To Carluccio’s in Canary Wharf for a late lunch with an old friend who I haven’t properly caught up with in a few years. She’s planning to revitalise the Asian Network at KPMG and is currently organising their next big event. It was pleasing to hear that she hopes to bring some aspects of eastern philosophy into the proceedings.

On that topic it seems that the Bhagavad Gita has this decade outshone Sun Tzu’s Art of War (which took centre stage during the eighties) as the preeminent ancient eastern management text. Whilst an argument could be made for the current governance in India and China being a reflection of those books respectively, I think more interestingly the shift from one to the other perhaps echoes a general global change in attitudes. With the increasing emphasis placed on such matters as human rights and the environment, we have seen a movement in management theory towards more holistic stakeholder based agendas which have most obviously manifested themselves in business as CSR. However, I don’t really see this as having taken away from the importance of maximising shareholder value, rather I hope that it encourages managers to take a longer term view. After all, in an increasingly interconnected and media influenced world, consumers are more and more likely to vote against unethical corporations with their wallets.

To the London West End offices of Vantis for the City Hindus Network mentoring workshop as mentioned in my post of 7 May 2008. It was a great privilege and honour for your blogger as the youngest person in the room to chair a meeting attended by some of the most senior professionals from his community and the positive feedback received on the event was much appreciated by the organisers. One attendee even mentioned the workshop in his own blog (trackback).

To Great Portland Street for dinner at Lotus Thai and drinks at Loom bar to celebrate my friend C securing a place on the MBA program at Harvard Business School. She has just handed in her notice at KMPG but hasn’t yet been able to make any plans for travelling before she starts as her passport is being kept by the US Embassy for review before they issue her visa.

Blogging of handing in notices, N who was in C’s class at my university which was a couple of years ahead of myself and his sister P, is planning to leave his job as well. He told us that he will soon be joining his family business, a construction firm headquartered in Mumbai, to oversee the establishment of operations in the Middle East. This will no doubt be quite a change from his existing role on a front office desk at Citigroup’s investment bank, but I can hardly pass comment having undergone a similar career revolution myself. In fact, the route from City firms to family businesses seems to be becoming almost ubiquitous amongst the sons and daughters of successful Asian business owners with any links to London. Having had a long chat with P at the party as well, I would be surprised if she didn’t leave her own prestigious City job to follow the same path soon.

Then to the Tent at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace for a City Inter-Faith Forum Steering Group meeting. It was a small and very informative session and it was interesting to learn of the new approaches that the Forum will be taking – due to the unique nature of the City – in its work.

To the offices of Praefinium in Mayfair for a meeting with hedge fund manager, best selling author and leading figure in Indo-British relations, Alpesh Patel. Ostensibly it was an initial contact meeting between TiE (where Alpesh is on the board) and the City Hindus Network but the main aim was to consider what can be done to encourage a younger generation of people to get involved with Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; a noble cause indeed. We also had a much broader ranging discussion particularly around British and Indian politics.

To Liverpool Street Station for an alfresco meeting to finalise details of the City Hindus Network mentoring scheme particularly the mentoring workshop we are running for potential mentors on 19 May 2008. In addition to your blogger, committee members present were Aekta Mahajan who set up the Asian Mentoring Scheme at Accenture and Mamta Bhatia (blog) who is the Leadership Development Coach at Tesco.

Back to the House of Commons for an informative discussion on the business case for compliance with disability legislation as a guest of The Citizens Trust hosted by Tom Clarke CBE JP MP. I was representing my family business and attended with my sister who has just finished the final exams of her intercalated BSc at Tanaka Business School. The only other parliamentarian in attendance was Tom's fellow disability campaigner Lord Alf Morris who chairs The Citizens Trust’s parent charity The Disability Times Trust.