I flew to London on Wednesday, flying from Memphis to Dallas. The airports were busy. The all night flight from Dallas to London was packed.
I came into the City of London from Heathrow Airport with a cab driver who qualified as one of the finest tour guides I have met. Thursday was a beautiful day in London. No sign of a recession that I could tell. Traffic was heavy, with plenty of Jaguars, Mercedes and a few Rolls Royce sprinkled through the pack. Tourists abounded. The shops were packed.
On Thursday night, instead of preparing for the Solari Report at my desk, I found myself evacuated from my hotel and standing in the middle of the City of London for several hours while fire fighters and police descended on the Liverpool Station area to put out a fire started in a fast food restaurant Here’s the news report.
I got back into the hotel in time to host the Solari Report with Franklin Sanders and James Turk from my desk. I was prepared to come in by cell, a dashing Australian banker having offered to lend me his mobile phone if mine ran out of juice. He was in London on a road show for an IPO. Despite the success of the IPO for China’s Agricultural Bank, he said that there was no IPO market. It was a chilling reminder of the price of central control, including the impact of replacing global equity with central banks and government debt.
After a quick cat nap, I headed off to Gatwick airport to fly to Jersey for a meeting and a sensational lunch at the Green Olive Restaurant . For a short time I was on the board of the Carteret Savings Bank in New Jersey when one of my partners from Dillon Read attempted to save it after the S&L crisis. I was bemused to discover where the name Carteret came from; this from the Wikipedia entry on Jersey:
“In recognition for help given to him during his exile in Jersey in the 1640s, Charles II gave George Carteret, bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies, which he promptly named New Jersey. It is now part of the United States of America.”
Then back across the English Channel to Gatwick, arriving just in time to see War Horse at the New London Theatre.
All in all, a great time. I was glad to be able to sleep late this morning.
