Sunday, 26 August 2007

25 Gresham Street: 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM

The venue for the final SCP presentation - this is Lloyds head quarters. We reached London in the morning at 9:15 AM to meet Paul and Yuvraj (from the Lloyds team) and headed off to Building 25 which was just a few minutes away. I had slept off during the entire one hour ride on the train or atleast my eyes were closed and I was not thinking about the presentation. I could hear Angel, Cesar and Fernando doing some last minute discussion on the train.

In the presentation room, we were joined by Paul senior and a few members from the Lloyds strategy team. After a bit of a chit-chat, we began with our presentation. What followed was a long - long session where amongst four of us, we shared the insights we had gathered over the last two months. There were some questions from the audience in between, which I welcomed as they broke the monologue from our team. But to be fair on the audience, it is difficult to understand all the concepts on 'carbon markets' in just one session. Hell, we spent the first three weeks on this study just to understand the basics of it all.

The presentation lasted for around 2.5 hours. I was glad that it finally ended as 2.5 hours is definitely long for anybody sitting in the audience. But after attending three hour long sessions regularly at the business school, it felt nice to be on the other side of the table and see part of the audience struggling to concentrate (read, struggling to wake up :)). At the end, the effort was appreciated by all. Both the Pauls thanked the team for a fantastic effort and mentioned that this was much above the expectations they had. Paul Wylie commented that he was very happy with the interim presentation and never expected that we guys would be able to do so much stuff after the interim - and all this has made him even more happier.

It was good to know that Lloyds liked our work. And, we do feel that this will help Lloyds in one way or the other to shape up their future strategy related to the carbon market. After breaking out of the meeting, the Lloyds team hosted a lunch for all of us. We went to a great Indian restaurant. My Spanish friends relished every bit of it. And, for me, there couldn't have been a better place for a full course meal. Over the lunch, we had a chat on various random issues - it was all such a great atmosphere; these guys are really good.

The journey back to Oxford was tiring. We all had hardly slept for long hours for some days. After I reached home, I helped myself to a long nap. The morning after was much relaxed.

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