THE LONDON TIMES: City Diary: Friends reunited: “LORD OXBURGH, the newish chairman of Shell, is giving the fourth Greenpeace business lecture later this month, speaking about the giant oil companies and climate change. You might think his position a difficult one. Do you tell your customers to use less of the stuff?” (ShellNews.net) 1 Jan 05
By Martin Waller
January 01, 2005
THEY have finally found someone to chair the company that has taken over Ofex, the stock market for tiddlers and those larger companies not too keen on all that corporate governance stuff. Stephen Hazell-Smith arrived yesterday, the same day that John Jenkins, the founder of the market, said that he would quit after this autumn’s financial rescue.
Hazell-Smith’s name may be familiar. Until August he was chairman of Hoodless Brennan, one of only three market makers operating on Ofex. He also chairs the PR company brought in by the new management after the rescue.
Simon Brickles, the former Stock Exchange man who is his chief executive, says: “I haven’t really thought about it in terms of a small world or coincidence. It’s just someone we know and we like.”
A HEADLINE from CNN, on the fallout from the terrible events in the Indian Ocean: “Tsunamis shatter celebrity holidays.”
No fun at the fair
PARANOIA reigns at MIPIM, the property-world gabfest that takes place every spring in Cannes, where the great and the good turn up in their yachts and swell their sense of selfimportance with ever-more lavish parties and receptions.
Someone has sent me, anonymously of course, the notes being sent to those who have officially registered for this year’s event. It seems in previous years “an increasing number of non-registered, non-paying visitors” have had the effrontery to turn up to Cannes and take unfair advantage of those who have paid by “conducting private business” there.
(Someone crueller than me, and less imbued with the year-end spirit, might wonder here about one bunch of property spivs trying to ensure that another bunch of property spivs does not encroach on their expensive space to do deals.) The organisers spell out the security measures they are taking to keep these “parasites” out. These come down to everyone who has paid wearing a badge at all times, anyone else will be summarily ejected. In most trade fairs, in Ronnie Scott’s immortal words, they have the bouncers on the outside, throwing the punters in.
LORD OXBURGH, the newish chairman of Shell, is giving the fourth Greenpeace business lecture later this month, speaking about the giant oil companies and climate change. You might think his position a difficult one. Do you tell your customers to use less of the stuff? For the record, Oxburgh’s preferred method of dealing with excess carbon dioxide is sequestration, storing the gas underground or in the sea, a process not all scientists are convinced would work.
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