On the top of the world!

An extremely exciting event was listed in my calendar for Thursday evening. I was invited to be the MiM representative at the first special presentation in the so called ‘London Business School Business Leaders Series’ of this year. The special guest was Tony Hayward, Group Chief Executive of BP Group, the largest company in the UK and the fourth largest in the world, who would talk about the future of ‘Energy Security’. The topic interests me immensely and of course it is a great honour to hear the very informed opinion of the business leader on this!

 

When I arrived at the Sainsbury Reception for registration I received a guest list for the event, that made me feel quite small. A Member of Parliament, the Head of Climate Change in the UK, Managing Directors of McKinsey and BCG, CEO’s of energy companies, several Oxford Professors and many more impressive characters were all there. I was sitting next to a counsellor from the Russian Embassy, who turned out to be quite nice (that’s some high-level networking;-)).

 

Anyway, after an introduction by our dean Andrew Likierman, who of course couldn’t resist some marketing by explaining everyone carefully that our MBA programme is listed by the Financial Times as the number 1 in the world, Tony Hayward kicked off. The bottom line was a simple logic that of course put a smile on Mr Hayward’s face: oil and gas will remain the main sources of energy at least in the next 50 years à demand rises and supply falls à price will go up à BP will do very well. Fair enough.

 

The next high-level event was one night later, on the seventh floor of the Penthouse Club on Leicester Square, great clubbing with an even better view on the Big Ben and the London Eye! But that’s a very different story.