If you think risk management is a serious business, then you haven't met Mervyn Stutter. Wearing a Hawaian shirt and a garish pink suit, the singer/comedian performed a musical revue of financial risk in front of an audience of initially reticent risk management experts at the end of June.
After a few songs, even more drinks, and some slanderous comments about former British cabinet ministers' sexual persuasions, Stutter managed to get some of the audience on their feet accompanying him on tambourines.
Needless to say, it was the malicious and the seedy renditions which appealed to the audience, all members of CSK Software's risk management forum. The risk manager of one song moved from one disaster to another: from Lloyd's to Barings, to Asil Nadir's empire, before ending up with Robert Maxwell - artistic licence allowing Stutter to ignore chronology.
The most laughs, though, came from Stutter's song about the influence of a certain Melinda Messenger - a popular topless model in several British tabloid newspapers. Which way her assets point in the paper, so goes the song, determines what positions traders take, and it's not just the British who are hooked: "But Jean-Claude Trichet says 'I know it's a cliché/But it's a lovely new fiscal perspective!'" And the motto of the song? - If you wanna be the best - keep abreast!". Antony Currie
