London has been the world's largest financial centre for decades and it will remain so despite chaos in the euro zone, says Lord Mayor of London David Wootton.
Wootton, a lawyer by training with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, did not hide the pride that London feels for demonstrating over the centuries great ability to adapt itself to stay ahead of others, aside from openness and transparency that draws law and financial firms as well as numerous transactions to the city.
"It's open. Services are welcome to operate in the UK and a level-playing field is provided, with a single standard across the market," he said in a group interview.
The UK has been hit by the euro-zone crisis as Europe is its biggest export market. However, through the past few years, London has demonstrated its flexibility to maintain its status as a global financial centre amid two big threats - exposure of UK banks to other European banks following the euro crisis; and amendments to Europe's regulatory structure.
Despite the bleak backdrop, growth opportunities in London remain. Ahead of Olympics 2012, real estate investment is booming. In the past few years, London was also firm in basing bank executives' pay on real performance and tightening regulations to ensure the city's resilience. It is also the world's first centre outside China for yuan trading, besides being the biggest centre of Islamic finance in the Western Hemisphere.
London is ready to share its experiences with Thailand, which has long dreamed of becoming a regional financial centre.
"Britain is looking East as never before. In time, we'll be united by the forces," he said.
Wootton was in Bangkok last week, leading a delegation of British business leaders to meet Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong and Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul as well as Thai business leaders. The mission is to present companies in London and across the United Kingdom as partners of choice to Thailand, boost bilateral trade and set the course for British companies' role in Thailand, particularly in services and construction, and Britain's part in the Public Private Partnership.
By the same token, he welcomed Thai banks, securities firms and funds to the UK as well as those in the manufacturing sector.
In the context of British investment in Thailand, he expressed concern over Thailand's foreign ownership limit, which should be lowered to allow foreign companies to become majority shareholders.
"If they are to be minorities, who's gonna put money? Over time, Thailand will see how this will be good for the country," he noted.
When the Asean Economic Community begins in 2015, he considers that the integration would make it easier to advance openness with a single set of rules, no matter where investment is poured. In this regard, Thailand has a competitive edge as it is one of the more active centres for finance. What the region first needs is central regulators. Then, they must acknowledge that rules require business openness and transparency in terms of information, security and disclosure, he said.
Despite chaos in the euro zone following its monetary integration, he did not see that as a cause of fear for Asean countries. He does not write off Europe, which "will remain the best part of the world". Moreover, he foresees more similar groupings in other parts of the world. There would be more groups of countries than indi-|viduals in the next 50 years, like what happened in the past 20 years.
"I suspect more permanent influence to groupings like those in the EU, Asean, Africa and Latin America. They are not necessarily unified, but they could be cooperating in specific partnership," he concluded.
"The EU is a lesson to be learnt. The crisis is not a structural fault. It hasn't happened because of the grouping. You have to learn from Europe's mistakes and identify what went wrong," he said, adding that much of the crisis is born out of the Hamburger crisis in 2008, which forced European countries to pump in liquidity and incur huge fiscal costs.
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Source: www.nationmultimedia.com
London 2012 Olympics: Kelly Sotherton forced to retire following surgery on back injury - Daily Telegraph
Sotherton, 35, who also won bronze at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, had been hoping to qualify for London but pulled up with a back injury in the 200 metres during a heptathlon competition in Desenzano, Italy, last month.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
London hotels prices dropping for Olympics - Sydney Morning Herald
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Travel
Hotel prices are notorious for increasing ahead of international sporting events, but in London the average price has actually decreased by almost $20 a night.
A London hotel room during the Olympic Games in July and August costs on average $325, an increase of 93 per cent to the previous year.
Accommodation website www.hotels.com has found hotel prices have decreased by $20 since March this year.
The online hotel reservation system believes the price cut is due to the number of rooms and deals still available just 60 days before the Olympics.
Further price drops on top of the $20 decrease are not expected ahead of the European summer, which is traditionally a busy time of year.
Rates also vary depending on how close people stay to Olympic venues.
The most popular night for hotels is the opening ceremony on July 27 and the first day of the athletics on August 3.
However, a four-star hotel in central London away from the opening ceremony could cost as little as $233, according to www.hotels.com.
During the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, hotel prices in Cape Town reportedly rose by 71 per cent compared with the previous year.
AAP
Source: www.smh.com.au
Champagne Charlie, his hard-partying daughters and a tragedy that has devastated Prince Harry - Daily Mail
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Close-knit: A seemingly carefree Charles Harbord with daughters Astrid (left) and Davina at Ascot last year
Not every picture tells the real story. There is one on a motor racing website which carries the caption: ‘Charles Harbord in a typical pose.’ It shows a handsome, well-dressed man of late middle age, sporting a flamboyant tie, a silk hankie in his breast pocket.
The ‘typical’ presumably alludes to the flute of champagne he has raised to a gathering of fellow classic car enthusiasts; the broad smile fills a face that would be good natured even in repose.
Another photograph, taken last year at Royal Ascot, captures him in top hat and tails. At his side, clinging to his arms, are the so-called ‘Hardcore Sisters’ — his two blonde, fun-loving daughters Astrid, 30, and Davina, 26, who in recent years had blazed a trail through the upper echelons of London Society. Astrid is a close friend of the Duchess of Cambridge, whose hen party she attended. She was even, albeit briefly, linked romantically to Prince Harry.
Again, the raised champagne flute and the breezy smile of a gentleman whose after-dinner party trick was a tap dancing routine.
Could later life be any more fun than this?
It appeared not. A lovable, upper-crust eccentric, Charles Harbord had seemingly stepped straight from the pages of P.G. Wodehouse.
But then last Tuesday he shot himself dead at his home in Dorset.
Prince Harry is said to be distressed. Mr Harbord’s daughters are, of course, devastated.
A friend told the Mail last night: ‘The whole family is still totally in shock. Astrid and Davina were always heading down to the country at weekends to spend time with their parents. They are an extremely close family and the girls absolutely adored their father.
‘At the moment they have lots of extended family and some friends staying with them in Dorset and offering them support. Everyone is really gathering around them at this hard time.’
Earlier Astrid was reported to have said: ‘He was an amazing father. To everyone who knew him he was a legend.’
Mr Harbord, 68, was found in the rented apartment where he and his wife had lived since they sold their family home 18 months ago.
Sources have spoken of depression caused by the financial problems which forced that sale.
Charles Harbord was unhappy; the man of the raised glass and sunny disposition was a moment in a photograph. In these straitened times, not everyone facing difficulty and disappointment is unacquainted with high living nor high society.
There is no doubt that the Harbords have pedigree. The family tree is typical of their thumpingly solid, minor aristocratic, English country stock.
His great-great-great grandfather was the Norfolk MP and landowner Sir Harbord Harbord, who was raised to the peerage as Baron Suffield in 1786. At his death Charles Harbord was third cousin to the current Lord Suffield, the 12th Baron, who is a Lloyd’s underwriter.
One Harbord ancestor held the position of Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria. Charles’s own grandfather was an infantry officer and war hero who won the DSO and MC.
In his own way Charles’s Old Etonian father, William ‘Bill’ Harbord, cast an equally long shadow.
He retired as chairman of the Yorkshire brewers John Smith’s. But it was as a cricketer that he won true renown, though Wisden described him as one of the game’s ‘slightly mysterious figures.’
Harbord senior was an attacking batsman who scored centuries for Yorkshire against Oxford University, for the Minor Counties against the formidable 1934 Australians and he toured the West Indies with the MCC. Later he sat for two decades on the Yorkshire county committee.
Friendly face: Astrid with Kate Middleton at a charity boxing event in London in 2008
His eldest son was also born in Yorkshire, but educated at Harrow. Charles’s interests were cars, art and jazz.
He first married in 1972 but it did not last. In 1974, his younger brother, a captain in a cavalry regiment, was killed in an accident.
Harbord married for a second time in 1980, to Sarah-Juliet Blandy, known to all as ‘SJ’. This one stuck and they had Astrid and Davina.
By all accounts it was a happy family, but despite his antecedents, there was not a great deal of wealth.
In the Eighties, Harbord was describing his profession as ‘hotel and property development in London and the Algarve.’
By the late Nineties this meant Charles and SJ hosting 700-per-person painting courses at the house they had built in Portugal.
SJ did the cooking while Charles kept the guests’ glasses brimming with fine wines.
‘Most people don’t think of the Algarve in terms of landscape, but it’s very beautiful and the light’s marvellous,’ Harbord enthused at the time. ‘We have 3,000 hours of sunshine, more than anywhere else in Europe.’
But that idyll was not to last. In 2001 he was back in the UK launching the specialist publication which was to be his main concern until his death.
Cars For The Connoisseur was a paid-for newsletter ‘featuring classic motoring and racing reminiscences, history and nostalgia, potential classics, auctioneers’ anecdotes and market miscellany’.
His office was a room in the handsome family home in a village near Shaftesbury. His prestigious list of contributors, as well as the obvious affection with which Harbord was viewed in the historic car community, spoke of its success, though it could hardly have been wildly profitable.
Out on the town: Prince Harry leaving a nightclub with Astrid in 2009
If Cars For The Connoisseur raised high the Harbord name in a niche market, then the founder’s daughters, and Astrid in particular, were ensuring it gained a wider profile. Educated at the 24,000-per-year Tudor Hall school in Oxfordshire, the girls both went on to university.
The vivacious Astrid studied at Bristol, where her enthusiastic socialising was first chronicled. While an undergraduate she told one newspaper: ‘We’ll probably drink half a bottle of white wine a day in an average week, maybe more.
‘We’re recovering at the moment after a huge drinking session in the K Bar for a friend’s 21st birthday party last night. It was a big night out — we had a bottle of wine, two sambucas and quite a bit of champagne in a restaurant. I can’t remember much after that but it involved large amounts of vodka and cranberry juice. I lost my wallet and my friend lost her cardigan. Now we’ve got to get ready for a drinks party tonight.’
Society bible Tatler described her as ‘the coolest blonde to leave Bristol since Jemima Khan’.
Let loose on London the girls became part of the young royals’ set.
Astrid’s friends include Lord Freddie Windsor and Jamie Murray Wells, a friend of Prince William. On her current sponsorship webpage — she had been hiking around South America earlier this year with her mother, to raise funds for children’s charities — there is a 20 donation from one Beatrice York.
But it has been her friendship with Prince Harry that has caught the headlines. Three years ago, shortly after Harry split from his long-term girlfriend Chelsy Davy, he and Astrid spent an evening on the town.
It ended at 3am with the pair being driven back to his bachelor flat in Clarence House. Harry also attended a warehouse party in East London with the two sisters. Much speculation ensued.
More recently, Astrid had been dating James Rothschild, scion of the banking family, (whose own father Amschel Rothschild, also killed himself). The pair split up last autumn and Astrid was said to be heartbroken.
Davina has been seeing Julian Rufus Isaacs, Viscount Erleigh, although friends say that they, too, are no longer together.
Both sisters currently work for entertainment entrepreneur Piers Adam who part owns the members-only Brompton Club in Kensington.
A friend said: ‘Davina is more like his PA and does some marketing for the club and Astrid is organising monthly talks there. The first speaker was going to be [former SAS officer and mercenary] Simon Mann this coming Tuesday but it is unclear whether this will now still go ahead after the tragedy.
‘They are still obviously extremely upset and no one knows whether Astrid will come back to London from the country.’
Only last week Davina was seen laughing and joking with friends at the private invite-only Valley Festival in Hampshire, on Prince Harry’s best friend Arthur Landon’s land. It was organised by Sam and Holly Branson and they all dressed as enchanted woodland creatures.
That life of carefree, gilded frivolity is now over.
At the weekend one source, said to be a friend of the deceased, was quoted as saying: ‘I think, like so many people, they have been hit by the state of the economy.
‘Charles was a charming man and a genuine character, the kind of Englishman you don’t often meet these days. He was very well connected in the art and motoring worlds. Apart from his family, they were his two main passions.’
Scene of the tragedy: Charles Harbord's body was found in Wyke Hall, where the family lived since downsizing to a rented apartment in 2010
Another source ‘close to the Harbord family’ was reported to have said: ‘I think Charles was very depressed, and it was because of money troubles.’
The sale of the Harbord’s 760,000 home near Shaftesbury was cited as a cause. They had moved to one of ten apartments in Wyke Hall, a converted manor house in the village of Gillingham, where Charles Harbord was found dead from gunshot wounds. It is thought that the funeral will be held after the forthcoming Diamond Jubilee.
On May 12 Davina wrote on her Facebook page: ‘Spotted two magpies in the park — 1 for sorrow 2 for JOY!!!! Yeeeehaaaaaa x’
Magpies, like photographs, cannot be relied on. Appearances are deceptive. While still unexplained, Charles Harbord’s tragic death at least tells us that.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London 2012: Jessica Ennis storms to personal best and victory in Götzis - The Guardian
Sixty-one days out from the Games, there were intimations of Olympic immortality in Jessica Ennis's performance in Austria. She was so dominant that by the time it came to the 800m the only question left to ask was just how much she wanted to turn the screw on everyone else.
Before competing in Götzis, Ennis had spoken about the small psychological edge that a victory would provide. Never mind her modesty, by winning in such style she was not so much serving notice to her rivals as she was taking names and collecting dues; she is an athlete in the form of her life. Her tally of 6,906 broke Denise Lewis's British heptathlon record by 75 points, was the 17th best in history, and perhaps most importantly, surpassed the personal best of the 2011 world champion Tatyana Chernova by 26 points.
Ennis's overnight lead over Chernova was 229 points, but that margin was deceptive. One of the reasons why rivalry between the two athletes is so compelling is that the differences between them are so pronounced. Chernova is nearly 10 inches taller and 13lb heavier. Ennis has better personal bests in all four events on day one, Chernova is superior in all three on day two. If both had reproduced their average scores for the second day they would have tied on 6,770. When Chernova won the world championship in Daegu, she made up 280 points on Ennis on day two.
The defining moment of this competition came in the first discipline on the second day. Chernova's personal best in the long jump is 6.82m, 28cm beyond anything Ennis has ever managed. Ennis is an erratic long-jumper – 6.19m cost her the world indoor pentathlon title in March – and will always be under pressure in the event, forced to fret about just how many points Chernova's leap will take out of her lead. Ennis's first jump was 6.23m. Chernova surpassed that with an opener of 6.32m. Ennis, pushing herself hard, fouled her second jump, overstepping by 5cm. Chernova then improved to 6.41m. Ennis, with one jump left, was going to lose 57 points from her lead.
Under intense pressure, with Chernova prowling on the runway behind her, Ennis nailed the perfect jump with her final attempt. Her toe was hard up against the take-off board, and she flew out to 6.51m. That equalled her outdoor best. "Oh my, why do I coach?" said Ennis's coach, Toni Minichiello. He described the moment as "heart-pounding". All of a sudden the barometer switched right round. All the pressure was on Chernova. She could only manage 6.44m. Ennis ended up picking up 22 points in an event where she had expected to lose many more.
Ennis's score at that point was the best she has ever recorded after five events. And her afternoon was about to get better still. After lunch she came out for the javelin, another event where she lags a long way behind Chernova. In Daegu, it was the javelin that cost Ennis gold. In Götzis she carried the momentum from the long jump pit into the next event. In the first round she threw a new personal best of 47.11 metres. It was the first time in her career she had thrown more than 47m, and beat her previous best by 40cm.
In Daegu, Minichiello had been furious that she was forced to compete in the B javelin group along with the lesser competitors, while Chernova threw in the A group. Here Ennis was in the A group, and she thrived. In the 200m she had been running on the inside of the talented Dutch teenager Dafne Schippers, the fastest woman in the field, and had been pulled around by her.
In the javelin, being bracketed with the strongest throwers brought the best out of Ennis. Her second and third efforts were both over 44m. There was a consistency that spoke volumes about the hard work she has done over the winter.
The 251-point lead she took into the event gave her a 12.5m buffer over Chernova. In the end the Russian beat her by a little under 6m, with her first round throw of 53.21m. Ennis had a 133-point lead at the start of the 800m.
Chernova would have needed to been 9.77sec quicker over two laps to have beaten Ennis, which is tantamount to having no chance at all. Still, Chernova overtook Ennis in the final few metres of the race, just to make the point "I'm still here". Chernova won in 2min 8.94sec, six hundreths of a second ahead of Ennis, but still 132 points behind her.
The next time Ennis and Chernova go head-to-head it will be in very different circumstances, and with much more at stake. Götzis is a low-key meet, and the contrast with the Olympic stadium could hardly be stronger. Here the crowd was only 2,000 or so strong, and the small stadium is surrounded by grass banks dotted with würst vendors and schnitzel sellers. Ennis gave her post-competition press conferences while standing in a wheelie bin full of iced water.
In a little over two months from now Ennis will need to reprise her on-track feats on the biggest stage she will ever perform. If she does, her life will never be the same again.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
London 2012: Haile Gebrselassie Olympic 10,000m hopes ended - BBC News
Ethiopian two-time Olympic 10,000m champion Haile Gebrselassie has failed to qualify for this summer's Games in London after finishing seventh at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo.
With the race being an official Ethiopian Olympic trial, Gebrselassie needed a top-two finish to qualify.
But the 39-year-old ran a time of 27 minutes 20.39 seconds, nearly nine seconds behind winner Tariku Bekele.
Haile Gebrselassie's medal haul
1993 World Championships: Gold (10,000m), Silver (5,000m)
1995 World Championships: Gold (10,000m)
1996 Olympic Games: Gold (10,000m)
1997 World Championships: Gold (10,000m)
1999 World Championships: Gold (10,000m)
2000 Olympic Games: Gold (10,000m)
2001 World Championships: Bronze (10,000m)
2003 World Championships: Silver (10,000m)
Elsewhere, Britain's Phillips Idowu was victorious in the triple jump.
The 33-year-old 2009 world champion won with a leap of 17.31m.
Idowu's fellow Briton Hannah England came home first in the women's 1500m in 4mins 4.05secs.
Former world-record holder Gebrselassie, who has already failed to earn a spot in the marathon for London this summer, was hoping to compete in his fifth Olympics and was in confident mood after winning the Great Manchester Run last weekend.
However, his chances of appearing are now over following a race won by Bekele in 27mins 11.70secs, just ahead of Leleisa Desisa Benti who will join him in London.
The third spot in the Ethiopian team is being held open for world-record holder Kenenisa Bekele, Tariku's brother, who has been suffering from injury problems.
"The Games in London is over for me," said Gebrselassie. "I ran a good race until the last lap. I felt good but I manifestly didn't have the speed to compete against my rivals. That's life. I am not disappointed."
Also in the Netherlands, in the 400m, Santos Luguelin of the Dominican Republic posted the second-fastest time of the year, 44.45secs, to edge out Britain's Martyn Rooney.
"Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius finished fifth in 46.35secs.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
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