Few tickets are more coveted than those for the opening preview gala night of the Chelsea Flower Show.
This is the event that takes place after the Queen and her entourage have visited the gardens and occurs on the Monday night before the gardens open to the public on Tuesday. It is where, if you are a chief executive, banker or consultant worth your salt, you need to be seen.
This year, I managed to snaffle a ticket. Arriving at the event and walking through the London Gate, I was flanked by Sir John Ritblat on one side and Donald Mackenzie, co-founder and co-chairman of CVC Capital Partners, and Sir Roger Carr, chairman of BAE Systems, on the other side.
They were just the start of what became, for me at least, a “spot the bigwig” competition and within the first 10 minutes I had spied Stephen Hester, the former boss of RBS and current head of RSA (and a keen gardener); Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Credit Suisse; and Sir Martin Sorrell.
I may have been imagining it, but Sorrell, the founder and chief executive of advertising and public relations giant WPP, still seemed rather flush with the success of being awarded a £62.8m share package last month – one of the largest pay cheques in British corporate history.
The great and the good were also out with their spouses to view the gardens, with Ritblat rubbing shoulders with Nick Leslau, Chris Grigg from British Land, Ian Hawksworth from Capital & Counties and Chris Ireland, UK chairman of JLL, among others.
I also spotted and attempted to waylay Dave Lewis for a chat, but I will admit that the under-pressure chief executive of Tesco effectively shied away when he saw me (journalists have that withering effect on FTSE chief executives). I don’t blame him though as I was intending to ask him how he planned to rein in the spending of Benny Higgins, the boss of Tesco Bank, whose expenses were leaked last week and showed he spent £18,000 on taxis in eight months. This is more than the annual salary of many shop workers in Tesco.
But namedropping aside, there were a lot of people from the business and when we weren’t all looking at the gardens, the mood seemed positive despite the looming EU referendum.
One M&A banker from Moelis who I bumped into said that the mood at his investment banking shop was “surprisingly good” as a recent deal hiatus was starting to ease and clients were starting to think about doing transactions again “assuming we get a remain vote”. It is fair to say that an anti-Brexit mood was in bloom on the day, with every person I spoke to arguing that staying in Britain was essential, whatever Boris Johnson says about Europe (and Hitler).
Business executives I spoke to said that leaving the EU could potentially destabilise the nation, hamper investment opportunities and diminish consumer spending at a time when the economic recovery still seemed fragile.
There was also some positive reaction to the first few weeks of Sadiq Khan’s tenure in City Hall. The Labour mayor, who is seen as a possible challenger to Jeremy Corbyn in time, is finalising his team of top lieutenants and he will need to have an ace team to properly negotiate with Number 10.
One property man I spoke to said that it would be “good news” that Khan had managed to secure the services of Andrew Adonis, the ex-Labour transport secretary. The peer is considered to be a transport guru and this week it was announced he would become chair of the Crossrail 2 board. He will work alongside Val Shawcross, who has been appointed deputy mayor for transport and deputy chair of Transport for London.
The show is a good barometer for the health and sentiment of British business and clearly most boardrooms across the nation had turned out to enjoy the show. Even Anthony Gutman, the Goldman Sachs banker, managed to sneak in an appearance. He arrived straight after telling a parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of BHS that the Wall Street investment bank had, in fact, told Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group that Dominic Chappell was a former bankrupt before it sold BHS to the former racing driver for £1.
Green, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Deirdre Hipwell is retail and M&A correspondent at The Times
