Dear Freemen,

It’s been a week! It started with our Tenth Anniversary Dinner at Ironmongers Hall. As this was also my installation, I had the great honour of presiding over this feast. It was fun! It was also rather thought provoking as we remembered all that has happened over the last ten years when we had our first Installation in that room. Julian Fellowes reminded us how important entrepreneurs are to the country.

Very early on, we lost our founder, Dan Docherty and our first Master, Sir Paul Judge. Such is the strength of the entrepreneurs that they got together, that we have moved quickly from Guild to the cusp of Worshipful Company status. We hope to be able to make a positive announcement in the first quarter next year.

We have built up our Charitable Trust and supported many good works. This has been supported by the Education and Outreach Committees. We have set up the Entrepreneurs Award for Social Innovation (EASI) which is just opening for applications for the fourth year. And this last month we have had our first float in the Lord Mayor’s Show as the Senior Warden, Alderman Alastair King, took up that office. We have achieved much is a short time of which we can be proud!

Those of you that were there will have our almanac with many of the events that we have planned. Two that I commend to you are the Spring Lunch and the Master’s Weekend Away.

The Spring Lunch is on 25th March and is at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, probably the finest Club house in London. The Lady Mayoress will be joining us as will City Consorts. There will also be a tour of the building afterwards.

The Master’s Weekend Away is from 16th to 18th May in Bristol. We are planning events with Bristol University Business School, a wine tasting with Avery’s, visits to Clifton Suspension Bridge, SS Great Britain as well as a dinner amongst other things. This is a great opportunity to get to know other Freemen and their partners. You may also see some Banksy’s!

Another event that is very popular is Make an Impact on 3rd March. Here the projects that the Company are involved with tell us what they are doing, how we have helped and what help they want in the year to come. A must if you want to do some mentoring or support some deserving causes. The website has more details and is the place to go to find things out. Don’t for get the “2nd Wednesday” Drinks at Tower Suites. 11th December and 15th January are the next ones. These are very good events to bring guests to where they can meet us and find out more.

A new event I am introducing is a Quarterly Zoom Update, the first is on 13th January. These will update you on what is going on. There will be a bit of explaining the Livery and how the Company fits in along with the opportunity to ask me and the Clerk any questions you have. Being on Zoom at the end of the working day makes this very accessible.

The dinner was a great success and we all outstayed our welcome! Those of you that made it may have seen the 7 Goblets that have been commissioned. They are very special so make sure you come to a dinner so that you can see them. I will be writing more about these works of art during the year.

The Company takes a great deal of organising and I am very glad that we have a great team in place to make all this happen. The Clerk, Duncan Simms, marshals us and keeps us structured with the help of Court. The Wardens, Jat Wasu and Rita W Bologna, run the Finance and General Purpose Committee which is the main governance committee. They will be even more busy this year as our Senior Warden will be rather absent as he spear heads the City and Financial Services across the Globe. Please reach out to any of us if you have any questions or ideas, we are looking forward to hearing them. My contact details are below.

Our journey as entrepreneurs is represented by our Wardens’ badges and I feel is very pertinent at the moment. The Junior Warden’s badge represents a Dragon’s Egg made with a centre of septarian, also known as ‘Dragon Stone’. The Middle Warden’s shows two wings emerging from the egg and the Senior Warden’s is a fully-formed dragon. It seems very fitting for this stage in the Company’s growth as we ‘hatch’ into Livery. Do have a look next time you bump into us wearing our badges! Thank you for reading this. Do have a look at the event page of the website and register. We look forward to seeing you!

 

Dare, Create, Succeed.

 

James Talbot

Master