Firm Elite Dinner - 16th March

I have recently been appointed to the advisory board of Firm Elite – a group of engaging and inspiring professionals from both third and private sectors.

We all share a passion for building networks and creating sustainable and collaborative relationships and our dinners serve as a dynamic forum for discussion.

Firm Elite meet every couple of months for dinner, when we exchange ideas and discuss specific topics. Last night, my first since joining the board, the topic was London, the status quo and future of this great city.



The location for this dinner was the Caledonian Club. It did not disappoint from the second I crossed the threshold: I was first to arrive, and have never encountered a more Scottish person at reception. I would imagine his name is Jock and I will forever remember him in full highland dress. I forget now whether he was or not. The dining room is beautiful, with some excellent watercolours of highland landscapes adorning the spaces between the bookshelves that contained leather bound, dusty volumes of Robert Burns, Almanacs of Scottish Antiquities, and the occasional Dickens.



Over some drinks, we mingled and briefly discussed the topic for the night and future events. We sat down to a delicious Roquefort tart, followed by lamb. As the wine was poured and we got to know our neighbours, the topic of the evening was formerly introduced by our co-host, Kehrela Hodkinson of the Hodkinson Law Group.



Benjamin Disraeli said that “London is a roost for every bird”, and while this statement carries a great deal of significance, one could suggest some birds are flocking here, while others are flying south in search of more hospitable climes. Why is this happening and what does the future hold? At this point of the evening I was sure that none of us we be much closer to answering these questions by the end of the evening. However, I also knew that I was about to hear some very informed, articulate and interesting opinions.



Discussions were led by Julian Rhys of Frostrow Capital and Derek Wright of Kleinwort Benson. Very interesting choices, made long before London lost our top spot as the world’s financial centre. The first question to be addressed was “Do we need to be in London to do business?” There are some very valid points to both sides of this: we are never more than a few feet from Blackberry, mobile phone or computer and conduct most business remotely, so why does it matter where we are? There are hundreds of extremely successful businesses that operate outside of London, so is our fear that removing ourselves from London will decimate business totally irrational? Andrew Pullman, MD of People Risk Solutions, said that he hadn’t had an office in London for years, and this not only had no effect on his business, but also had saved him considerable expense!

Contrary to this, some argue that you need to be near clients, to be near the action, the hubbub and the buzz of a large conurbation. There was a split in the room here. Each argument is equally valid and equally flawed – we shouldn’t need to be in London, but we really want to be.



The third sector viewpoint came up here: responding to a member survey around 2 years ago, ACEVO established an office in Leeds. There were a great number of our members who wanted a greater level of engagement with ACEVO, but were prevented by our location in London. A great number of them are delivering services to local areas, and therefore have no stakeholders in London. So we asked, we listened and we did. And the response was great: we are now offering valuable help to hundreds more members in the North East, North West and Yorkshire and Humberside.



The next point was around the future for London – what is happening now that will affect our beloved city in 5, 10 or 20 years. We reminded ourselves about the Olympic games, and how successful 2012 will be for London and the UK. However, is this a sustainable future? Plans are of course being made to ensure the sporting venues will be put to use after the post-games exodus, but there is a nagging doubt that we may be left with a games-shaped hole in our city.

Alongside this temporary peak of the activity around London, will be the cultural Olympiad. A festival of art, theatre and music has accompanied the games for some years, and London’s will sit next to some of the most impressive and extensive arts, heritage and cultural venues in the world.



At this point, we were joined by Philip Henson, a Partner at law firm Bargate Murray. He had been interviewing with the BBC and so arrived late. It was quite wrong-footing to see, as the last morsels of lamb were removed from the room, more cheese and leek tart arrive. I knew the Scots had interesting views on cuisine (not least the manifestly artery clogging deep-fried pizza), but surely not starter followed by main course followed by starter? All my fears were laid to rest when I realised that rather than join us for pudding, Philip was going to get the whole meal, and a very good thing – it was delicious!



Two themes appeared throughout the night throughout our discussions. The first was the idea of ‘UK Plc’, and how it is currently valued. The second was around the responsibility of the media for ensuring that the good news is heard, how London is promoted and how we shout about our successes.

These two combine nicely, and as a group of rational beings we might quite rightly assume that the press is to blame. Luckily, we had a representative of the media with us. Chrissie Smith is a trainer with Electric Airwaves, the media training group and has advised many nervous or inexperienced professionals on how to deal with and engage with tricky interviews, and more importantly, tricky interviewers. It was really interesting to hear a seasoned journalist talking about how media and press can play such a vital role in the communication of ideas.



Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and look forward to the next event. These dinners are a fantastic opportunity to slow down our thoughts and devote some real time to issues that interest us, affect us and allow us to find new relationships and areas for future collaboration.



Richard McKelvey 17th March 2010