KEY POINTS:
I have been reading a Metro magazine supplement documenting a charity evening to raise money for the Cancer Society. It is sponsored by Chandon champagne and seems to involve groups of socialites and balding business titans dining at various restaurants, each with a different host, where they pose for gritted-teeth photos.
The pictures look awkward, as though the participants are strangers being forced to celebrate Christmas together. There also seems to be some confusion about the dress code.
At a dinner hosted by Mark Trigg of Contact Energy, at the restaurant Dine, some of the participants - James Flexman (Carter Holt Harvey) and Cory Franklin (Contact) - are wearing black tie, but other guests - Ray Ferner (Rinnai) and Jason Delamore (Contact) - seem to have come straight from work.
At other venues, property developer wife Rochelle Henderson is wearing a vintage shower curtain, another property developer wife Heather Wimsett is wearing a red carpet gown (not made of red carpet, silly), actor Michael Galvin is wearing his pyjama shirt, and someone called Tony Elvey is wearing an Act yellow blazer. Tony chook, I hope that is your political hue: it is dangerous to choose marigold jackets these days.
The higgledy-piggledy outfits reinforce the impression these extroverts have been thrust together reluctantly for a few tedious hours of compulsory bonhomie.
Maybe they should have taken the photos later in the evening when the talk about mortgages and school fees was out of the way and ties had been loosened. There was also a Chandon after-party, and in those photos the punters look a bit higher kicking.
Still, I didn't bring up this topic to be sneery about a venture which raised $70,000 to stop people dying painfully of cancer and is therefore a Jolly Good Thing.
What was interesting was how much has happened since the evening of the Chandon Supper Club, making the brochure look like a historical document from a happier time.
There is Andrew Ferrier, CEO of Fonterra, twinkling in a pink shirt at Monsoon Poon. Had he heard of melamine then? Ferrier is at a dinner hosted by Westpac's Andy Morris, who told House and Garden magazine how he and his wife and four children moved from London to live permanently at Millbrook Resort.
Would anyone in finance circles be keen to boast about that in a glossy magazine right now?
At Cin Cin restaurant, Sarah Murray of the Bank of Scotland International was hosting a dinner. HBOS had to be bailed out by Lloyds not long after this picture was taken.
Bank of Scotland International has been an aggressive property lender here, arranging, among other things, $365 million of financing for Landco, the company no longer owned by Greg Olliver. The Cin Cin dinner looked merry, but I am not sure all HBOS clients are quite so perky now.
And since the Contact executives were snapped at Dine, their company has come under fire for announcing a 10 per cent increase in power prices as well as almost doubling directors' pay to $200,000.
Not everyone's world has fallen apart in the past couple of months of course.
There is "vulture" financier Martyn Reesby at Heather Wimsett's bash: since the Chandon night out his firm has been swooping in to lend money to troubled developers - a nice position to be in.
Oh, and there is Allan Hawkins at a dinner hosted by accountant Peter McNoe of BDO Spicers. He is smiling calmly.
The Hawk has seen it all before.
deborah@coneandco.com
