BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently visited the 40th floor of the 30 St. Mary Axe, also known as the Swiss Re building, also known as the Gherkin.

This is the best thing that can happen to a City hack. The 40th floor is the bar set at the very top of the building, pictured above. Neither the bar nor the dining rooms below are open to the public – you have to know people. And no wonder: it is a truly sublime place.

The 40th floor is the most elevated bar in London. Even on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, the views of the city were staggering. I took a few hurried snaps on my mobile as my hosts looked on and grinned, gracious enough to allow me the time to soak up the experience.

I’ve said before that high-quality office environments induce feelings of calm and serenity in me. This place just blew me away. It was peaceful, like an executive class departure lounge, but with a Fifth Element-style hypermodernity that made it feel otherworldly. Everything just felt so incredibly still.

Snaps snapped, we sat down in modernist leather armchairs as two friendly Poles catered to our every need. It was early afternoon, so I stuck to coffee, served in a futuristic espresso cup that I won’t even try to describe. I was tripping out of my mind with serene office pleasure – I could barely stay focused on the interview.

I was there as a guest of an Israeli chief executive who is doing something very interesting with options pricing. I liked him a great deal. His company had previously occupied the top office floor of Tower 42, and therefore was the most elevated company in the City. When the Gherkin was built, this was no longer the case - while the Gherkin is ten feet shorter than Tower 42, the uppermost office floor is higher. This drove him crazy, and he moved mountains to get his hands on the top floor of the Gherkin.

In the end, he had to settle for the second-highest office floor, the 33rd. But still, I like his style.

BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews has discovered a new financial derivative instrument that is so beautiful I nearly wept when I read about it.

The Japanese have a tradition called hanami, in which people sit under a sakura, or cherry blossom tree, drink beer and reflect on the transience of life. There are festivals based on this pastime, coinciding with the blossoming of the trees. The small hanami industry – festival organisers and tour operators - relies on the cherry blossoms falling at the right time.

TUPNews has just learned that it is possible to trade cherry blossom derivatives.

BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews can report that Barclays Bank, to whom I have remained loyal for many years, is suffering from some kind of mid-life crisis.

Barclays always treated me well, even during my reckless student days, and I anticipate banking with them for as long as I reside in the UK. I like the brand. NatWest, Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland all strike me as – there’s no other word – naff.

HSBC has a certain global citizen charm, I suppose. But Barclays, however, is the bank of the English gentleman. “Help yourself,” I imagine them saying as they treat me to another overdraft extension, “you’re an Oxford man, I’m sure you’re good for it.”

But this veneer of competent conservatism is starting to slip. First off, I was disappointed when they dropped their incomprehensibly pretentious “Fluent in Finance” TV ads, featuring the actor Samuel Jackson. These annoyed many, which in turn delighted me. This is exactly what I want from my bank, I thought – for them to say, “we are fluent in finance, so run along and play while we go look after serious things like your money.”

These were replaced by the “brainstorming” TV ads, essentially office comedies in which young Barclays executives pitched outlandish schemes to each other. These were odd, but were at least in my view vaguely funny. I was mildly concerned, but figured it was just a phase.

A recent visit to the Charing Cross branch has left me bewildered, however. To my amusement and horror, Barclays seem to have hired the same brand managers as those – there’s no other word – gaylords at the Innocent Smoothie Company.

I reach the front of the queue, to be greeted by this sign:

Nearly there*
*Thanks for waiting!

I am trying to work out why the apostrophe is necessary when the teller calls me to the window. She is wearing a badge that reads:

Jennifer
Counter manager
I’d love to help.

This I find a bit try-hard, but Jennifer is so polite and friendly that I actually believe it. After cashing my cheque, Jennifer invites me to participate in a customer feedback exercise, which involves answering five questions by pressing buttons on a machine next to the counter.

The first is innocuous enough – “How long did you wait today?” 0-3 minutes, I happily respond. The second question is equally prosaic and technical, I don’t remember it precisely.

The third is a statement to which the customer is invited to express a level of agreement. The statement was:

I made you feel special

At this I burst into uncontrollable laughter. Thinking about it, I decided that Jennifer had indeed made me feel special, and went to punch “Strongly Agree”. Except I wasn’t offered “Strongly Agree” or “Agree”, but rather “Absolutely” or “I’d say so.” I went for “Absolutely”.

The next statement sent me into a protracted giggling fit:

Overall, it went well today

Yes, I thought, tears forming in my eyes, it did go well. In fact, it was perfect. I will remember this day fondly. I hit “Absolutely”.

I was hoping that the final statement would be something along the lines of “It would be nice to see each other again soon, maybe go to a movie or something”, but it was in fact “I would recommend Barclays to friends and family.”

I punched “Absolutely”.

EUROPE NEWS

The best word in Italian is "basta", which means "enough".

It's best delivered by small children who are having drinks poured for them.

EUROPE NEWS

TUPNews recently visited Italy.

My aunt lives out there, in an old Tuscan mining town with her six-year-old daughter and estranged husband. Once a cocktail waitress in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and a trained chef of the Culinary Institute of America, she now works in the fields of the Fattoria il Palago vineyard, which is owned by the Zonin corporation. There are two teams at the vineyard – the field team and the wine press team. My aunt works in the field team. “Breaking the rocks / in the hot sun / I fought the law / and the law won,” she would sing when she got home from work, because that was in fact what she was doing. She took me on a tour of the vineyard one day.

We started at the wine press, an airy building full of terracotta, stainless steel and air-conditioning. A short, friendly Italian man took me through the whole process, from the loading of the grapes from the field to the aging in the barrels. Men in white coats walked around, adjusting dials on forty-foot vats of fermenting wine. I was surprised by the sleek cleanliness of the environment – somehow in my head I expected wine spills and stains everywhere, and big open cauldrons letting off steam. As it was, you could have told me that it was a baby milk, or anthrax factory and I would have happily believed you. Only in the dimly-lit, chandeliered foyer, where there were fifty or sixty wooden barrels patiently awaiting export to Islington, did the place carry any rustic charm. But still, it seemed a pretty cool place to work.

After that we checked out the fields. They are as you imagine – rows and rows of vines. The work of the field orderly is varied. One day it may be as simple as making sure that the growing vines are fastened securely between the wires of the row. I had a go at this; it was relaxing. Other days, they may be pulling rocks out of the dirt to prepare unused ground for planting. The work can be hard, but there is camaraderie among the workers. And my aunt says she likes being close to nature.

Italian labour laws suck, however. The field orderlies only get paid if they work. If it rains and they can’t work, they don’t get paid. Many employers don’t offer paid holidays – instead, the government pays you a kind of unemployment benefit if you’ve worked enough – but not too many – hours that year.

In the UK, this kind of bitch labour is generally undertaken by plucky immigrants. Here, all of the workers were local. Many even lived on the grounds of the estate in workers’ accommodation, and had worked there all their lives.

My aunt is at least lucky to be paid on the level. Her husband, who manages the public relations of a baseball team, is paid in cash. No tax sounds great – except many companies, including his, take advantage of the semi-official status of their workers by only paying them when they feel it is convenient. He is always paid what he is owed, but never on time.

On the way up to the tractor yard, we passed a ruddy, weathered fellow in overalls. He declined a lift; “why get the car all dirty?” He was covered in dust. As we pulled away, my aunt explained that he was a Sicilian. It’s common in Italy for Sicilians to turn up in places other than Sicily and quietly take jobs without going through any formal selection process. This is because they have links to organised crime.

We finished the tour by visiting the spot where the field orderlies sometimes have their lunch together, if they don’t feel like going home. It was high up on a hill, with an excellent view of the surrounds. At the bottom of the hill was a small statue of St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners. At the top of the hill was a cast-iron memorial to victims of a mining disaster.

We stayed a few minutes, and then drove off to visit a couple from North London. There we drank gin and tonics, talked about property prices, and discovered from the World Service that things were getting hot in Beirut.