- Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman is a big player in the UK
- Without being too Grinch-like, there is a serious element to these festive antics
- Like other firms, it is sensitive to accusations of rapacity and asset-stripping
Does anyone else miss those old-fashioned round-robins people used to send?
Our family looked forward to decoding what was really going on behind the boasts in one unintentionally hilarious specimen that would plop onto our doormat each year.
On reading that ‘Ollie is taking a break from his studies and Jess is looking for opportunities at home after returning from New York,’ we would surmise that he failed his second year exams and she has been sacked by JP Morgan and is trading Manhattan for Milton Keynes.
Sadly, these middle-class missives are, if not extinct, an endangered species. But we aficionados of seasonal schadenfreude can console ourselves with the corporate equivalent: the Wall Street festive video.
These have been around for a while, but this year have plumbed new depths of awfulness, where self-parody tips over into sheer cringe. What possessed Blackstone, the US private equity firm, to produce a video inspired by Taylor Swift, featuring multi-billionaire chief executive Stephen Schwarzman, aged 76, wearing a rainbow sequin jacket similar to one of the singer’s outfits?
Grinch-like: There is a serious element to these cheesy Christmas stunts by a bunch of American masters of the universe
Why should we care about a cheesy Christmas stunt by a bunch of American masters of the universe? Because Schwarzman, who mercifully wore a sober dark suit when he met the King and the Prime Minister last month, is a big player in the UK, where his firm has a new London headquarters.
As with the round-robins, there is a subtext to these naff videos. Blackstone lingers in memory in this country for its involvement in the Southern Cross care home fiasco. Southern Cross was the biggest chain of its kind in the UK when it collapsed in 2012 with 31,000 vulnerable residents. Blackstone, although it had exited by the time the firm went under, had made hundreds of millions of pounds in profit in two years of previous ownership.
Like other firms, it is sensitive to accusations of rapacity and asset-stripping.
The chorus line on the video ‘Oh oh oh Build with Blackstone’ is its slogan, aimed at portraying itself as a constructive, long-term investor.
Whatever one makes of that, the Blackstone video is an Oscar-winning effort in comparison with the mini-movie made by fellow private equity outfit Apollo, which casts boss Marc Rowan in the starring role.
The theme is ‘no new toys’, a mantra repeated by Mr Rowan last year, by which he meant staff should not allow themselves to be distracted. In the video, this is taken literally to mean children’s playthings at Christmas – a laboured ‘joke’ took away six minutes of my life I will never get back.
Apollo, too, is a significant operator in the UK, having taken over the owner of Wagamama restaurant earlier this year.
It is weighing up a multi-billion pound bid for Pension Insurance Corporation, which is a specialist insurer of pension schemes and an important player in the retirement market. The firm is also reported to be preparing a deal to provide £630m of debt to Stonegate, one of our biggest pub chains.
So without wanting to be too Grinch-like, there is a serious element to these antics.
And the trend has spread to the UK. One very British gem, spotted by the FT, comes from Oil Brokerage.
Someone spent a lot of money to hire a studio at Abbey Road, famed for the Beatles recordings, for staff to sing a version of ‘Feed the World’ with a chorus of ‘Trade the Brent…Trade the freight, let them know it’s Fixing Time again.’ One staff member elevated Dad-dancing to a fine art. The UK seeks to excel at the creative industries, but not like this!