WOLF WHISTLES FOLLOW STYLISH CITY LADIES DRESSED FOR SUCCESS
WHERE does a City woman go when she needs to out-dress her TM-Lewin-clad male counterparts? Designer Britt Lintner – who is also still a full-time professional at hedge fund GLG – is making a new bid to make her clothes the ultimate go-to items, and she has recruited a line-up of swanky femme fatales from the City to help her.
The women to be featured include Alexandra Palace MD Rebecca Kane, British Property Foundation chief executive Liz Peace and Boster Group founder Susan Boster.
But first up is Rothschild Debt Advisory MD Ranjit Munro, pictured, who agreed to a profile to promote the designs for high net-worth working ladies. Munro reportedly keeps a wardrobe of more than a dozen Britt Lintner dresses on hand and claims that one of them has even garnered her wolf whistles on the way in to the office: “It proves that age-appropriate dressing can be alluring, which I find rather reassuring now that I am the wrong side of 40,” she claims. As to how she balances the pressures of three kids with life in the City: “I like being busy and productive and I also have a really supportive husband, who has never expected cooked meals and is a great believer in outsourcing domestic tasks.” Here’s to outsourcing. But Munro needn’t attribute the wolf whistles wholly to her dress sense.
BACCHUS JOHNSON
The Wine Investment Fund held an art auction for charity last week, with an unusual set of paintings on offer. Unfortunately not everything was in order: one painting by Terence Gilbert entitled Wines of Bordeaux shocked wine aficionados with its unrealistic depiction of a rather-too-ancient 1963 Chateau Haut Brion and a red, instead of a white, Cheval Blanc. The offending painting was swiftly retouched.
But the star attraction included a most bizarre proposition: a colourful oil depicting none other than London mayor Boris Johnson as Bacchus, Roman god of wine, ecstasy and general partying. Alas, Boris was not available to view the portrait, pictured, but he would doubtless approve, having once labelled the Tories “the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth”.
SCHOOL’S OUT
Power down at Barclays on Churchill Place, where the office was preparing for a full switch-off of electricity on Friday to allow for maintenance. The power down was due to take place at 6pm, giving Barclays’ busy bees ample time to finish off their week’s number crunching.
But one sly worker just couldn’t wait another two hours to troop over to All Bar One. Logging on to his outlook email, he created a fake email that seemed to be forwarded from IT support, informing computer users across several floors that they had exceeded their electricity use and that if they did not turn their machine off for the weekend by 4pm, it would start losing data.
Surely no tech-savvy Barclays professional could fall for such a trick? Not so, according to The Capitalist’s eyes and ears in the building. Several confused – but rather happy – folks were spotted bar-bound at four, leaving their station’s lights on, but nobody home. Just in time to start the weekend in style.
SLIPPERY MATTERS
A mixed blessing for square mile commuters – already used to regular shut-downs on the Tube (and, apparently, on their computer systems). The bad news is that the millennium bridge will be closed to pedestrians today and everyday until Friday this week between 10am and 4pm – for “routine maintenance”. The good news is that one very civic-minded individual at a local wealth manager has been on the city of London’s case to fix the real problem with the ill-fated bridge: its slippery panels that have a tendency to dump innocent City folk on their arses at the slightest touch of rain.
Our hero’s persistent – and rather wry – emails to the City finally won him a response after a fortnight. He has been promised a rigorous run of “grip and slip testing on the bridge” (which we assume means more than repeated falling over) alongside the “deep clean” of the structure and some added “texturing” of the steps. Hopefully enough to keep commuters’ brogue-clad feet firmly on the ground.
DAILY GRINDR
Red faces all round in one City bank due to a far-too-clever mobile app called Grindr. The helpful programme lets gay and bi men connect to other similarly oriented individuals in the area – you just download the app and set your availability to whatever you’re looking for, whether it’s a relationship or just sex. The app uses Bluetooth to find other like-minded individuals in the area and hey presto.
Unfortunately, according to The Capitalist’s sources, the device proved a little too helpful in one City bank client meeting, where the electronic matchmaker tried to pair up one guy from each side. But what happened to the lovebirds after they left the meeting? Do get in touch with this column thecapitalist@cityam.com if you know…