It is always uplifting to look out of the window in the morning to see the sun shining, particularly so if the previous day involved a 15 hour marathon of meetings concluding at around 1am. The mood of awakening to the view however was soon interrupted by the terribly sad news at the death of Professor Stephen Hawking and I think it was significant that throughout the day at the various meetings that we attended that almost everyone we met made mention of their sadness at the passing of a truly great man.
The split however came quite early when Alex again flew solo, first attending a tennis tournament with Brabners and then onto a Michelin Star lunch with Freeths, followed by his attendance at the Aviva UK Investors Reception where he brought back the holy grail… 2 mobile phone chargers and a high tech worldwide multi socket adaptor!
Sam and I enjoyed a brief meeting with Andrew Kingsley of Kingsley Recruitment and then onto a lovely lunch with Tiko Rawlinson- Winder from Zurich Insurance but then Sam and I also split up to attend separate meetings, him with Squire Patton Boggs and I with Edward Owen of WeWork, the son of our Chairman, Barry Owen at the rather decadent beach surroundings of the JLL Facility.
The team was back together for the European Reception on the DLA boat later that evening where I was able to catch up with the Merseyside Metro Mayor, Steve Rotherham, who is in Cannes doing an excellent job of promoting the Liverpool City Region. In the time that Steve has been in his various offices as MP and Mayor, he has been a tremendous supporter of Merseyside Youth Association, a youth charity that I chair in Liverpool, but it is good to see the work that he is doing on behalf of the city is paying dividends with those who will provide future investment into the Liverpool Region.
Like most 1980’s gatherings, our evening finished with New York New York (the restaurant rather than the song) and a late dinner with our good friends from Travers Smith. One of their group, Paul Kenny, was part of the first MOFS team to participate in the Mason Owen Property Golf Classic in 2016, which I am pleased to say that we won. However, as a Sunderland fan, and with me being a Bolton Wanderers fan, he was understandably reluctant to discuss anything to do with football.
Again the evening concluded reasonably late but with discussions of how we were getting back to Cannes La Bocca, particularly as our Uber was taking around 15 minutes to arrive. Sam had however noticed earlier in the day that there is an alternative means of Uber transport available in Cannes and investigations have shown that the cost of taking the Ubercopter from Cannes to Nice Airport on our return journey may actually be more cost effective than using the road based transport! However, discussions are still continuing within our group as to how we would get that past our accounts department in terms of expenses! More to follow…
