The Chelsea Flower Show’s displays are the delight of royalty, celebrities and horticultural enthusiasts. But when Britain’s bankers are let loose on the exhibits on Monday, the blooms will fade into the background.
The City’s sharpest dealmakers descend en masse to the Royal Horticultural Society showcase for its preview evening every year and they have become accustomed to ignoring its floral installations because the gala offers such fertile ground for cultivating contacts.
The RHS gala is formally a charity fundraising event, but has gained notoriety in City circles as the most important networking opportunity of the year, as well as the unofficial start of a British summer social season that will take in Glyndebourne, Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and Goodwood. This year the flower show is enjoying a renewed level of popularity, having enlisted Sir David Beckham and Alan Titchmarsh to design gardens, sparking a stampede for tickets to the exhibition, which has sold out for the first time since the pandemic.
Nicola Sallis Chandler prepares her display at the “floral market” stand featuring flowers supplied by Marks & SpencerTimes photgrapher richard pohle
Sources attending this year’s Chelsea show said it was a “speed dating-style” affair that had become one of the most sought-after tickets in the social diary. Mervyn Metcalf, founder of Dean Street Advisers, the London-based boutique advisory firm, said the fundraiser had become such an important night for teeing up big-ticket transactions that bankers would go to extreme measures to be seen at the event.
He said: “One year, a senior banker I know couldn’t get a ticket. The idea of not being there was just not an option, so he simply hung out at the entrance to meet people, saying he was waiting for his guest.”
banks and law firms apply for tickets to dole out to clients, who are invited to drink at their designated mini-bars in the huge exhibition marquee, which is roughly the size of two football pitches. The Great Pavilion hosts 40 stands and with institutions sometimes handed hundreds of tickets each, attendance numbers can reach well over 4,000. One City spinner described the £635-a-head night as “the most concentrated gathering of high net worth individuals in Europe”.
Yet the marquee itself is not widely regarded as the epicentre of the evening’s action; the bankers will stay within its confines only if it’s raining. After loading up their champagne glasses, they start to hunt down each other’s clients along the show-garden promenade, known to the more established visitors as “the avenue”.
Alamy
Lord Leigh of Hurley, the Conservative Party’s longest-serving treasurer and co-founder of Cavendish Corporate Finance, the boutique advisory firm, said: “I’ve been going for about 25 years and we all walk the avenue — some people never leave the avenue — and apparently there are some flowers there as well. It’s quite clear that some of the bankers have absolutely no idea what the difference is between a peony and a weed.
“There’s one American banker who I only meet once a year, every year, at that event. It’s almost got a routine to it; you have the usual suspects, sometimes there are some new people and there are lots of politicians as well.”
Lord Leigh of HurleyAlan Davidson/Shutterstock
The evening’s focus turns to dining at about 9pm as guests gather at one of the many dinners hosted by City companies. The sit-down meals are as least as competitive as the promenade, as hosts jostle to secure the most notable guests from the political, cultural and corporate spheres.
Lloyds Banking Group’s offering is known for drawing a particularly starry selection of FTSE 100 chairs and chief executives, who hobnob with cabinet ministers and the occasional media personality. City source said the dinner had become “notorious for starting later than planned” because the guests were too busy talking to sit down for food. Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of Lloyds, and Sir Robin Budenberg, the chairman, will host this year’s banquet in aid of the Woodland Trust conservation charity.
Charlie NunnTayfun Salci/ZUMA/Alamy
Meanwhile, Fenchurch Advisory, the financial dealmaking boutique, will host a dinner for 200 clients and contacts, which it has been holding for almost two decades. Malik Karim, the founder and chief executive of Fenchurch, said the night was “a great chance to meet and gossip” and was a particular draw for guests from America, Canada and Europe, who want to see “Britain and London at its best”.
Malik Karimfenchurch advisory
While deals are rarely formalised among the shrubs of the show gardens, bankers will certainly use Monday’s event to tee up transactions. In May 2013, a pivotal deal was seeded when Matteo Canonaco of Canson Capital Partners introduced Joseph Baratta, Blackstone’s private equity head, to David Craig, then head of Thomson Reuters’ financial and risk division. The meeting led to Blackstone’s deal to buy a majority stake in Thomson Reuters’ data business, which was rebranded as Refinitiv and later sold to the London Stock Exchange Group in a $27 billion deal.
Sir Philip Green, Daphne Guinness and Stuart Rose at the British Fashion Awards in London in 2007Dave M Benett/Getty Images
The gala was also at the heart of a corporate scandal during Sir Philip Green’s hostile takeover bid for Marks & Spencer in the early 2000s. Stuart Rose, who had recently become chief executive of M&S, was accused by Green’s bankers of effectively admitting to insider trading. They said the executive, who had bought shares in M&S, disclosed to a guest at the gala that he had known about the takeover because he discussed working with Green on the deal. Rose denied the allegations and was ultimately cleared by regulators.
Yet, for many, the main pull of the jamboree is far less serious: they go to have a good time. Leigh said: “Unfortunately, the main people you meet are other bankers and what’s the use of that? But it’s a see-and-be-seen type of moment. I’ve never met a client that’s turned directly into a deal at Chelsea Flower, but I still buy a ticket or two every year in hope and aspiration and because it’s just a nice thing to do. For me, it’s an important moment, because it marks the beginning of summer.”
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