Video news about the 156th Brussels 4 Breakfast on 5th November

16 October 2019

Graham Bishop invites you to comment on the topics for the next Brussels 4 Breakfast. As a Friend, you can apply for a place at the event. It has been announced that Sir David Liddington MP will be an additional speaker.

Access to the Brussels 4 Breakfast event, my notes and the subsequent CISI webinar is part of our Basic service. (Details)

 

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Brussels for Breakfast (156): A round-table discussion on EU affairs, with Graham Bishop (grahambishop.com), John Rega (Politico), and Helen Thomas (Blondemoney).

To be held on Tuesday, 5^th November, 2019, 8.30-10.00am

Andrew Hilton's invitation letter to CSFI members  (contact Graham@grhambishop.com if you would like to attend)

There is something fitting about scheduling our next B4B meeting for the morning of Guy Fawkes Night. There are certainly plenty of people willing to blow up Parliament – and some of them are trying quite hard.

To me, all the hoo-hah over unsigned letters and wrecking amendments looks awfully like some public school debating society; we are (I fear) in Molesworth territory here. But the issues involved are enormously important, and there is no clear right or wrong.

We in deeply uncertain times – and I concede that things may look very different indeed by the time we meet. Still, one thing is certain: the EU will soldier on, with 27 or 28 members. And, even if we are not in the club, the City of London will continue to be a (or even the) major international financial centre – and everyone who works here will still be closely bound by what is going on in Brussels and Strasbourg (and, I guess, at the ECB in Frankfurt). Given that we have a new Council President, a new Commission (and Commission President), a new ECB President, and a new European Parliament, there is a lot to talk about. What, for instance, will be the EU’s priorities in the financial sphere – CMU? Solvency 2? GDPR implementation? What chance equivalence? Or Banking Union?

There are many questions – and at least a few answers, though I fear that many concerns will remain unsettled. Whatever, I am delighted that our usual guide, Graham Bishop, is still ploughing his way through the minutiae of European legislation – and that he is still sharing his insights with us. This month, we also have two distinguished panellists:

• John Regais now financial services editor at Politico, which he joined from MLex in March this year. He has spent more than 15 years in Brussels, since arriving from Washington (with Bloomberg) in 2003.
• Helen Thomasfounded BlondeMoney in 2017, focusing on monitoring the un-priced un-quantifiable risks in financial markets. She is a former head of currency alpha at State Street Global Advisors, and was an advisor to George Osborne when he was Chancellor. She is a board member of CFA UK.

Weird times… But it is important that we don’t lose touch with what is going on in the Brussels labyrinth. So, please, join us – and share your own thoughts. Just let us know first, by emailing alex@csfi.org or by calling the Centre on 0207 621 1056. As usual, thanks to the generosity of our friends at the CISI, there will be coffee, tea, and buns to ease the pain.

Many thanks,

 

Andrew Hilton

Director

CSFI

 

© Graham Bishop