We sat down with Michael Mainelli, the Lord Mayor of London to discuss his time during the role, goals accomplished and his hopes for the future.
What motivated you to pursue a career in public service and ultimately become the Lord Mayor of London?
My parents inculcated a strong sense of duty to our shared community. My mother encouraged me to develop a moral code, interestingly in Latin. I chose carpe diem (seize the day, so make the most of where you are), tempus fugit (time flies, so get moving), and sumus unus (we are one, so look out for your fellow human beings). Equally, the City of London lives by commerce, community, and charity. We create wealth, invest in our business and built environments, and share prosperity. It would be difficult not to see that working with the City, as I have since the late 1980s, fits my life purpose.
What advice would you offer to your successor in effectively representing the city?
Representing, or ‘selling’, our City is first and foremost about defining us in the most positive terms possible. My theme this year has been “Connect To Prosper”, celebrating the many Knowledge Miles of our Square Mile, which I affectionately dub the “World’s Coffee House”. This year I’ve emphasised a quite strict definition that the City of London is “the world’s oldest continuous workers’ and residents’ cooperative”. Hopefully, this year is close to the close of so many concerns overseas about Brexit. As I’ve emphasised during my Mayoralty, in the eight years since the 2016 vote, the City has gained 90,000 new net jobs, up from 525,000 to 615,000. We’ve also increased the global assets under management from 11% to 13%, and 2% of global assets is a big number. I’ve also emphasised that we are a particularly intense concentration of connected knowledge networks – not just professional services and finance (about 200,000 of our jobs) but also science, engineering, technology, shipping, arts, media, culture, and education as a business. Thus we need to be a multi-disciplinary global problem-solving centre for our biggest client, modestly, “The World”. Over the centuries one can discern a long-term strategy based on four themes – defence & security, rule of law, free & fair trade, and access to talent & skills. My successor, Alastair King, has chosen “Growth Unleashed” as his theme. It chimes well with Connect To Prosper as a natural follow on. I would encourage Alastair to develop this further in his own skilful way and he will make a wonderful 696th Lord Mayor.
Looking back, how has your personal background and career shaped your approach to the role of Lord Mayor? What values have guided your leadership?
My life has combined personal characteristics of curiosity, doubt, and problem-solving with a career that has bounced repeatedly back between science & technology and economics & finance. While my career suited me, ranging from aerospace & cartography to accounting & wholesale financial markets, then back to defence research & smart economy networks to climate finance & advanced risk products, I would encourage young people to remain polymaths, curious about everything. We are all born polymaths, but sadly many of us lose that youthful inquisitiveness about life in our world. When it comes to leadership, all a Lord Mayor or most leaders can do is to ‘convene’. But the key thing about convening is ‘convening about what?’. My seven part method is to ‘identify’ the issue, ‘convene’ on the topics, get people’s ‘contribution’, create ‘consensus’, gain ‘commitment’, enhance ‘communication’, and not forget an appropriate ‘celebration’ of success.
Talk us through some of the most significant accomplishments or initiatives during your tenure as Lord Mayor?
My mayoral theme, Connect to Prosper, celebrating the knowledge miles of our Square Mile, the world’s coffee house. Over 40 learned societies, 70 higher education institutions, and 130 research institutes surround the City of London, creating a network of knowledge connections among science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, and finance. We had the Knowledge Miles lecture series, the Coffee Colloquies at Mansion House promoting the connections that help address the issues of the day.
As part of this I had six initiatives as Lord Mayor they were:
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The Ethical AI Initiative, A particularly significant milestone has been the work of my Ethical AI initiative which has been promoting strong international standards in AI use. Through this initiative we have launched the ethical AI course which has been taken by 6,000 people in 600 firms across more than 60 countries. In addition, we launched the Walbrook AI Accord which has led to 38 countries agreeing to use ISO 42001 for regulation. This will help standardise AI use globally and smooth trade.
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The Space Protection Initiative, using space debris removal insurance bonds to deal with space junk and keep space clutter-free.
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The Smart Economy Networks Initiative, using international X-Road standards for smart data.
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The Constructing Science Initiative, for building life science laboratories.
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The Sustainable Finance Initiative, reinforcing carbon markets.
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GALENOS, an open access pre-print service that should speed up mental health research for 2-3 years.
Talk us through some of the key challenges you’ve faced during your term, and how did you overcome them?
The Lord Mayor has an incredible busy year involving over 100 days of travel to more than 25 countries, a dinner or reception almost every night — but the challenge is even with all those engagements, there are countless more people you’d love to engage with and a number of other markets that would have been great to visit. Thankfully, we have great continuity from one Lord Mayor to the next. So they’re able to pick up where I left off and continue those engagements in their role.
Could you provide insights into the unique ceremonial duties and traditions associated with the Lord Mayor’s role?
Traditionally, the Lord Mayor holds a number of ceremonial roles which include the rector of City, University, admiral of the port and president of the historic Gresham College. The Lord Mayor is the head of the City of London Corporation, world’s oldest democratic worker’s and residents’ cooperative, and has precedence of every subject in the City, and takes place immediately after the Sovereign. Outside the City of London, he takes precedence with, but after, members of the cabinet. The Lord Mayor is also head of the livery in their role and so attends a large number of Livery events and ceremonies through the year.
With London being a global financial hub, how do you see the role of the Lord Mayor in shaping the city’s economic future in an increasingly competitive global landscape?
The Lord Mayor is the UK’s international ambassador for financial and professional services and does more than 100 days of travel a year banging the drum for UK Plc meeting key financial services stakeholders in markets such as Japan, India, Germany, New York and more. The Lord Mayor has an important role to play in shaping the City’s economic future we’ve seen this with the Mansion House Compact of pension reforms led by my predecessor Sir Nicholas Lyons and now with the Walbrook Accord. With the convening power of the Lord Mayor, Mansion House and the City of London Corporation as a whole, the office of the Lord Mayor is essential to supporting the efforts to ensure the UK is globally competitive.
In what ways have you worked to strengthen the relationship between the City of London and its international partners?
I spent over 100 days travelling to 25 countries around the world. Along with our major trading partners in the US, Japan and the Gulf, these trips ranged from new partners in ASEAN to 9 trips reinforcing our European connections. Everywhere the warmth and affection for our City was intense. On these trips and at home we sponsored six key initiatives on sustainability, mental health, constructing science, smart economy networks, space protection, and ethical AI.
As the UK’s international ambassador for financial and professional services I’ve met with major businesses and senior government officials to strengthen our economic and present a clear and confident image of the sector.
In light of post-Brexit changes, how do you envision London maintaining its position as a global financial centre? What strategies are being employed to attract international investment and talent?
London’s fundamentals remains strong and promise to give it a bright future. Our offer to global investors continues to go from strength to strength. Its unique combination of time zone, language, legal system, global talent, and financial services ecosystem which makes us truly a gateway to global capital and advice.
Its position at the crossroads of Europe’s biggest financial and tech sectors make it one of the globe’s foremost hubs for innovation – London has one of the world’s most exciting fintech and AI sectors, while it was also recently ranked top for quality of its green finance offer.
Going forward it will be crucial to ensure that London remains open to global talent and has a competitive regulatory and tax and regime to ensure we maintain our advantages.
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