SME Alliance 3rd Celebration At Conway Hall

Yesterday SME Alliance members and friends got together at the Conway Hall to celebrate the fact it’s three years since we formed SME Alliance. It was a fantastic event and not least because of our speaker panel – George Kerevan, Anthony Stansfeld, Noel Edmonds and Jonathan Ford, Chaired by the always excellent Andy Verity.

We know several people filmed the panel debating members questions and we hope to be able to put some live footage up very soon. There were some very thought-provoking comments from the panel – here’s some of my favourites:

George Kerevan announced he will be applying for the job of top dog at the FCA – Yeah!!!! I’m sure he’ll get huge support from the SME sector – not so sure the major banks will be quite so keen although that is exactly what our banking sector needs – a regulator who isn’t intimidated by banks!
Anthony Stansfeld read the replies he got from Sir Jeremy Heyward, the cabinet secretary, who, having said he would meet with Anthony to discuss his concerns about the banking sector, then decided he wouldn’t meet and, apparently, would not give any explanation why. As Anthony said this is extraordinary behaviour. Anthony also said he believes HBOS must have known about the HBOS Reading fraud since 2008 – a fact Paul and I concur with as we’d been sending them evidence since 2007.

Noel was both very serious and very entertaining – he has a way with words. In particular his conclusion that Antonio Horta-Osorio is either a shit banker or a liar was a point appreciated by everyone in the audience and a point well made. If Mr HO didn’t know about the HBOS fraud, he’s not very good at his job and if he did know, he’s been lying ever since.

While Jonathan was the least inflammatory of the panel and very much the calm voice of reason, his final statements shocked us all. He reminded us that historically the penalty for senior Chinese bankers who allowed their banks to fail was beheading!!
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Andy Verity was such a brilliant Chairman we decided to let the Q&A session run on for extra time and it probably would have gone on longer but for the unexpected arrival of the Shadow Minister for small business, Bill Esterson MP who came straight from the Labour Party Conference to talk to members.

There were more stars of the show – The Cake!!!!

​As always, our Chairman, the lovely Mr Gould, made an excellent speech which we will be putting up on our site tomorrow. We had a big media presence which was brilliant and very much courtesy of our media adviser, Jason Nisse, who is very kindly helping us raise the profile of SME Alliance. ​

It was great to see friends from other organisations including the APPG on Fair Business Banking, New City Agenda, Whistleblowers UK, Help 4Lips (DIY Law). I’m sure there were others but as we had over 150 attendees, I didn’t have a chance to meet everyone.

Happy to say the staff at the Conway Hall were very helpful and the catering from Mayfair Catering was excellent and plentiful. So much so, we didn’t eat it all!!

Of course, the real stars of the show were our members and supporters who travelled from all over the Country to be with us yesterday. Thank you all so much  for attending and many thanks also for the donations we received at the event – they are very, very welcome. For those who asked us for our bank details so they can donate online, our account details are on this link: http://www.smealliance.org/join-us.html  

​Again thanks to all for making it a fantastic event.