For those who couldn't make the Euromoney Awards for Excellence dinner on July 15, the hot ticket was Deutsche Bank's global derivatives conference in Barcelona. After dinner at the grand Finca Mas Solers in the hills above the the nearby resort of Sitges, Deutsche executives and their clients were treated to a private performance from diminutive Australian diva Kylie Minogue.
After an introduction from Colin Grassie, Deutsche's head of global markets Europe, Kylie emerged from a cloud of dry ice to perform for nearly an hour, reeling off such classics as "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" and "I Should Be So Lucky" to the delight of the audience.
Deutsche's conference is one of the derivative industry's best attended events – so much so that, according to one estimate, Kylie was singing to managers of more than a quarter of the world's invested fixed-income assets under management.
And could the evening have inspired Kylie to engage in a little shorting on her own behalf?
After all, in the words of her hit "Spinning Around", Kylie has "traded in some sorrow for some joy that I borrowed".