Editor's podcast: Why the Lord Mayor views London as the world's coffee house
Welcome to this new conversational series from FT Adviser, in which the editor talks with people from outside of financial services to get a fresh perspective on global and national developments that may affect aspects of the profession in the future.
This podcast features the Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Michael Mainelli.
We visited him at Mansion House to ask what he has been doing in his first few months in office, and to discuss the variety of initiatives he has launched, which range from re-pollinating the City of London, to his Connect to Prosper theme.
As he tells editor Simoney Kyriakou: "The first thing I want to achieve is positioning London as a solutions centre to some of the world's problems.
"The second thing is to increase the number of connections that we have, thus my theme is 'connect to prosper', which is to celebrate the many knowledge miles of the City."
He said the final task was to demonstrate that London "is a place where things are happening".
"It has always been about trade, and this has always been fundamental to London - the connections we have in what I colloquially call the 'world's coffee house'."
This would not be just to promote the thriving media, technology and science sectors but also the financial sectors, he said.
Kindly hinting that the FT would, of course, be the paper of choice if London were a modern-day coffee house, he referred to the four original coffee houses from which various exchanges were forged, including Lloyds.
"Coffee houses and learned societies were all intertwined and the legacy of these is clear today", he said, referring to the City’s "vast knowledge ecosystem", with more than 40 learned societies, 70 higher education institutions and 130 research institutes in and around the City.
This is why he believes the coffee house is a good metaphor for the discourse and collaboration and ideas generation that London could and should be known for globally.
It is also why the four original coffee houses are represented on a spoon created to commemorate his year as the 695th Lord Mayor of London, topped off with a puffin playing the bagpipes.
"Never tell anyone you like a certain thing until you are well into your 50s", he said after the podcast, pointing to a row of assorted puffins lining his office. "I am building up quite a collection".
To listen to the full conversation, click on the link above, and watch this space for the next editor's podcast, when we'll be talking to a former NASA scientist about AI in insurance.
simoney.kyriakou@ft.com
