CITY GOES RURAL IN A PASSION FOR SPEED
CITY petrol-heads were out in force over the weekend, among 175,000 visitors to the Goodwood Festival of Speed at Goodwood House outside Chichester. Among the business visitors to the F1 racing event were Arnauld Bamberger of Cartier, Audi’s Peter Duffy, BlackRock’s James Charrington, and Alfa Romeo/Fiat Group’s Richard Gadeselli. They turned out to watch top drivers from Jenson Button to Lewis Hamilton spin their wheels around the 2.4-mile track right under the noses of lucky guests in hospitality areas sponsored by BlackRock, Diageo, Cartier, Jaguar, BMW and Ferrari. Rubbing shoulders with the City car fans was a glamorous crowd present celebrating this year’s theme of “vivo veloce” (a passion for speed), including director George Lucas, model Yasmin Le Bon and actor Orlando Bloom.
When their eyes weren’t glued to the hours of tarmac action, guests had the chance to wander through a display of six decades of F1 cars to celebrate the organisation’s 60th anniversary and enjoyed the entertainments of motorbike stunt-riders and guitarists Jimmie Vaughan and Jeff Beck. The weekend was capped off by a stunning acrobatics show by a set of Red Arrow fighters.
CHEAPSIDE
For City workers who find themselves wandering the Square Mile on the weekend, the area can be an eerie place, bereft of its commuting crowds and working day buzz. The City is hoping to change this and in anticipation of the December opening of the One New Change office and retail development in Cheapside, 13 local employers including real estate agents and Transport for London have signed an Employment Charter for the City of London. The agreement centralises job listings and connects local businesses to Job Centres in an attempt to recruit local people into the estimated 1,500 new jobs that will come with the development. Deputy Mayor Richard Barnes said the combination of the charter and the development will lead to a “repositioning of Cheapside as a seven-day destination (that) will create much-needed job opportunities for local people in the City and the surrounding boroughs”. If successful, the project could make Cheapside’s echoing Sunday streets a thing of the past.
MOST HATED
CNN Money has released its definitive list of “Most hateable companies (not named BP)”. Having assigned BP the implicit honour of first place, the American broadcaster otherwise focuses mostly on the ongoing hangover of the financial crisis. In at eight are the evil twins Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: “Money is pouring out of these bottomless reservoirs of taxpayer dollars at a rate few of us can comprehend. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have received $145bn of government capital in less than two years (for their) reckless bets in housing,” says CNN in explanation. The insurance giant AIG takes fifth place for similarly relying on the government’s tendency to favour “short-term financial stability at any price” and in at the top of the league of hateables comes Goldman Sachs, with the broadcaster citing its $3.3bn profits in the face of impending fraud charges as a sore point. Meanwhile, Facebook swiped sixth position due to its attitude towards users’ information – “privacy, shmivacy”.
• Victoria Bates is away