The Going Is Good…

Z/Yen people and punters enjoyed a day at the races (or "Practical Risk/Reward Training" for tax purposes) on October 5th, organised by our in-house betting expert Mary O’Callaghan. Lingfield Park was the venue and the weather and going were both good. Infuriatingly, Michael Mainelli won consistently and claimed it was pure luck and nothing to do with his client’s Stochastic Perception engine in his pocket. Sadly, most of the rest of us did the predictable thing (lost hopelessly). The biggest loser of all was Mary O’Callaghan herself, once Ian Harris learned that October 5th was the last day of the old betting tax regime. Z/Yen prides itself on unsurpassed tax planning, so Mary is in deep trouble for missing this simple tax point and failing to organise the event a day or few later.

What To Do With 60,000 Data Points

Last year, Z/Yen carried out its first financial services benchmarking study and we are now on our fifth. We have 60,000 data points measuring the length and breadth of the industry which has made Z/Yen rather popular with all the other consulting groups who keep ringing up Jeremy Smith and Giles Wright and asking for their vital statistics.

Seriously though, we have won two recent assignments applying this data to define market size and recently presented our findings to the the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation. This presentation can be found on the Z/Yen web-site.

In Watt Spirits

Kevin and Michael have decided to set up an import/export business with Kevin doing the importing and Michael exporting great quantities of whatever it is he possesses. Our two lads have targeted a certain country to the north of England with a fine history of technology commercialisation. Working at the former home to Maxwell, Higgs and a few other noteworthies, our boys are trying to place the University of Edinburgh’s 21st century inventions in computer network analysis and environmental modeling into successful commercial vehicles. Critics have pointed out that the two of them would be better suited to using Kevin’s analytical chemistry prowess on more interesting exports, but you know how stubborn those S***s are.

Hello

Strangely enough, none of the Z/Yen Directors or staff are yet rich and famous enough to merit a 10-page spread in Hello magazine. However, by a fairly tortuous connection, we can say a big Hello to new associates John Pike and David Hailstone working with us at Unison.

Bio-5-0

Last month Z/Yen was invited to set-up and run an adaptation of the boating bourse at the annual BioIndustry Association CFO conference. 5 members of the Z/Yen team, Giles, Michael, Kevin, Mary and Helen ran the newly designed bourse for around 40 players.

The Bull-Bear Biotech Bourse (try saying that after a few glasses of genetically modified wine) was based upon many of the issues surrounding the ever changing biotechnology industry. The game succeeded in getting players to invest in such biotechnology companies as Clone Rangers, Stenches ‘RNT’ Us and Corn Ucopia whilst trying to avoid pitfalls of celebrity seeking CEOs, crooked Doctors and the South American ‘Nacho Cartel’.

The game went down well and was a welcome distraction for most of the delegates. It was interesting to observe the difference between a wholly sober bourse and those that are played on the boat!

Picture This

Z/Yen’s website now has a monthly caption competition, giving witty visitors to the site a chance to win the odd bottle of bubbly. The current competition picture is so ghastly that any visitor to the page deserves a prize just for suffering the sight of it (be warned however, there may be worse to come).

If friends of Z/Yen have any Z/Yen-oriented pictures that might be good for future competitions, please send them to Rakesh Shah at Z/Yen. If the pictures are incriminating enough, we will; gladly split the resulting blackmail proceeds 50-50 with the photographer!