MASTER’S SPEECH AT THE INSTALLATION DINNER

Vintners’ Hall, 17 October 2013

Sheriffs, Wardens, Visiting Masters, Members of the Company, Honoured Guests,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you all here, at the most senior of our various activities. The Installation Dinner is at once a celebration of the vitality of the Company, and the opening of a new episode in the Company’s life. And it is an honour to have you Sir Paul and so many other distinguished guests to celebrate with us. I want to express my thanks to you, Sir Paul, for your fine speech and toast.

And of course it is a great honour for the person standing where I am to address the Company and its guests as Master of this Company.

As I grow older, which - as Denis Norden said - I now seem to do with increasing facility, my speeches get shorter. There is good company to enjoy. I do not intend to keep you from them for long.

As a bit if a theme, I would like to quote Warren Buffet. He said “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” A valuable distinction and I want to use it in the context of this Livery Company.

Whether Master or not, I am proud to be a member of this Company. We have people of great distinction in our ranks, and I look with awe at what the earliest members achieved. Having the ambition and determination to get City consent to found a guild in 1992, the Masters, Wardens, Assistants and members worked to gain Livery status. Guests not familiar with the City should know that this requires jumping high hurdles. These hurdles relate to charitable achievement, member growth, support of one’s profession, affiliation with the Armed Forces, playing a part in the Civic City, its governance and not least sociable aims. All these things we have achieved.

We have been innovative in our development. Our pro bono consulting work to the charities became the talk of the Civic City. We were bold enough to take from a gleam in the eye to strategic importance the idea of management development specifically for executives and staff in the third sector. Our Centre of Charity Effectiveness is now a crown jewel at the Cass Business School.

Certain of our members developed management consultancy as a distinct profession, working in the Institute of Management Consulting as it was called to launch a qualification and accreditation in management consultancy, now used internationally.

Our adoption of the Sea Cadets struck an independent note and a successful one, meeting our link with the Armed Forces with our aim of supporting non-for-profit, especially for youngsters in the London Area.

I could go on about the out-of-the-ordinary things our members have done to bring success to the Company.

Why did I choose this Hall for our Installation Dinner? The easy answer would be because it’s where the Earl of Wessex presented us with the Royal Charter granted by Her Majesty the Queen in 2008. I had a deeper reason. From the first time I came here I have always been attracted by the wooden plaque.  It reminds me that the City of London has always been a place of great significance – in 14th century, and now. When PM McHugh charged our Company with the Road to Livery mission, I remember his words. He said the earliest guilds predated 1066. The Grocers was formed as a livery Company 1180. Not only did Patrick point out that that means we are part of a millennium old institution (and how many organisations can say that) but looking forward, there is every reason to think that what we are developing will be here in a hundred years, and why not further centuries?

To justify that ambition and, one is sure, achievement, we must always move forward. We’ve succeeded through innovation and change. We must continue to do that.

I want us to continue providing the new and changing opportunities our current members want and numerous future members will want, whether it be charitable works, charitable giving, supporting education, professional development and standards in management, engaging in the activities of the City, business and Civic. Not least enjoying each other’s Company and having entertaining times with friends and colleagues who are not members.

In many people’s minds, the Livery is characterised by the most the ancient companies such as the Vintners here. These Companies set out to ensure standards in their professions and craft. They improved education and training, and some founded some of the best schools in the country. This is a fine heritage. In fact many still provide apprenticeships, training and found new schools, not least the Coopers, old friends of ours.

Whilst these Companies remained vibrant, as inventions came and technology advanced and businesses became more capital and knowledge based many of the trades and crafts have of course waned in the modern City and business.  Modern business is powered by newer professions, leading to new Livery Companies such as the Actuaries and the Marketors, to whom our two Sheriffs belong, the Insurers, the World Traders and of course our own. In the Livery these are the Companies that are shaping and reflecting the business of the City and increasingly the Civic City. We are about to have for the first time ever a Lord Mayor and Sheriffs whose mother Companies are influencing modern businesses. Through bodies such as the Financial Services Group of Modern Companies and the City Values Forum, which we conceived, there is a real sense that the Modern Companies are increasingly influencing the City.

So of the societies, associations, institutes that we could belong to the distinctive feature about ours is it is a Livery Company, and our motto “Giving and Gaining” applies to our involvement in the City, its business, governance and sociability.

To this end I see us engaging more than ever in the City. We are setting out to create a Civic City Concert, where we will reach out to distinguished members of the city, as well of course to members of our profession involved in the City. We will pursue other initiatives to work with other livery companies, business schools, and consultancies professional bodies to give and gain in various ways. This without of course in any way reducing our interest in pro bono. And to show there’s a fun side, the Wine Club is planning a first, short wine tour in France!

If I may remind you of Warren Buffet’s quote - “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” The Value we get is related to what we seek to achieve through and for the Company. The value from being a Liveryman is the potential for engagement in so many ways. We can do today something that can be written in a history of this company in a hundred years.

Sheriffs, Wardens, Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope you enjoy the evening, and I am delighted you have come here. This is a grand event, and I remind you of something Mark Twain wrote:   Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Thank you.