Posted on: 13 February 2024
Attendees of the Maritime London Annual General Meeting (AGM), which was held at the offices of Norton Rose Fulbright LLP on 8 February, had the opportunity to hear from The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, who was elected the 695th Lord Mayor.
The Lord Mayor provided a briefing on the key themes of his Mayoral year, focusing on the future of the City of London as a global hub for professional services and commerce and the importance of shipping, and the Thames.
His mayoral theme for the year in office is Connect to Prosper, he related, which seeks to celebrate the many Knowledge Miles of the Square Mile, the world’s oldest democratic workers’ and residents’ cooperative, the governing body of the Square Mile, and to revive London’s proud coffee house tradition. “One in which Jonathan’s Coffee House, opened in 1680, grew into the London Stock Exchange. Lloyd’s Coffee House, founded in 1686, became Lloyd’s of London, and of course the Virginia and Baltick Coffee House, opened in 1744, spawned the Baltic Exchange”, he said.
“Recognising the significant importance of London’s maritime heritage, and because “the Thames is liquid history”, the Lord Mayor continued, “we’re organising experiments and events around our great waterway too – including an autonomous boat trial, a microplastics survey, a seagrass carbon sequestration study, a Lord Mayor’s View of the Boundary Stones, and a Thames Day on 22nd September. Not to mention appointing an Honorary Water Bailiff for the year.”
“Shipping has long been an integral component of London’s diverse financial services sector, with more shipping deals happening here than anywhere else in the world. And our capital is home to great thought leaders like Professor Constantinos Grammenos and Arsenio Dominguez Velasco, the Secretary General of the IMO – which, incidentally, remains the only UN organisation that is headquartered on these isles.”
He also highlighted “the challenges on the horizon… We face stiff competition – not only from Singapore, who lead the Baltic/Xinhua Shipping Centre Index, but also from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Dubai, who are not far behind us in second place. We’ve seen a significant decline in the availability of bank finance for shipping, while geopolitical tensions risk the potential bifurcation of the shipping trade and are making our oceans contested zones for the first time since the Cold War.”
Concluding his remarks, the Lord Mayor said: “International cooperation is paramount, and leveraging our unparalleled global connections, top talent, and world-class legal system we should be promoting London’s unique position as a hub of globalised trade, a node in commercial interconnectivity, and as a centre of learning and ingenuity to help maintain peace, deliver prosperity, and solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
