Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Late news: what was really served at the Mansion House banquet

Plus: Why HSBC is wrong to contemplate bringing back the Midland

Last week’s deadline did not allow me to report from ringside at the Mansion House dinner, but there was so much to observe that I hope you’ll forgive a late dispatch. What a vivid guide to City psychology and precedence it offered.

In the anteroom, Lord (Jim) O’Neill, the Treasury’s new Northern Powerhouse minister, could be seen chatting to ex-BP chief Tony Hayward, now chairman of mining giant Glencore Xstrata. At the top table, HSBC chairman Douglas Flint was carefully separated (by António Horta-Osório of Lloyds) from Governor Carney, so they could avoid discussing HSBC’s plans to move back to Hong Kong. But in prime place next to George Osborne was Jayne-Anne Gadhia of Virgin Money — which the Chancellor called ‘that great challenger’ in his speech: there’s a turnaround from 2007, when Virgin wasn’t thought fit to buy busted Northern Rock.

And among the lower-table crowd were lots of gossips — offering, among other things, a guide to deputy governors of the Bank of England, of whom there are four, or possibly five. Most glamorous is Egyptian-born Dame Minouche Shafik, who chaired the Fair and Efficient Markets Review; most anonymous is Sir Jon Cunliffe, who ‘does the political stuff’; but ‘blue-eyed boy’ is Andrew Bailey, who has made a success of the Prudential Regulation Authority, while its counterpart the Financial Conduct Authority (run by Martin Wheatley, who is not a Bank man) is ‘a bit of an embarrassment’.

The main dish, by the way, was cannon of lamb, and the dessert was mostly rhubarb — as, in a sense, were the between-course speeches by the Chancellor and the Governor, timed for the 10 p.m. news. Carney’s elaboration of structures and jail sentences that signal the end of what he called the ‘the age of irresponsibility’ was an important City moment dulled by lifeless delivery, barely audible to the hall.

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