FX poll dinner: I don’t want to go to Chelsea

The first question many asked at this year’s Euromoney FX poll dinner (see photos below) was: how could the European football authorities be so stupid? Uefa, in its wisdom, had decided to hold the second leg of the crunch semi-final between London’s finest football team, Chelsea, and arch-European rivals Barcelona on the very same night as the dinner. How could Uefa be so cruel to the hundreds of Chelsea fans – most of whom are, strangely, US citizens – who had already committed themselves to attend the dinner? I even felt sorry for Mark Warms, general manager of Europe at FXall and a Chelsea season-ticket holder, who was doubly frustrated as his company sponsored the dinner. As we all now know, Chelsea were cheated out of the victory they deserved. Brad Leek from RBS and Sean Comer from Barclays oddly made a similar claim in the taxi on the way home about their respective rankings in the poll, at which point I fell asleep. It’s good to see that such – I won’t call it honest – competition remains in FX.