Been another busy week in the Spaceship. I was in Frankfurt on Tuesday and Wednesday, seeing a German bank, which was OK, apart from the fact that Frankfurt must be the dullest town on earth.
Thursday I was speaking at a breakfast meeting with Microgen, who have partnered with SAP in the financial services area. I have known them personally and professionally for a lot of years, especially in their former guise as OST Business Rules. Interesting meeting quite apart from the chance to catch up with a few people, as the main speaker was Richard Fenning of Control Risks, and he did twenty minutes off the cuff on various issues facing the world today, and as the subject under discussion was mainly compliance, he talked about various accounting and other issues in recent years, Barings, Enron, Worldcom, and the Shell Oil reserves issues, etc.
He made a good point about the general perception that is being portrayed by the media, which is in his view alarmist and unhelpful. He seemed quite clear that the BBC or any other large media organisation would call him up about the "crise de jour" and ask his views, or that of his staff, and if he said "not really a problem, " then guess what, the story would run without his comments, but they would get someone who would say that it was all terrible, etc.
In his view that led to situation where everything is terrible all the time, and he clearly felt that one of his tasks was to help people get the right risks in the right perspective. He talked about going into Enron, and trying to sell his services, and being quite intimidated by the overbearing confidence of the organisation. No error could or would happen there, they were too smart. Whereas, as he said, there perhaps could have been room for more self-doubt as it turns out. Interesting speaker in any case.
So, maybe my "canned food and shotguns" posts are a result of listening to the news media, and not the birds in the trees.
Other than that, in London I had chance to meet up with one of my old colleagues from SAP, Liam McLaughlin, who went to Credit Suisse First Boston, and spent a few productive years there doing merchant banking IT and risk management. Then as Credit Suisse First Boston was clearly being turned back into Credit Suisse by the Swiss, i.e. goodbye First Boston in the hierarchy, finds himself a soft landing as one of the senior wallahs at Deloittes in London.
Went for seafood in one of the old City restaurants, and had a chat about the intervening five years, as I have run round Europe, and he has been feeding the presenteerism culture in CSFB. Genuine pleasure to catch up with him again, and the seafood was good too.
Then I came home, and have been intermittently either sitting on my bike getting my thirties in for the early season, or sitting on my fundament in a deck chair soaking up the sun, and listening to the birds, and the shrieking of my son and his friends in the long grass at the bottom of the garden. Happy times.
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