Over the weekend of 23 and 24 October at the Inter-Continental Hotel, Park Lane, I attended the twenty-first international conference of MSI Global Alliance, our international association of which I have been a director for some 10 years. These events are a great time to meet friends old and new in similar businesses and also to understand the differences in working in different parts of the world. Below is the welcome speech I gave to the conference on Monday morning.
“Welcome to London, England, the capital city of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is the city that I have lived and worked in for the last 35 years; the city that will hold the Olympic Games in 2012; the city where over 300 different languages are spoken by a multi-cultural mix of over 200 nations practicing every religion and every faith, side by side; the city that people have chosen to come to for many years to live the life they choose and be able to be themselves.
London is one of only two cities that can claim to be the financial capital of the world.
On Saturday night those of us here ate in the heart of the “old” City of London, up a narrow street, just behind the Bank of England. Yesterday on the river trip we went past the “new” city at Canary Wharf. What you may not be aware of is that “hedge fund alley” from where the hedge fund managers operate and had considerable success in shorting the Scottish and Irish banks in 2008 (all of which are headquartered outside London) is only a couple of hundred yards away over there on the way to the Grosvenor House Hotel where, today, the annual conference of the Confederation of British Industry is being held.
Tonight we dine at St Paul’s Cathedral, a first for me and probably all of us. According to its website, St Paul’s is a monument to the glory of God and a symbol of the hope, resilience and strength of the City of London. I’m sure we will learn a lot more later.
haysmacintyre is a London firm. We are proud to be co-founders of MSI. This is the 21st annual conference of MSI and the third to be held in London. As our Chairman has mentioned, the first was held in London shortly after the founding of the Association. The success of this conference with delegates from 90 firms, spread over 44 countries, is due in no small part to the vision of those who founded MSI and, at considerable cost, developed the association in the early years. I mention the late Eric Barrett, our Chairman Dr Peter Abels, Guy Rigby - under whose inspired leadership in the late 90s and first two years of this millennium MSI became a name to be reckoned with – not forgetting, of course, my partner, George Crowther, who claims to be the only one here who was at that first conference.
Enough of history. London is a city that has always looked to the future. Only by getting our succession right will we safeguard our firms and MSI for the future. At haysmacintyre over 40% of our partners are 40 or younger. At 4.30 this afternoon, two of my partners, Tash Frangos and David Cox (neither of whom were born when I started work in 1975) are leading a session on corporate finance. I commend this to those of you who work in that area.
London still offers many opportunities to capital raising in a stable environment without too much unnecessary regulation.
Over the weekend I’ve heard some surprises from colleagues about the apparent lack of rainfall this weekend. Contrary to popular opinion, the average annual rainfall in London is not particularly high. Sydney, Paris, New York City, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, New Delhi, Dallas, Miami, Boston, Des Moines, Harare, and Hong Kong are wetter – it’s just that conditions are hard to predict here and can be changeable. Los Angeles, Madrid and Dubai are, of course, drier.
We should not forget our co-hosts, lawyers Lee Bolton Monier-Williams, who will be hosting a reception tomorrow evening.
I leave you with a quote from our illustrious Mayor of London, Boris Johnson – “my friends – as I have discovered – there are no disasters – only opportunities and indeed opportunities for fresh disasters!”
Thank you. Have a great conference.”
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