Euroblog

Blog was delighted to hear that International Finance Corp’s Ben Powell is keeping true to his Welsh rugby playing roots, even though he is now part of the sophisticated Washington DC café scene.

Blog is well aware that financial journalists are not bankers. We reporters are content to consider ourselves mere intrepid explorers in the market jungle, happy to observe from a distance the behaviour of those, er, magnificent creatures and beautiful landscapes around us.

The summer is a slow time for banks and an even slower time for journalists. It has been less slow for Ashling Cashmore, BNP Paribas communications officer and purveyor of fine tennis-based events.

Having just celebrated the fourth birthday of his first son, Deutsche Bank capital solutions supremo Gerald Podobnik and his wife are looking forward to welcoming their second born in October.

You’ve got to hand it to investment bankers. When it comes to generous holiday allowances, teachers normally get the brunt of the resentment from the rest of the working population. But at least their holidays are official — bankers just talk their way into one.

Financial types, being generally rationalists, believers in meritocracy and pretty full of themselves, on the whole have little time for royalty, however popular it may remain with those outside the posher postcodes of London.

It is not every man that can get news wires to advertise his own stag do, but given Nick Darrant’s ability for impressing the press (such as with his much lauded quotes on Rwanda), it is perhaps not surprising that one wire service sent out a market-wide invitation to his “end of bachelordom” party on his behalf.

The analyst didn’t say how much the tickets cost, but Blog was too inquisitive to let the story go there. A quick Google search revealed that entry to a recent Sheffield gig was a cool £160. That price included an early entry pass, which he didn’t mention — but he’s a classy guy and we’re sure he would have seen that as an essential rather than a frivolity.

Have we fallen out with the market’s Rossoneri? Did one of the EW crew eat a bad canapé last year? Were we confused by the CD invitations dressed up to look like vinyl LPs?

Euromoney’s Global Borrowers and Investors Forum week (last week, in case you missed it) is always a busy round of lunches, dinners and drinks. But none is more appreciated (by Blog, at least) than the HSBC Wine Challenge, where we can pit our taste buds and olfactory senses against the connoisseurs in the market.

The great and the good (and EuroWeek staff) of the SSA market went to the Garrick Club last week to mark Jo Richards’ retirement after more than 20 years of writing about their market. It was fantastic to see so many people from across the industry in the same room for the evening enjoying the champagne and canapés.

What is the world coming to? Once upon a time you could rely on bankers for a bit of merrymaking on pretty much any day of the week, with beer and fags for syndicate, wine and cigars for the posh boys in origination, all followed up by a burger or some other heart-stopping monstrosity before the inevitable Minicab Journey of Doom and the Hangover of Heroic Proportions.