Happy Perthday

by Brendan Connolly, Business Manager, Allied Irish Bank (GB)

You don't normally associate a visit to the bank with a fun day out, but it can be done.

Allied Irish Bank (GB) likes to say that it prides itself on fostering long-term relationships with its clients, but this is no pious mission statement or corporate objective. If you're going to say something, you'd better live up to it. Otherwise, it's just words.

We know our clients well. We go a long way back with many of them in this corner of Scotland, and so we were pleased to be associated with the race day at Perth Racecourse in May this year. It gave us a great opportunity to meet one another socially.

Around one hundred of our Edinburgh and Glasgow clients came. The organisation at the racecourse couldn't have been bettered: we were treated to a splendid lunch, an accommodating bar, and relaxed surroundings in which to watch everyone's money running past on four legs.

A tipster was provided to mark everyone's cards for over lunch, and individual successes and failures were due in large part to the degree with which people followed his advice. Personally, I was made to realise that gambling on horses is a way of looking at profit and loss in their most immediate forms - with the emphasis, sadly, on the red rather than the black.

It wasn't too painful, and I was pleased to see so many of our clients having such a good time. How many racecourses can be set in surroundings as beautiful as this? The Perth racetrack is set in the grounds of Scone Palace, and the going has been good for nearly one hundred years.

I'm glad to see that the course is looking to its future. A new grandstand is scheduled to be opened in spring next year, and this is just one way in which the racecourse's management team, for whom I have much respect, is looking to make the best even better. Indeed, we at the bank are currently exploring ways in which we might work together with the team to be part of this future.