Emil Zopfi
Lond-on-Line Diary
26.03.1996
You cannot go to Lloyd’s without a tie, Urs Siegenthaler said, so I ran to the Bengali Market in Whitechapel, bought an appalling blue shirt with white collar, unable to find a tie, I ironed my Glarus foulard and tied it around my neck and polished my black Reeboks. Lloyd’s is the most important insurance market in the world, established 300 years ago in a coffee house in the London City, a consortium of financier, so called Names or today Members, who are liable for damages. We plane a report.
The reception is less stylish than the dignified Lloyd’s reputation. The lift goes up on the outside of the façade of the immense metal construction. A view over the Bank district. My glance goes to the men in the lift, who are all actually wearing a tie, lower down the trousers are mostly already creased and the shoes have not been polished for weeks. But the building, designed by Richard Rogers as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, pulls the gaze upwards again. It is as if it was upended, bowels outside, tubes, lifts, fire escapes, inside a tremendous courtyard, that is roofed over, in the middle the old Lloyd’s Bell still hanging: one stroke for good news, two strokes for bad news. But it does not strike any more, then according to today’s state of Lloyd’s it should only submit double strokes. The insurance market was bankrupt long ago and with it many prominent names. In July the members will decide on a recapitalisation plan, whether Lloyd’s will survive is unknown.
I was lead to a conference room, one of the cabins that were stuck on the outside of the building like a cocoon, whilst the offices were looking inwards. Apologies were made. The conference table was covered with the remainders of a binge, sandwiches, plates with dried-up gravy, bowls with smelly salad, opened wine bottles, half full wine glasses. The air is suffocating, the fitted carpet dirty. Two women in black uniforms push in a dented trolley, clumsily, clear up, spill a half-full wine glass twice over a chair which had seen better times. The building is ten years old, the money for renovation was apparently non-existent.
The talk with Mat Huber of the Communications Department is good, we will be supported. Lloyd’s was closed to visitors five years ago, bombs had exploded nearby. He briefly showed me around, we paced through the antlike business, the Brokers in the rooms, all decently darkly dressed, the tie fashionably coloured, I have already mentioned the shoes. Here the Lloyd’s Underwriters are bargaining with the Brokers who are dealing with insurance deals on behalf of their customers. In the middle of the hall, still standing on a column the "Loss Book”, the book of claims, in which the lost ships, the crashed planes, hurricanes and earthquakes concerning Lloyd’s are daily entered in handwriting, Each day premiums are contracted for 25 million pounds. On the tables computers and laptops are strung together, the slip, Lloyd’s traditional policies, will soon be replaced by the computer. A reason for the financial crisis is the massive risen costs of natural disasters, such as the Kobe earthquake, but also the liability for asbestos damage and the tanker war in the Persian Golf.
Before I said goodbye, I asked "Should we wear a tie if we are working here?”
Mat Huber look at me with a glare "It would be better, yes”.
Translated by Pat Gerber