BUSINESS NEWS

This morning, TUPNews attended a press conference hosted by Russian oil giant Lukoil at the Four Seasons Hotel, just off London’s Park Lane.

I’ve never understood why the visitor to London would want to stay in any of the hotels clustered on Park Lane and the western tip of Piccadilly. It’s a nice enough walk out there from Piccadilly Circus; past The Ritz, Green Park and the cool model oil tanker in the window of the Hanjin Shipping offices, but once you get a bit further on, it’s just a massive dual carriageway and the Hard Rock Café – although it theoretically overlooks Hyde Park, the immediate surroundings are pretty unpleasant. The Four Seasons itself is of the 1960s brutalist school of architecture, and wouldn’t look out of place in Sofia or Bucharest. I suppose it’s all the same to taxi-bound aristocrats.

The interior is pretty special, though. Lavish and understated at the same time – a lot of mahogany going on. The presentation took place in a medium-sized conference room, decorated in the Georgian style and featuring a rectangular chandelier set into the ceiling.

It was Lukoil that added the nicest touches, however. There were about sixty people in the room, a mix of journalists and bank analysts from both Russia and the UK (including a smattering of gorgeous Russian girls). To reflect the international nature of the occasion, the ranks of tables on which we sat all sported intertwined mini-flags of the Russian tricolour, a white Lukoil flag and the Union Jack. Brilliant.

But best of all, the Russian executives all addressed us in their native language, giving us the opportunity to use those cool headset translation things. The translation device was about the size of a bulky remote control, with a small glass bulb on top. There was an on/off button and two dials – one for volume, and one for language selection. The language selection allowed the user to potentially choose from twelve language options, each represented by a yellow star, mimicking the flag of the European Union. Of course, there were only two options in this case. A Russian woman sat at the back of the room in a soundproof booth, translating.

TUPNews always struggles to maintain alertness at such presentations – not because of the subject matter necessarily, but because of the soothing nature of the environment. Listening to the woman’s voice through headphones created a feeling of disconnect from what was happening – by the time the second speaker took the dais, I was starting to drift. The second presentation included a ten-minute summary of Lukoil’s worldwide exploration and development activities, illustrated by ten minutes of pictures of plants and facilities in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and even Iraq. This send me completely into my own hypnotic world, and I didn’t really recover until I again found myself pounding the Piccadilly pavement on my way back to the office.