Last month Front End had a little jest at the expense of one of the runners in the Chase Corporate Challenge fun run recently held in London's Battersea Park. One brave soul, you may recall, was spotted heading for the finishing line in a Yamaichi T-shirt.
Benjamin Siu, who works in the risk management department at ING Barings, in London admits: "I was that man."
So what prompted this display of misplaced loyalty to his sadly departed former employer? Siu, who worked for Yamaichi in London until November 1997, blames the cost-cutting zeal of his new bosses. David Robins and Malcolm LeMay have, it seems, put a squeeze on corporate junkets. Printing T-shirts for fun runs is no longer a justifiable expense. "Last year we had T-shirts and a hospitality tent for after the race,' says Siu. "But this year we wore an assortment of T-shirts and after the race we just dispersed."
Wearing the wrong kind of T-shirt did not hold Siu back. He completed the run in the highly creditable time of 29 minutes. "It's the Marlboro Lights that help," he says. Michael Peterson