Welcome to Capital Confidential — a weekly diary column featuring the best tidbits from around the U.K.’s business and political landscape from MarketWatch sister publication Financial News.
This week: Extinction Rebellion makes friends with financiers, Iron Maiden lead singers lays into Ryanair and Luke Ellis makes a frugal last trip to the Man Booker International Prize ceremony…
Extinction Rebellion means business
Back to the barricades! Capital can reveal that Extinction Rebellion, the climate change protest group that brought London’s streets to a standstill last month, is launching a renewed bid to persuade the City to back its environmental aims. “We’ve already had some success engaging with the business community,” an XR source tells Capital. “We’ve seen [governor of the Bank of England] Mark Carney, Legal & General and Axa. But we’re going to step it up by forming a ‘business declares emergency’ movement which will be affiliated to XR. We want large banks, insurance companies, pension funds and hedge funds to openly declare we have a climate emergency and commit to zero emissions by 2025.”
While many in the Square Mile took exception to the chaos caused by Extinction Rebellion’s protests, which resulted in over 1,000 arrests, the XR source said the movement has a growing number of City pals. “A hedge fund manager has been significantly funding us,” they said. “People in business feel they’re doing the wrong thing by pushing profit and exploitation of resources everywhere, and are offsetting their guilt by putting money into Extinction Rebellion which is proven to get results.” Who is this hedge fund donor? Extinction Rebellion won’t say. But business leaders who have publicly backed its mission include Amy Clarke, co-founder of Tribe Impact Capital, and Bevis Watts, managing director of Triodos Bank.
Plane speaking
As well as being lead singer of Iron Maiden and a Brexiteer, Bruce Dickinson is also a qualified airline pilot. The veteran metalhead recently laid into Ryanair’s business model. “It’s not a low-cost airline – it’s a low-fare airline and, as you know, that’s largely bullsh*t,” he scoffed while speaking at index provider Stoxx’s Innovate2Invest conference. Referring to baggage costs and price fluctuations, he joked that passengers on Ryanair who are “unlucky to turn up at the last minute” discover their “£1 ticket is now going to cost you £300. That’s how Ryanair make their money.” Ryanair’s pugnacious chief executive Michael O’Leary was unavailable for comment.
Man about town
Man Group serves over 70 million pensioner clients. They would have been impressed to see Luke Ellis, Man Group’s dapper chief executive, travelling in his tuxedo on the Tube en route to the Roundhouse for the Man Booker International Prize ceremony last Tuesday, thereby avoiding spending their savings on taxis or a chauffeur. “I hate the car thing,” Ellis said when Capital caught up with him afterwards. Jokha Alharthi was the first Arabic writer to win the prize for her novel Celestial Bodies, in the final Booker event to be sponsored by Man, which is severing ties after 18 years of sponsorship. So what has been Ellis’s most memorable social moment at the Booker Prize? “The time I accidentally snogged Camilla Parker-Bowles,” he replied.
Full bloom
The Chelsea Flower Show attracted its usual smattering of boldface business names. This year they included Anthony Gutman, co-head of Goldman Sachs’ UK investment banking business, Ocado chairman Lord Stuart Rose and former Standard Life Aberdeen head Martin “Teflon” Gilbert. Aside from beautiful shrubbery, what is it about the Chelsea Flower Show that continually sends the City into raptures? Toscafund chief economist Savvas Savouri, whose unorthodox theories have helped keep the lights on at the hedge fund, spies an ulterior motive for why top City men keep attending the floral fest. “Going earns a load of brownie points with wives,” he says. “To be traded in for passes to boys’ events.”
Lehman Bother
The Lehman Trilogy, the acclaimed play exploring the origins of Lehman Brothers, has transferred to the West End after sellout stints in New York and at the London’s National Theatre. But there was off-stage drama during a recent performance at the Piccadilly Theatre (The Lehman Trilogy has Financial News as its media partner). An audience member fainted during the third act and there was a seven-minute delay before proceedings resumed. A National Theatre spokesperson happily reports the audience member is now back to full health. If only the same could be said about Lehman Brothers…
Closed book?
Following last week’s story that The Economist pulled out of sponsoring Danny Baker and Gary Lineker’s football podcast Behind Closed Doors in the aftermath of Baker’s incendiary royal chimpanzee tweet, Capital hears about more trouble for the pair. Last March Baker and Lineker signed a book deal with Penguin for Behind Closed Doors: Life, Laughs and Football, a spin-off of their podcast. Penguin announced the book would be published by its Century imprint in September. But word is that publication will be delayed, possibly for good, given that the number of people who care to laugh with Baker has seemingly dwindled in number. Penguin would not comment.
Football focus
The perpetual debate over whether Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo is the better player has been revived via the unlikely forum of online travel giant Expedia. As the official travel partner of the UEFA Champions League, Expedia has conducted a study of football and travel among 16,500 global football fans. Asked who was the celebrity they most desired to watch a game with, 20.1% chose Messi while 19.9% plumped for Ronaldo. Meanwhile 3% surveyed said they would miss their own wedding to watch a football match. It’s not called the beautiful game for nothing.
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