Visa’s Valerie Dias in a daze at Asian Woman Award triumph
VISA Europe’s chief risk officer Valerie Dias was taken by surprise in winning the Finance Award at the Asian Women of Achievement awards at Park Lane’s Hilton last night, saying she was surprised to even be nominated. “I was a reluctant participant when my team put me forward – I didn’t think I was worthy,” she told The Capitalist. With a gong on her desk, we’re sure she’ll change her tune.
Also picking up trophies were Yee Yee Low, senior concept engineer at Shell, in the Professional category and Karina Govindji, managing consultant at Gallup, in the Business category. Liz Hurley was there too. We can’t really explain why.
■ BANKS aren’t exactly well-known for their bouncing off the wall, “let’s all sit in a tree house to brainstorm” creativity but Virgin Money is stepping outside the box with its latest job interview. In the bank’s search for a creative visionary to head up a new proposition, it’s staging a very unusual interview in deepest Hackney on 10 July. The premise is the candidate will walk into six different rooms with various scenarios. The Capitalist has been privy to just one of the rooms – the jobseeker enters the changing room of a losing team at half-time and will need to motivate them. We have no idea what other tasks will be thrown at the budding bankers. It sounds more like immersive theatre than a job opportunity. Is this the future?
■ THE SPORTS business team at Deloitte have been showing their age, again – with this year’s Review of Football Finance report. The beancounting scribes behind the 16-page football dossier traditionally use song titles as their sub-headings in the foreword and in previous years have used track titles from The Rolling Stones, The Stone Roses and The Smiths. This year’s report is a smorgasbord of Simple Minds. We’ve got “Once Upon A Time,” “Glittering Prize,” “Alive and Kicking,” “Somewhere, Someone in Summertime,” and “(Don’t You) Forget about Me,” to name but a few. Well, The Capitalist hears the band is playing Kew Gardens on 19 July – perhaps the whole Deloitte team should pop along, post-World Cup, for a jolly…