Denise Marray
Gulf Times Correspondent
London
Warwick Business School (WBS), whose Executive MBA is ranked in the world’s top 20 by the Financial Times, has made The Shard its London base.
From next year, the part-time Executive MBA, part-time MSc in Finance, part-time MSc in Human Resource Management and Executive Education courses will be available from the prestigious building.
The WBS MBA has some impressive alumni, including David Smith the newly appointed chief financial officer of Rolls-Royce Holdings, and Bernardo Vieira Hees, CEO of H J Heinz Company.
Professor Mark Taylor, dean and professor of Finance at Warwick Business School (WBS) at Warwick University, spoke to Gulf Times about why he sees The Shard as the ideal choice for WBS.
“We chose to locate in The Shard for a number of reasons. The actual building itself is a bold statement. We like to think WBS is changing the way the world thinks about business and management. We try to bring a fresh perspective to our research and teaching. In a very symbolic sense, locating in The Shard seemed the right thing to do. It is a young, exciting building — it has such an innovative design by Renzo Piano — it fits in with our ethos of being young and dynamic,” he said.
He explained that WBS, with its diverse range of business programmes, wanted a central location within easy access to the financial districts of The City of London and Canary Wharf.
“We didn’t want to be located within The City itself because we want to do more things than purely finance. The Shard scores highly because it is located just across London Bridge from the City of London with strong and easy links to Canary Wharf. “Being right next door to London Bridge, the transport network couldn’t be better. It’s a fantastic location giving access to the whole of London.
“The area around London Bridge is going through a renaissance. It is an increasingly important cultural and business district,” he said.
He also values being part of a richly diverse business community. Neighbours in The Shard include includes intellectual property lawyers, a venture capitalist, a global media brand, a New York based investment bank, the world’s largest hospital group and an international energy business. Famous names including Al Jazeera, Foresight Group and Tiffany & Co are all located in the stunning building.
The adjacent News Building has been let in its entirety to News UK, bringing some of the UK’s most illustrious media brands to London Bridge Quarter, including Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Sun, and one of the world’s leading book publishers, HarperCollins.
Before becoming Dean of WBS in early 2010, Professor Taylor was a Managing Director at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, where he ran the European arm of a large global macro investment fund. He has also been an Economist at the Bank of England, was for five years a senior economic advisor at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, and began his career as a foreign exchange trader in the City of London.
He has also held professorships at Cass Business School, at Oxford University and at Liverpool University, and was Visiting Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Asked to comment on the impact of Qatari investment in the UK he said: “The Qatar Investment Authority has $170bn worth of assets. Their investments in the UK tend to be in long term, wealth creating opportunities. Their investments contribute to improving the infrastructure. The Shard, for example, is an amazing addition to London and, therefore, to the British economy.”
He was also asked to give his view on London’s drive to become a leading centre for Islamic Finance. He responded: “Given the amount of money being invested from Islamic sources, it is only reasonable that principles of Islamic finance should be followed in some sense. London is still the world’s international financial capital and centre and, therefore, one would have thought that London would want to develop its Islamic finance expertise.”
