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| Joe Klamer / AFP |
The Euro 2004 football championships generated fierce rivalry off the pitch as well as on it. Nowhere more so than at London fund manager Gartmore, which ran a fantasy league for staff, clients and journalists during the tournament.
Interdesk rivalry between Paul Skinner, product specialist for Gartmore?s AlphaGen currency hedge fund, and colleague Charlotte Goodheart, business development executive on the Global CIO fixed income fund, was particularly fierce. Skinner named his team ?The nemesis of Charlotte? while Goodheart?s team was dubbed the ?Lego haired lovelies?. Skinner says of Goodheart?s team name: ?It?s rather uncomplimentary to me?.
As Euromoney went to press on the eve of the semi-finals, Goodheart was well behind Skinner. Nemesis was in sixth place while the Lovelies were seventy-eighth. Of the top 10 teams in the competition, eight were managed by Gartmore staff.
Skinner attributed his success to having selected the Czech Republic?s Milan Baros ? the tournament?s leading scorer after the quarter-finals stage with five goals ? and Karel Poborsky, who fired their team into the semi-finals.