BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently had a word with the chaps at Oil Securities, who are launching the first oil-backed exchange-traded fund tomorrow. What this means is that the ordinary punter can now, through his stockbroker, gain exposure to the oil price. The price of crude oil is one of the most “visible” economic indicators out there, appearing in headlines whenever it goes over $50, or now $60, but until now the closest Joe Sixpack could get to it was buying shares in the oil companies themselves, which is not quite the same. But now you can buy an oil security from Oil Securities, which will track the price of a barrel provided by Shell Trading Switzerland. So you don’t actually have to take delivery of the barrel! The minimum investment is just one barrel, which goes for about $58-59, depending on where it’s from – you’ve got a choice of Brent or West Texas Intermediate. WTI is light and sweet, while Brent is also light and sweet, but slightly less light and slightly less sweet than WTI. I’m probably going to get one of each.

Obviously this alone is great fun, but Oil Securities say they are also looking at bringing out similar instruments for the price of gasoline. If these came to the market, motorists could hedge themselves against fluctuations in the price of gasoline by buying the equivalent of their annual consumption of gasoline at the start of the year, and holding it as an asset. As the gasoline price rises, you would pay more at the pump, but there would be more sitting in your portfolio. Risk management power to the people!

LONDON NEWS

From the Times:

“Elite detectives, dressed as young Londoners with peace wristbands, designer leisurewear and fashionable haircuts, are now on the front line, stalking suspects. Trained with the SAS in close-combat techniques, they are equipped with brutally efficient, adapted Heckler & Koch pistols.”

Just last night TUPNews was in a bar on the Holloway Road, sneering at trendies (as is my wont). Little did I know that one wrong move could have earned me a Stockwell sandwich from a tooled-up Nathan Barley. Be vigilant, Londoners, especially in the Hoxton/Shoreditch area.

BUSINESS NEWS

China has depegged its currency from the dollar. TUPNews has no idea what this means, but I can tell you a few things about elevators in Hong Kong banks.

The first thing to bear in mind is that Hong Kong is entirely made up of skyscrapers and high rises, because you’re cramming 6.9 million people onto 1042 square kilometres of land. Less than that, in fact, because a great chunk of Hong Kong’s land mass is taken up by the mountains and nature reserves in the middle of the island. So the visitor to Hong Kong – and in particular the business traveller - is immediately struck by the sheer amount of time spent in elevators.

(This is also one of the reasons Hong Kong has a poor-to-non-existent indie scene – there’s nowhere to practise without making too much noise.)

But as a consequence of spending so much time in elevators, the people who design the elevators put a little more effort into making them inhabitable than their European or American counterparts. Every elevator TUPNews used in Hong Kong was spotlessly clean and elegantly modern. Several banks, including HSBC Asset Management, even had TV screens tuned to Bloomberg inside their elevators. One even had an old-fashioned lift attendant. Riding elevators is fun in Hong Kong.

The second thing to bear in mind is the Chinese obsession with public hygiene. SARS understandably shat them up a treat, and as a result you now can’t walk fifty yards in Hong Kong without having to dodge public works employees hosing down the street. There are posters everywhere warning people about various epidemics and fevers. Not just SARS and avian flu either – those are just the epidemics that developed enough of a reputation to gain an international following. Rat fever, dengue fever and yellow fever are all constant threats as well. In fact I understand there is a massive rat infestation currently affecting central Hong Kong.

(At the time of my visit last year, a Hong Kong-based colleague reported that the latest avian flu warning had advised the public not to blow into a chicken’s ass. We assumed this was a comedy mistranslation. But later that night, I caught a TV advert that showed an old woman blowing into a chicken’s ass, only for a younger, suited woman, perhaps her daughter, to grab the chicken and shake her finger disapprovingly. I don’t speak Cantonese, but the old woman’s expression seemed to say, “What the fuck is your problem? I’ve blown more chicken ass than you’ve had dim sum, you jumped-up little bitch.”)

As a result, all elevators are sprayed down with disinfectant every ten minutes, and a soothing automated woman’s voice informs you that the elevators are sprayed down with disinfectant every ten minutes. It doesn’t smell too bad, though. So there you have it: Hong Kong elevators are both fun and hygienic.

SPORTS NEWS

Badminton

Gentlemens’ singles match
Friendly
Queen Mother Sports Centre

The Uncertainty Principle bt TUPNews 2-1
(2-15 15-6 15-7)

Shock turnaround in this match: Jake was routed in Game 1, which at 13-0 threatened to be a trousers-down affair. Pleas of lack of warm-up seemed desperate at the break, but were vindicated by assured performances in the second and third games. Game 2 saw the strongest rallies, with Jake’s tactical nous proving the deciding factor on several key points. TUPNews was heard muttering something about poor lighting. Game 3 was at altogether scrappier affair; TUPNews routinely broke serve only to waste scoring opportunities. Ultimately, it was Jake’s mastery of the drop shot that settled the encounter.

BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently visited the Swiss Re building, also known as the Gherkin, to attend a press briefing on weather derivatives. The briefing took place on the 14th floor, less than a third the way up the building, and below the inflection point at which the curvature tends inwards. Even at this vantage point, however, the views were fantastic. The 14th floor contains a spacious split-level café-bar area, where TUPNews spent a pleasant half hour chatting with other correspondents. After this, we were ushered into a sleek, well-appointed briefing room. The room was rectangular, with the seats arranged to face away from a long window and towards a podium. On the podium-side wall, there were two large, embedded flatscreen monitors. As we entered, these monitors showed a woman sitting behind a desk staring out at us. High-quality office environments induce a feeling of calm and serenity in TUPNews, and as a result I did not immediately compute why this image of the woman was being broadcast; it just seemed to fit with the ambience of the space. Soon after, however, the woman was introduced as the head of such-and-such, and it emerged that she was in fact addressing us from a purpose-built studio in Swiss Re’s New York offices. At the end of her address, people asked her questions, which she could hear through the microphones in the room, and she was able to respond. There was only the tiniest hint of satellite delay. TUPNews found this experience utterly sublime.

Weather derivatives are brilliant. In fact, they are my favourite financial instruments. As you can probably guess, they allow you to bet on the weather: temperature, rainfall, even wind. Mostly used by energy, agricultural and construction firms, but Joe Six-pack can access them as well, in Holland anyway. There, Dutch bank ABN Amro offers an internet savings account that will bump up its interest rate if it rains too much over the summer. This is what risk management should be about!

SPORTS NEWS

TUPNews recently considered having the words “City Till I Die” tattooed across my forearm as a declaration of allegiance to Bath City FC. It dawned on me, however, that if there were any form of afterlife, I would continue to support Bath City in said afterlife, and that, in fact, any fan who claims to be “City Till I Die” is a fair-weather lightweight who will glory-hunt off to Arsenal or Man U as soon as they are reincarnated.

Pittsburgh Steelers fan James Smith was obviously working on the same logic, judging from this AP report:

“James Henry Smith was a zealous Pittsburgh Steelers fan in life, and even death could not keep him from his favorite spot: in a recliner, in front of a TV showing his beloved team in action.

The Samuel E. Coston Funeral Home erected a small stage in a viewing room, and arranged furniture on it much as it was in Smith's home on game day Sundays.
Smith's body was on the recliner, his feet crossed and a remote in his hand. He wore black and gold silk pajamas, slippers and a robe. A pack of cigarettes and a beer were at his side, while a high-definition TV played a continuous loop of Steelers highlights.
``I couldn't stop crying after looking at the Steeler blanket in his lap,'' said his sister, MaryAnn Nails, 58. ``He loved football and nobody did (anything) until the game went off. It was just like he was at home.''

LONDON NEWS

TUPNews recently visited St. Anne’s church on Dean Street in Soho. St. Anne’s is the C of E parish church for Soho, and has been recently refurbished. If you work in or near Soho, the gardens out front are a great place to spend your lunch break. It’s shady, quiet and never too busy, unlike, say, St. James Square.

It’s also the final resting place of William Hazlitt, a 19th century anti-monarchist writer who put together some tidy stuff about going to an illegal boxing match, as well as some duller stuff about the monarchy and how crap it is.

RUSSIA NEWS

Russian astrologer Marina Bai has sued NASA, claiming the Deep Impact probe that punched a crater into the comet Tempel 1 late Sunday "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe.” A Moscow court has postponed hearings on the case until late July, the paper said.

Bai is seeking damages totaling $300 million — the approximate equivalent of the mission's cost — for her "moral sufferings," says the Russian press, citing her lawyer Alexander Molokhov. She earlier told the paper that the experiment would "deform her horoscope."

Scientists say the crash did not significantly alter the comet's orbit around the sun and said the experiment does not pose any danger to Earth.

BREAKING RUSSIA NEWS!

A man who cross-dressed to sit an exam for his sister was caught when his huge fake boobs gave him away in Moscow.

BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently visited the Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein building on 20 Fenchurch St to attend a presentation on climate change and the financial sector. The chief executive of the WWF was there, as was Joachim Faber, CEO of Allianz and the 14th most important person in European finance. To the amusement of all, the presentation packs doled out to journalists were made of thick, non-biodegradable plastic.

The view from the 21st floor briefing room is fantastic. Positioned on the corner of the building, the south-facing vista stretches from Tower Bridge to Waterloo Bridge, where the river starts to bend. From the west-facing window, one can see over most of the City of London, and on as far as Centre Point and the BT Tower. The quality of office building is surprising given that DrKW is a second-tier German bank; its other London office is rubbish.

European banks sometimes make odd decisions about where to set up their London offices. For some reason, they seem to believe that a location becomes more prestigious the closer it is to the river. The other DrKW office is a grey monstrosity on Swan Lane, just to the west of London Bridge on the north bank of the Thames, and actually has a small marina out front. But in the City of London, the closer you are to the river, the more inaccessible your office is. Take Societe Generale’s massive London headquarters in Tower Hill; “opposite Tower Bridge and the Tower of London on the banks of the Thames” must have sounded great on the brochure, but the reality is an inoffensive but average-looking building in an isolated location hemmed in by the massive traffic system around Tower Bridge. Equally, DrKW’s Swan Lane office is essentially down a back street, and the grubby little marina looks pitiful. The big boys like UBS and JPMorgan know that when it comes to the City, it’s all about proximity to Liverpool Street Station.

(Major, major international players like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and HSBC are all at Canary Wharf, as are Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Coutts. Hedge funds are too cool for school, however, and prefer to set up shop in the more refined Piccadilly/St. James area.)

The only thing that let down DrKW’s Fenchurch Street office was its retro-futuristic elevator, which could have featured in Back to the Future II. Actually thinking about, it was a highlight.

LONDON NEWS

TUPNews recently paid a visit to The Griffin, a pound-in-the-pot strip pub on the Clerkenwell Road. I’m pleased to report that the standard of erotic dancing there continues to go from strength to strength. It was early in the week, so there were few punters about. The bouncer welcomed me in by warning me that it “fucking stank in there”, but actually the smell of disinfectant was bearable.

The girl on stage when I arrived bore a striking resemblance to former FA secretary Faria Alam. I didn’t catch her name, but I’ve seen her dance there before – all smiles and neatly competent.

Broadly speaking there are two types of stripper, or rather I should say two types of performance. The first draws on the tradition of page 3 and the naughty seaside postcard – it’s innocent and unthreatening, with little suggestion of sexual appetite on the part of the dancer. The second is more overtly sexual; there is a subtext of “yes, I’m gorgeous – but are you man enough to handle me?”

Although it may seem counter-intuitive, it is actually more difficult to give a convincing performance in the first style: the slightest hesitation or uncertainty early on blows the illusion. But the Faria lookalike never falters – I don’t know whether this is skill or genuine enthusiasm, but she is always a pleasure to watch.

The next girl up was Louise. I was only mildly curious, as her past form has been uninspiring. The first time I saw her dance was at my birthday drinks last year; my friends kindly bought me a private dance with two girls. The first was a stunning Czech girl that with whom I was quite infatuated, the second was Louise, a blonde with something of the girl-next-door about her. The double private dance is a diplomatic nightmare at the best of times, as well as being an absurd false economy (far better to get two separate one-on-one dances for the same price), but the disparity between these two was almost embarrassing. Louise kept it strictly page 3 while the Czech girl radiated earthy European sexuality; I soon became conscious that I was spending the whole time staring into the Czech girl’s eyes and all but ignoring poor Louise. Out of politeness I chucked her the odd glance and smile, but she wasn’t fooled.

Tonight, however, I was stunned by the transformation. She has switched from coquette to vixen, exuding confidence and élan. It’s a quantum leap from the indifferent performances she’s put in up till now; I found myself genuinely moved. The moves were bolder and more athletic, the eye contact was self-assured, everything was right. It’s almost worth making the trip down to the Griffin just to see her.

I wish I could say the same of the next girl, but sadly her rank amateurism nearly spoiled my whole evening. For a start, no-one is ever going to get even mildly aroused to a soundtrack of Nickelback. Fair play for making a riskier music choice than the usual tepid R&B, but Nickelback? I have heard rock songs work before as stripper soundtracks – I remember a Polish girl last Christmas who played some kind of 60s garage track and pulled it off – but again, Nickelback? The performance was awful – the girl, who resembled BB6’s Mary, couldn’t decide whether to go fun-girl or sexy and kept flitting back and forth; her routine was unambitious and her movements awkward; I was relieved when the whole thing was over.

Dispirited and already starting to run late for an evening engagement, I was tempted to cut my losses, finish my drink and leave. I stuck around because I wanted to see the new dancer who had caught my attention during the previous set. She had surprised me by approaching me from behind and touching my arm – like most strip pubs the Griffin operates a strict no-touching policy, and I was visibly startled. She apologised sweetly and asked if I wanted a private dance, which I declined. She was pretty, the just the right mix of the girlish and the womanly; she reminded me of film actress Scarlett Johansson. The DJ/compere introduced her as Kelly, but she quickly corrected him: “Kel-Star”. This is quite eccentric - it’s not unusual for strippers to take on stage names like “Amber” or “Brandy”, but I’ve never heard a stylised name like that – like a name a rapper might come up with. As soon as the music kicked in, it was clear we were in for a treat. She had chosen some kind of lush, string-heavy, Wall-of-Sound 50s ballad sung by a European chanteuse – the type of record James Bond would put on when he brought some bit of Russian skirt back for a coffee. This set the tone for a virtuoso performance. Kelstar’s poise was marvellous; every movement was perfectly measured, her ambitious polework underpinned by a true athleticism. But it was more than the technical excellence than won me over: there was such personality in the performance, such attitude – again, that perfect blend of playfulness and threat – that all of us were enraptured. Such beauty! You have to come see this girl dance.

I left satisfied. I have only one piece of bad news to impart: it’s now £3.40 for a pint of San Miguel. The Griffin used to be pub prices.

ASIA NEWS

According to one current Chinese-language guidebook to
Britain, Trafalgar Square, Karl Marx's grave and the
British Museum are among the highlights of London. Westminster's
Big Ben clock - Da Ben Zhong in Chinese, which
translated directly means "big stupid clock" - is also
praised. "The most precise time-teller in the UK!
Although it did break twice."

Soho provides a taste of home - "All Chinese tourists
will be taken here because they simply need to eat
Chinese food when they are abroad," says the guide.
But that part of London also provides other
attractions. "The male tourists always ask to see the
red light district, so they are always taken there.
The red light district is not as developed in Britain
as in other parts of Europe," the book says.

Clarks shoes has a reputation as a prestige brand
because it was introduced to China in the 1980s via
Hong Kong. Provenance is important to the Chinese when
it comes to buying goods, so they are also drawn to
brands such as Dunhill and Burberry, which are seen as
quintessentially British.

Oliver Twist is a very popular book in China and the
title of the Chinese version translates as Foggy City
Orphan.

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