PRINCELY NEWCOMER JOINS CITY CLUB SCENE
WORK hard and play hard has long been the City’s mantra, so dedicated party-goers will be happy to hear that a new club is coming to town. It’s not just any old dive, either – we’re talking about a true A-list hotspot, from the people behind Prince Harry’s favourite nightspot Mahiki.
Clubowners Nick House and Piers Adam both originally started their careers in the City, the former in derivatives at JP Morgan and the latter trading commodity futures, so they were more than keen to bring their brand to the Square Mile.
The ritzy new venue, on Shoe Lane, between St Paul’s and Chancery Lane, is to be called Kanaloa and will open next month. Like Mahiki, it is themed as a Polynesian tiki bar – the style of exotic cocktail venue which originally came to prominence in the US, ironically, after the Wall Street crash of 1929.
“There is this incredible energy in the City – a huge forcefield of energy that comes from such a close concentration of the people who really make the economy go round,” gushes Adam, evidently undeterred by the fiery bonus debate of recent weeks.
“We are 100 per cent behind the idea that people should get out of work what they put in, and spending huge bonuses creates employment, wealth in the economy and more tax revenue,” he adds. “We’re fully behind the City.”
You’ve just bagged yourselves a great many loyal customers, dear sirs.
TECHNICAL GLITCH
If you’ve ever stood in front of a roomful of people to do a presentation and been let down by technology at the last moment, never fear: you’re in good company.
At a briefing for the launch of the new Microsoft Windows 7 operating system yesterday at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden, Sky’s director of on-demand Griff Parry (pictured above right) proudly stood up to present the Sky Player’s partnership with the new system. Embarrassingly, Parry’s attempts to get on the internet failed. Again, and again, and again.
Finally, as he waited to get started, Microsoft Windows consumer business group leader Leila Martine jumped up to explain the situation to the gathered hacks, saying: “Sorry, everyone, we’re experiencing a very complicated technical glitch – called the cable falling out of the back of the screen.”
After the offending cable was duly plugged in, Parry promptly stood up again and turned his attention back to his flat screen – which still obstinately refused to connect to the web. You just can’t get the service these days.
MONEY MATTERS
Even Warren Buffett, the so-called “Sage of Omaha”, wants to chip in and give his penny’s worth on the bonus debate. Buffett – who gets paid $100,000 a year for running Berkshire Hathaway, not that he probably even notices such a piffling little amount in his bank account – said in an interview that “what you have to change in Wall Street is, you have to make sure that in addition to carrots, there are sticks”. The man certainly knows how to drive a hard bargain.