At lunch with Citi loan captains Paul Gibbs and Rizwan Shaikh last week, we learnt that Paul is no fan of boats or the sea while Citi comms head Simon Boughey keeps a boat outside his bedroom window so that he can admire it at all times.
At coffee with Natixis’ Chris Lovgren, the loans head spent some time explaining the difference between soft mini perms and hard mini perms to the Ranger. Although the Ranger was pretty sure that perms belonged in the 1980s and nowhere else.
Later in the week, at the mothership (the LMA offices) we sat in an office overlooking a gleaming NATO warship.
A large part of the meeting was spent distracted by the impressive boat. Nick Voisey very proudly told us that his office overlooked the water from where he could regularly admire the ships.
Another chunk of the meeting was spent discussing how financial markets superstar Michael Lewis has been hired as a consultant on the European Commission’s decision on whether to classify CLOs as simple transparent and standardised (STS) securitisations.
This led the Ranger to wonder whether Leonardo Di Caprio or Ryan Gosling might be available for the keynote speech at the September LMA conference. Or maybe Johnny Depp could do a turn as Jack Sparrow.
