Citi's night at the opera
Senior Citibankers might be in for something of a shock on May 17. That's the date the new Glyndebourne opera season starts - and the first performance of the new production of Handel's Theodora, sponsored by Citibank.
Citi had enormous success with the last opera it sponsored at Glyndebourne, an exclusive venue in the English countryside near Brighton. Porgy and Bess was conducted by Simon Rattle and had an all-black cast including world-famous bass Willard White. Many regular opera-goers rate it the best they've ever seen.
This season, Citi was given a choice of two new productions. One was a non-starter: Lulu, a fairly hard-going, avant-garde opera by Alban Berg.
So that leaves Theodora. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry: it was last performed in Britain in 1966. In fact, it's not an opera at all, but an oratorio. And the director is Peter Sellars.
Peter Sellars is the enfant terrible of the business. His 1990 Zauberflöte at Glyndebourne was, according to one buff who's been to every season since 1952, "the worst production ever". Set in a Los Angeles of grubby T-shirts, it was seen as a travesty of Glyndebourne's beloved Mozart.
Theodora isn't a much-loved opera: it's all but unknown. But 18th-century opera does tend to attract fanatics: those who like it tend to be keen on authenticity. This production is being conducted by an early-music specialist, William Christie, with the orchestra playing on original instruments.
Peter Sellars, however, certainly won't make many concessions to authenticity. He will offend a lot of people - he always does.
Citibank says the bank's first priority is to support the arts, and that this is a "new and exciting" production. It just remains to be seen what their staff and clients think of it. Felix Salmon
New Chase, new office, new clothes The new Chase has opened its first office since the Chemical Bank merger - in Tashkent. For once, it has beaten Citibank to a location, setting up the first office of a US bank in the capital of the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.
It's not surprising, then, that the cocktail party thrown to celebrate the opening was a lavish affair held in the grand Museum of Applied Arts. Beneath the museum's 100-year-old hand-painted dome, guests were entertained with a mix of western classical music and traditional Uzbek songs. Such was the stir the opening caused that the television news programme Akhborot showed footage of the event several times.
No-one was more concerned to show affinity with the local culture than Chase's head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Charles Bauccio, who was the bank's most senior representative. He received the office's accreditation from the central bank just half an hour before the party. He was also presented with an Uzbek tun, duppi and belbogh (robe, cap and belt) which he immediately put on and wore to the party.
As a result, Bauccio's speech won a rapturous round of applause. "People felt, after he put on the clothes, more comfortable. [It was] like 'I respect your country, I am one of you'," says Chase's deputy branch manager, Tokhir Sultanov, who formerly worked for the central bank and is one of the three locals in an office of four.
The office, which opened 10 days after the merger of the two banks, is centrally located in the Turab Tula Plaza office block. This is Uzbekistan's international financial centre, a glistening new building among the grey Stalinist blocks. It also houses Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
It took just three months to open the office, Chase's first in central Asia. "It shows our commitment to the country and the prospects we think it has," says Murat Talayhan, vice-president for central Asia and the Caucasus. He adds that Chase has completed lots of transactions in Uzbekistan, for example a $40 million cotton pre-export financing for US commodity trading company Dunavant. He says there are many more deals in the pipeline.
Uzbekistan, while not as large as neighbouring Kazakhstan (which is as large as the whole of western Europe), is also rich in minerals and resources, especially gas. In addition, it has a reputation for respecting legal contracts. There are 19 EBRD projects under way in the country. Steven Irvine
http://www.ABN-Amro/overload It seems ABN Amro employees have been protecting themselves against misfortune with chain mail - not the stuff that deflects slings and arrows, but those insidious chain letters that are these days mostly sent by e-mail.
Eleven ABN Amro employees in the US and the Netherlands in departments including global clients, structured finance, equity merchant banking and treasury received a chain e-mail message in early April forwarded either to their ordinary e-mail boxes or to internal ccMail or Lotus Notes addresses. At least eight of these people forwarded the demanded 10 copies to other personnel within the bank. Soon the total number of recipients was over 100; it would have required only six generations of the message before 40,000 people received it. But angry systems managers stepped in and via a stiff e-mail message (what else?) demanded a stop to the whole silly business. The chain letter appears to have entered the ABN Amro system via someone working in the bank's Chicago treasury.
Claiming to originate in New England, from an Asian missionary signing herself Diana Li, the e-mail promises: "You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this message provided you, in turn, send it on. This is no joke. You will receive good luck in the mail...send copies to people you think need good luck...this message must leave your hands in 96 hours. Please send 10 copies and see what happens."
A source at the bank says an earlier chain e-mail was traced back to an official in the Amsterdam automation department. "We think we have stopped this new one. But you cannot be sure unless employees report it to you." Nigel Ash
David Band David Band, chief executive of BZW, died on March 28 at the age of 53. A colleague writes this tribute.
The son of an Edinburgh surgeon, David Band was educated at Edinburgh Academy, Rugby and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He began his career in 1964 with JP Morgan.
After various posts in London, Band ran the firm's south-east Asian operations in Singapore in 1976. He was then promoted to head the firm's Paris office for three years until 1981 when he was posted to New York as senior vice-president. He returned to London in 1986 and the following year became head of JP Morgan Securities, heading Morgan's operations in Europe.
Band was recruited to head BZW in 1988, two years after the firm was formed. In his eight years at BZW, he developed and transformed it from its UK stockbroking roots into a powerful investment bank.
Befriending all who came within his ambit, Band cared deeply about unifying the firm by breaking down the parochial barriers between products. He was someone who let others take the credit, though his was often the industrious and invisible hand achieving harmony.
A determined fighter and a natural winner, he possessed a deep understanding of the investment banking business and a clear vision of its future. As a friend and a leader David Band is greatly missed.
He leaves a wife, Olivia, and two children, Ben and Isabelle.
Merrill: not for the athletic An ex-Merrill Lynch banker captained Cambridge University to victory in the boat race
against Oxford last month. But why did he leave Merrill to go back to university?
It seems the 15 stone 5lb rower decided he couldn't hack the Merrill diet of burgers and late-night takeaways, and a regime that kept him in the office until 11pm most nights. "It was a radical lifestyle change for me," laughs Ethan Ayer, the ex-Harvard rower who worked for Merrill's 20-person structured finance group. "After two years at Merrill I thought I should move on."
He left Merrill last July. Since then, a diet of pasta and the wholesale commitment to fitness the boat race demands have helped him lose over 30lb. Despite this, the Cambridge number five was still the heaviest oarsman in the race. Celebrating victory afterwards, the 25-year old - who is studying English literature - had his first alcoholic drink in 10 weeks.
"The Oxford and Cambridge boat race has been in my mind for over eight years," says Ayer, "although I can see that, to many people, what I have done might appear in career and financial terms a pretty irresponsible move."
But not in health terms. Mike Normile, head of the structured finance group at Merrill, was delighted for Ayer. "He came in with a strong interest in athletics," he recalls. "And in a short space of time we turned an athlete into an overweight analyst. It's kind of a badge we wear," he jokes.
Cambridge won the four-and-a-quarter mile race on the River Thames very easily, but the only record broken on the day was again set by Ayer. He is the tallest man - at six feet eight and three-quarter inches - ever to row in the annual race. Steven Irvine
Board of low pay and their licence to kill German executives have started to compare their pay with US levels - and found it wanting. Jürgen Schrempp, chairman of Daimler-Benz, has taken the lead by initiating a share-option scheme for the group's 170 top executives - the board included.
Previously, a percentage of board pay at Daimler was linked to the company's dividend. Now, strictly in the interests of shareholder value, according to Schrempp, executive pay will be linked to the share price, which happens to have rallied this spring, while the dividend has been cancelled altogether.
A similar scheme has been introduced for Deutsche Bank's top 200 executives in Germany, perhaps to lessen the hurt of seeing Deutsche Morgan Grenfell executives in London signing up for million-dollar pay packets.
Serving on the board of a German corporation is not a job anyone can do, according to the traditionalists. Indeed, the law on joint-stock corporations lays down a probationary period of two years.
Deutsche Bank's Tessen von Heydebreck has just been named a full member of the board after the waiting period. In German banker's parlance, he's been awarded his Jagdschein, which might loosely be translated as "licence to kill" and is a fair description of how many German bankers and directors used to regard their authority.
German companies aren't obliged to disclose directors' earnings in detail, but only to give a total sum for the full board. At Deutsche Bank, for instance, that suggests an annual salary of Dm1.8 million ($1.18 million) per board member. Laura Covill
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