertainment, Marshall’s son Winston, vocalist and banjo player in folk rock band Mumford & Sons, will not be performing, but Mark Ronson – nephew of property tycoon Gerald Ronson – has been booked, as has an “internationally recognised rock band”, to be announced on the night.
The founders of Ark – short for Absolute Return for Kids – will be hoping to top the £14m raised by last year’s party for the global charity, which has projects running in Romania, Zimbabwe and Zambia alongside the UK programme to found schools for disadvantaged children.
Eight Ark academies have opened in the UK so far – including the Globe Academy in Southwark, visited by David Cameron with President Obama on last week’s state visit – and four more will be up and running by September 2012.
DANCE WITH DEATH
NO MORE sleepless nights for the family of UBS banker David Tait, who has come back alive from his fourth ascent of Everest despite a “dance with death” on the Khumbu icefall.
“It was the closest I have ever come to dying,” said Tait of the moment when a huge body of ice collapsed and sent shockwaves through the ground, leaving the climbers clinging onto a rope to avoid falling into the abyss.
Following the near-death encounter, Tait reached the summit in the early hours of 20 May and is now back at home in Surrey, where he is sleeping as though he has been “anaesthetised” to recover from badly frostbitten cheeks and Raynaud’s disease in his right hand, after his fingers “turned to wood” at 7,800 metres. Unsurprisingly, the UBS head of macro-directional trading has “yet to feel elation”. “It was an ordeal from beginning to end,” he said.
DRINKS CABINET
TAIT will return to his desk in the City on 6 June, when he will do some last-minute canvassing to supplement the £130,000 raised so far for the Child’s i Foundation, the abandoned children’s charity of which he is chairman.
Next on the fundraising agenda is a Berry Brothers wine tasting evening on 22 June, where the guest list includes Glenn Earle, chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs and hedge fund bosses Louis Bacon of Moore Capital, Mike Platt of BlueCrest and Stanley Fink, the former CEO of Man Group and founder of International Standard Asset Management.
Throw in media baron Richard Desmond and you have the makings of a high-octane affair. “We are a new charity, so we need to spread the word,” said Tait.