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Despite the bad weather, country lanes, public footpaths and bridleways around the Home Counties and beyond have seen a marked increase in use by an intrepid bunch of futures and options and foreign exchange industry executives in recent weeks. The reason? The Futures for Kids ‘Walk to Work’ and the sudden awareness that a good pair of walking shoes and a few plasters to ease the pain of those blisters will not suffice to drag those ageing legs some 35 miles to the City of London.
The FFK Walk to Work 2012 is raising funds for four children’s charities with a mix of local, regional and international coverage – Demelza House, Hope HIV, Everychild and Variety.
The inaugural 2011 Walk consisted of a single route from Tunbridge Wells and 25 walkers raised £48k from friends, colleagues and customers. This year, instead of spending the day worrying about the next Eurozone crisis and pontificating about straight through processing, latency or the ‘flash crash’ some one hundred City executives will ‘walk to work’ to the City on 4 routes from Tunbridge Wells, Guildford, Tring and Billericay on Friday May 18th.
A broad spectrum of market participants has joined the team including executives from brokerage houses, banks, proprietary trading firms and software vendors. They are boosted by a very strong contingent of senior management from London-based derivatives and stock exchanges and trade associations including Futures and Options Association CEO, Anthony Belchambers , the COO of the London Stock Exchange owned trading venue Turquoise, Adrian Farnham , as well as representatives from Deutsche Boerse subsidiary Eurex, NYSE Liffe, Nasdaq OMX, Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange and Singapore Exchange.
The team hope to be striding (or limping) into Paternoster Square after a long day’s ‘yomp’ between 5 and 7.30 pm to celebrate their efforts with the beneficiary charities and support groups at a Finish Line party sponsored by Eurex (who are also supporting the checkpoints on the 4 routes) and to receive awards sponsored by ICAP-owned post-trade software company, Traiana.
Unless they intend to trade on their mobile telephones they won’t actually be working, of course, but they will be doing much to raise the profile of the caring side of the City. FFK believes it is well on its way to its target of 100 walkers raising £100k between them for the 4 charities and already has over £32k in pledges.
Those individuals and companies wishing to contribute can select their favourite futures and foreign exchange industry characters at http://www.justgiving.com/teams/ffkw2w2012
Contacts - David Setters david@contango.co.uk + 44 7710 271291/Emma Davey davey@foa.co.uk +44 207 090 1348
