London Bankers Prepare for Ski Showdown on Courmayeur Slopes
Gold Medal Winner Tommy Moe
Mike Powell/Allsport/Getty Images
Tommy Moe competes in the mens downhill during the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan.
Tommy Moe competes in the mens downhill during the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. Photographer: Mike Powell/Allsport/Getty Images
London Bankers Prepare for Ski Showdown on Courmayeur Slopes
Andrea Fieschi/Momentum Ski via Bloomberg
Lloyds of London's Antony Barrow, left, and Felippo Guerrini-Maraldi, center, celebrate winning over 50s and over 40s categories respectively at City Ski 2009 in Courmayeur.
Lloyds of London's Antony Barrow, left, and Felippo Guerrini-Maraldi, center, celebrate winning over 50s and over 40s categories respectively at City Ski 2009 in Courmayeur. Source: Andrea Fieschi/Momentum Ski via Bloomberg
Teams from UBS AG (UBSN) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are waxing their skis this week as rivalries forged in London’s financial district play out on the pistes of the Italian Alps.
About 200 competitors, a mixture of former racers and social skiers, will take on downhill and slalom courses at the two-day City Ski Championships in Courmayeur on March 18-19. At stake are bragging rights when they return to London’s square mile and new business contacts.
“There’s an added satisfaction beating your business peers on the slopes,” said Stewart Edgington, who won the best fund manager category three times when he was at BofA Merrill Lynch. “The rivalry between certain firms is intense.”
The competition, which began 11 years ago, gives former ski internationals a chance to relive their glory days, and others the opportunity to catch up on market gossip and network with clients in bars and restaurants at the foot of Mont Blanc, western Europe’s highest mountain.
“I always get my butt kicked by some ringer,” said Tommy Moe, who won a gold medal in the 1994 downhill at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. “I’m impressed at the level of skill for a bunch of city folks.”
This year’s celebrity guests will include ex-downhill racers Graham Bell and Konrad Bartelski, who became the best- performing British skier in the Alpine Skiing World Cup when he finished 0.11 seconds behind Austria’s Erwin Resch at Val Gardena, another Italian resort, in 1981. Damon Hill, the 1996 Formula 1 world champion, also will attend.
Fastest Banker
Financiers compete for a place on the “Roll of Honor,” which shows Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) as the most frequent winner in the “fastest banker” category and Citigroup Inc. (C) as the “fastest skier in Canary Wharf.”
The men’s competition is open this year because neither Einar Johansen, who has won seven titles for three different banks, nor reigning champion Jan Zajackowski, a power broker at GFI Group Inc. (GFIG) and a qualified ski instructor from Combloux in the French Alps, will be racing.
Josh Matthews, a former Citigroup banker who’s now a London-based managing partner at MASECO, reckons he has a chance. “Every year I seem to be getting faster,” said the Canadian, who grew up skiing in Montreal.
The MASECO team, which includes an American, a Briton and a Frenchman, has been training in Chamonix, a French resort on the other side of Mont Blanc. The company set up offices in Geneva and Zurich in 2009 to offer investment and tax compliance advice to expatriate Americans.
‘Looking for Victory’
Jonathan Davies, captain of the team sent by UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, is making his third trip to Courmayeur, a resort that claims Europe’s highest botanical garden and a cable car that climbs to 3,462 meters (11,359 feet), before crossing glaciers to link with the Aiguille du Midi in France.
“We’re going there looking for a victory, especially in the best fund manager category,” said Davies, 47, head of currency strategy at UBS Global Investment Solutions in London. “But there’s always stiff competition at City Ski.”
Felippo Guerrini-Maraldi, who captains the Lloyd’s of London group drawn from six different insurers, said he started preparing for the race in the gym two months ago. The Lloyd’s team also has been practicing in the Swiss resorts of St. Moritz and Verbier and at Val d’Isere and Courchevel in France.
The women’s competition, with 42 racers, includes Michelle Muir, who works in London for Accenture as a consultant to utilities companies.
“I’ve hired a personal trainer to try and get fitter,” said Muir, who used to race on artificial slopes in a British universities competition.
To contact the reporter on this story: Giles Broom in Zurich at gbroom@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Merritt at dmerritt1@bloomberg.net
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