Coming A Close 20,000^nd To Paula Radcliffe In The London Marathon

Everyone knows that Paula Radcliffe did OK in the London Marathon this year, but what the mass media failed to point out was the fact that one of the Z/Yen Aspect team, Francesca Birch, also participated. This finally tuned athlete (Francesca that is, not Paula) was also competing in her first marathon, but graciously allowed Paula to beat her… by a couple of hours.

After months of hard training, and even longer deciding what to wear, on Sunday 14 April, Francesca took her place at the start and enjoyed the event tremendously, particularly when overhearing a little boy asking his mother , “when are all the fun runners coming past as these people don’t look as if they are having much fun.” Francesca raised over £2,000 for Children with Leukaemia (a task that proved harder than the marathon itself!). Next year Z/Yen hopes to be fielding a second marathon runner in the shape of Jeremy Smith who is getting into training with the Great North Run for the

Children’s Society in October.

Merger Mystery Tour - OligopoLuedo

As Z/Yennies will know, we are so socially-challenged that we find it necessary to subject our Lady Daphne networking guests to complicated games and then bury them in cheap corporate gimcrack prizes like a million Turkish lira to buy their affection. Over the last three years our Boating Bourse games have grown to five - technology, environment, law, biotechnology and facilities management. These business/ hospitality games have become a shore-based product line in their own right for awaydays and conferences (call for a quote) - but guests clamoured for new chances to win prizes on the boat

We felt compelled to develop an entirely new fun format, so in April we launched a new merger mystery, OligopoLuedo (elementary my dear Watson). Our clever friends managed to convict the ‘Enron’ (as for the not-so-clever ones…), and uncover the dastardly tricks it was up to, but some had problems finding their ideal merger partner. Nevertheless, substantial M&A fees and soouuuper prizes were had by all. So dust off those cupboard games and practise before your next trip. Bring your own deerstalker. Mashy niblicks provided on board.

In The Meantime

Z/Yen's risk/reward interim management group keeps growing. With 15 placements, we have a large and diverse team helping various clients as finance directors, project managers, HR managers, marketing specialists, IT directors, telecomms experts and contract negotiators, to name a few. For fixed deliverables, Z/Yen continues to grow its special projects area, but where clients are prepared to manage skilled people Z/Yen provides them directly. Obviously, we have to do it our way, which involves performance-based contracts with our people and monthly QA reviews. However, we still struggle with the term "interim management", so yet another bottle of bubbly from our rapidly depleting cellars (you should see these former bomb-shelters sometime) to the reader with the most Z/Yennable catchphrase!

Summer In The City

Z/Yen has completed its first Competitive Cost Comparison of the Year with reports being sent out to 11 banks. Work continues on three other benchmarking studies including a new piece of work on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for a mjor European Bank.

It’s Only Risk’n’Reward But We Like It !!

A Z/Yen group has been to see Echo and the Bunnymen at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Messrs. Harris, Mainelli, Pay, Smith and friends formed the group (the Z/Yen group that is, provisionally named the “Z Club 7”). Reminded of their younger days, they each downed several pints of black frothy liquid and while Jeremy was getting re-acquanted with the mosh-pit, the others soon got into between-song banter.

“What is the most environmentally friendly group in the world?: Eco and the Bunnymen. What is the most self-centred group in the world?: Ego and the Bunnymen. The most logical?: Ergo…The least environmentally friendly?: Esso…The most envious?: Iago…The most greedy?: Gekko and the Moneymen.

Rumours of a Z Club 7 tribute single “Bring on the Stochastic Processes” are sadly premature.