PROPERTY BIGWIGS GET OUT THEIR WALLETS FOR A DAY AT THE RACES
FOR STARTERS, let’s head down to Ascot racecourse – always a pleasure – for the annual Property Race Day, playground of the suited and booted doyens of the property world.
This year marked a change of scenery for the charity event set up by Parkwood Asset Management founder Derek Lucie-Smith, which moved from Sandown Park to the more illustrious confines of Ascot for its fourth anniversary.
Attendees included Helical Bar chief executive Mike Slade, David Erwin from Cushman and Wakefield and Will Astor, as well as almost 700 chums from the property sector. The move to Ascot clearly paid off for the committee, which managed to make a net profit of £140,000 on the occasion thanks to some very popular auction lots – including a £10,000 bid for a trip on Slade’s record-breaking yacht, the Icap Leopard.
As is usually the way with these things, most of the fun was to be had after the racing ended, when the guests were treated to a live performance from Clarence King and The Regents. Hundreds stayed to boogie with the band, whose members are no strangers to the spirited antics of the property world. They were recently backing band at the sector’s Party Near The Park fundraising singalong, where the usual suspects belted out crowd-pleasers from Tubthumping to Lady Marmalade.
TWILIGHT ZONE
An irresistible snippet courtesy of the US blogosphere, which has its hands on a charming internal memo sent out last week from hedgie Tom Barrack to his Colony Capital minions. Barrack, you see, has just experienced a “personal breakthrough” relating to none other than the Twilight vampire books, currently sending shivers down teenage spines with the release of a third film sequel starring the lovely Robert Pattinson.
“Many of you will think that I have lost my mind or have finally experienced a mystical intervention of my feminine side,” Barrack explained. “I promise you, it is neither.”
After being “forced” to take up the first Twilight book while alone on a yacht in Turkey, Barrack had a Eureka moment on the difference between men and women – that women long for anticipation and romance, whereas men are all about the destination.
Yes, yes, we all could have told him that and spared him the time, yadda yadda. But our man is enthused with the discovery. “I feel renewed and refreshed,” he gushes. “Taking the agenda-less time to absorb a point of view that I had ignored while loved ones around me relished in it, was an oasis for my soul…”
One for the Christmas list, gents?
HAPPY DAYS
Cathal Morrow, who you may remember for spending a whole year without lying, has been in touch.
Not content with his year of fame, which was “sponsored” by private equity firm the Thaler Fund, he’s at it again. This time, it’s spending a year “being happy”, or more precisely, not getting moody.
Someone warn that man that you can have too much of a good thing.