GIVEN the number of venues available within the City of London and further afield it is strange why many companies and trade organisations choose the ones they do for their big events.Take the British Bankers' Association, which held its first annual conference this week at the Gibson Hall, which boasted a sun-dappled garden where grey-looking financiers could get a rare dose of vitamin D.
But, as City Minister Kitty Ussher pointed out, the building's first occupant after its completion in 1865 was the National Provincial Bank of England, which went on to merge with the Westminster Bank to form Natwest before it got snapped up by Royal Bank of Scotland eight years ago. She didn't go on to note that RBS's enthusiasm for expansion, most notably its takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro, was one of the reasons for its £12bn cash call this month.
When ratings agency Fitch opted to have its own banking conference, it went for Plaisterers' Hall, the guildhall for plasterers. Director for North American investment banks Sharon Hass told the audience: "You've probably heard enough about sub prime, so I'll jump past that." There is a fine tradition of plaistering over cracks.
The summer party season has also seen companies hire plush venues for drinks soirees.
Edinburgh-based SVM Asset Management opted for a different guild, holding its Spanish-themed party (some confusion over the S; what was Scottish Value Management?) in the Merchant Taylors' Hall, The Merchant Taylors were originally involved in the making of padded undergarments for suits of armour - exactly the sort of clothing a fund manager requires in the current bumpy markets.
The Iberian motif was also in evidence at a similar event hosted by F&C Asset Management, which press-ganged its fund managers, including a number from Edinburgh, into sipping bubbly with journalists in the oak-panelled surroundings of the former Spanish embassy in Cavendish Square.
F&C's majority owner, Friends Provident, is waiting until September to hold its annual bash. The ailing insurer hasn't been in the best of form after its turnaround plans fell apart in the wake of an aborted merger with Resolution Life. So its choice of venue to prove to the world it is alive and kicking? It's Somerset House, the historical home of the register for births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales and in the past the site of Oliver Cromwell's lying-in-state.
Digital method to handle crisis THERE will be no shortage of strategies in the big global banking groups at the moment for dealing with the fall-out from the global credit crisis.
But one of the more unusual ones was revealed this week. And from the most unexpected of sources. See if you can match the words to the UK bank chief executive: "I think travelling with your fingers crossed most of the time is quite a good policy."
Pressed further on whether he had his fingers crossed a lot, he continued: "There is lots of things in life you have your fingers crossed about. There always seems to be something you wish to be going well."
Given the plunge in HBOS's share price below its rights issue price earlier this week, you might hazard a guess at this bank's chief executive, Andy Hornby. And you might even think, given the shares are now back above the issue price again, that the unusual strategy might have paid off for him.
But it was not he. Got it yet?
Well . . . this seemingly superstitious UK bank chief executive is none other than Sir Fred Goodwin, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, who was responding to a question about whether he was worried at any point that he might not get his bank's since-completed £12bn rights issue away.
Goodwin? Superstitious? Whatever next?
Then again, maybe the boys at Bradford & Bingley are wishing they'd been crossing their fingers (and their toes) on their initial fund-raising plans.
Contribution by Ian McConnell
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