Greece lost its marbles\u2014and we found them (read further to find the explanation of this mystery)<\/p>\n
London, May 10, 2013<\/p>\n
Day 3 in London was a nice mix of activities, with the extra of having most of the afternoon and evening free to explore.\u00a0\u00a0What I\u2019m going to share was my day, part of which involved our students.<\/p>\n
In the morning we took the underground (the subway is an underpass here) to visit Citi\u2019s operations in London, a visit facilitated by former student (and veteran May term tripper\u2014he went to Asia with me a few years ago) Chris Wheatley, who is completing an internship in \u201cprivate banking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/05\/cisco.jpg\")
invited two of his coworkers (boss?), who described the nature of private banking to us.\u00a0\u00a0As they explained, they provide customer services to a limited clientele\u2014the really wealthy in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (from this area), with a heavy emphasis on benefitting \u201ccash rich\u201d customers.<\/p>\n
The bank has 25 bankers who handle about 15 or so clients, providing advice and management services such as through a jet aircraft division (so the owner doesn\u2019t have to worry about what to buy, how to maintain, etc.), or brokering deals such as the purchase of a sports team and the building of a stadium (the 30 something banker told us he doesn\u2019t know why, but\u00a0\u00a0when you get a certain level of financial security, you want to buy a team–witness the Russian owner of the Nets).\u00a0\u00a0The key is not only to provide a portfolio of services, but to build a personal relationship (he hosted a $1 million golf tournament), taking what is in many ways a commodity business and moving farther downstream into customer service. They pointed out that England is an important base because of the stability of the country, economically and politically, as well as the desirability of the wealthy to have a home in London.<\/p>\n
One of the interesting challenges they described was the political vulnerability of (and the press attacks on) banks in Europe.\u00a0\u00a0The Europeans have limited the size of bonuses that can be awarded to bankers, a policy that has been followed in the United States.\u00a0\u00a0From what we saw, though, Citi is at least as much a local, global bank as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank which has claimed that slogan as its own.<\/p>\n
Similar to what we heard yesterday at Cisco, and in the evening from Professor Pana and my two students who are working in finance in London, banking is a\u00a0\u00a0competitive business in England.\u00a0\u00a0As a result of the financial ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/05\/03-P5090014-1-300x225.jpg\")
crisis of the past few years, there are about 250,000 finance people in England, down from 350,000 at the onset of the crisis. In describing how to get through the barrier, they emphasized the study of foreign languages\u2014everyone in Europe seems to know several, and some of the Universities in England pay for their students to study abroad for a year\u2014and to \u201cnetwork like crazy; make every connection count.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now for the lost marbles.\u00a0\u00a0After lunch, we went to the close by British Museum, and like many museums in England (but not much else), with free admission.\u00a0\u00a0Westminster Abbey was about 18 L by contrast.\u00a0\u00a0The reason was to make sure the students got to see the so-called \u201cElgin Marbles,\u201d the Students scattered after that, while Ella and I sampled some of the other areas of the museum.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a fabulous Egyptian collection (remember Great Britain was the \u201cprotector\u201d of Egypt as part of the digging of the Suez Professor Pana and I\u2014and one of our students\u2014did get that Indian meal, but our professorial goal afterwards was to sample one of the evening cultural activities in London.\u00a0\u00a0The Royal Opera (Don Carlo by Verdi was sold out); I\u2019ve seen the English National Opera production of La Boheme, and Helen Mirren\u2019s The Audience has nary a seat left for the entire run.\u00a0\u00a0Thinking what could be more British than the Beatles (and remember I love classical music\u20141690s or 1960s), we decided on \u201cLet it Be,\u201d a 2 hour Professor Pana\u2019s observation was spot-on: \u201cIt was like a facelift.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Those musical geniuses did have the audience rocking, from\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI want to hold your hand\u201d to the later ones from Rubber Soul, moving even those in the audience too young to\u00a0\u00a0KNOW to their feet.<\/p>\n I was thinking back to that day in the spring of 1964 when I was visiting my then fianc\u00e9e at a fraternity party when one of my brothers said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to hear this group.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The song was, \u201cI want to hold your hand,\u201d and fifty years later, Carolyn, I still want to hold your hand.\u00a0\u00a0Happy Mum\u2019s Day, Mrs. Hoyt.\u00a0 \u00a0And the other mums reading this blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greece lost its marbles\u2014and we found them (read further to find the explanation of this mystery) London, May 10, 2013 Day 3 in London was a nice mix of activities, with the extra of having most of the afternoon and evening free to explore.\u00a0\u00a0What I\u2019m going to share was my day, part of which involved … Continue reading “We found Greece’s Lost Marbles”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-term-2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7546"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9437,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546\/revisions\/9437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2013\/05\/181813334-bf72c28.jpg\")
<\/a>friezes that Lord Elgin, as British ambassador to Turkey (another connection for the trip), brought back with the consent of the Turkish governor of Greece to England, and they eventually wound up in a room in the British Museum.\u00a0\u00a0The storyline is roughly that the Ambassador\u2019s actions saved the frieze from pollution and neglect, and possible destruction, which I\u2019ll bet is not the same story we\u2019ll get in Athens, which has requested the purloined pieces be sent back to Athens to be reunited in the Acropolis Museum.\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019ll get to see the remaining 30% that are in Athens later.<\/p>\n<\/a>Canal; and the creator of the Cairo museum that has the King Tut relics), a substantial Greek collection (again, it was Hellenophiles such as Lord Byron, that helped in the war of independence that freed Greece from Turkey in the 1820s), with a selection from Cyprus that would have pleased Professor Pana\u2019s Cypriot husband; a nice collection of Indian Buddhist\/Jain artifacts, though smaller than I would have expected (and not much from the East India Company that triggered the British raj), and the usual assortment of Chinese and south east Asian materials, including items from many of the ruins I\u2019ve seen\u2014the Mogao caves, the Lungmen grottos, Borobudur and Prambanan in Indonesia, and some nice shamanist Buddhas from Tibet.<\/p>\n<\/a>look at the Red\/Blue and #1 albums of the Beatles, interspersed with film clips and commercials from the six or seven years of Beatlemania.<\/p>\n