The Champions’ League football final between Liverpool and AC Milan failed to live up to expectations but that evening London’s capital markets journalists were treated to an unexpected match between Deutsche Bank and UBS. Deutsche had sent out save-the-date invitations over a month before for a press party on the terrace at swanky restaurant Coq d’Argent.
And although normally the prospect of drinking for free on a rooftop looking across the City on an early summer evening would have assured full attendance from the invited hacks, it was a concern that the German bank had realized that its party clashed with the football only after Euromoney had intervened to tell them about it.
Rather than suffer a low turnout or risk an embarrassing walk-out by reporters (and bankers) seeking out the game, Deutsche moved quickly to assure football lovers that the match would be shown at a venue close by – for some strange reason Coq d’Argent did not think that showing the TV broadcast would offer a fitting ambience for its refined customers.
In contrast, UBS put in some tricky wing play by booking out a quarter of the Corney & Barrow wine bar in London’s Broadgate Circle.
It also offered the ultimate football fantasy – a barbecue to accompany the screening of the game.
Who was the winner? We say UBS, although we had fun at both parties. But there were a number of reporters (and Deutsche bankers) who wondered what had happened to one of the co-hosts of the Deutsche event – Zia Huque, global head of syndicate. At least Ivor Dunbar, the newish head of global capital markets for Europe and Asia, and European head of debt capital markets Miles Millard bothered to turn up.
