Old friends swap jokes and memories on top of the world
If Christmas means gathering of old friends and sharing of old jokes, the festive season had come three months early for Simon Murray (below) this year.
The former Hutchison Whampoa taipan and four former expatriate executives, including Sir John Bond and Simon Robertson, held a reunion three months ago - on Mount Everest, apparently to add excitement to the event.
The five senior (and not just in the corporate sense) executives went on a 12-day mountaineering excursion. They got as high as 18,000 feet up the world's most challenging mountain, just 11,029 feet short of the peak. They were hiking day and night, chatting away like boys on a scouting trip.
'We chatted about the old days. Lots of jokes. Lots of 'Do you remember' kind of stuff ... the only thing we didn't talk about really was subprime,' Mr Murray, a known adventurer, recalled, poking fun at friends, some of whom he has known for 40 years.
The five go back a long way. Sir John made his career in a bank that he transformed into the world's most profitable; he now chairs Vodafone Group. Mr Robertson made his way up investment banking, was president of Goldman Sachs in Europe and chairman of Rolls-Royce.