Christmas Message from The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor, December 2023

CHRISTMAS MESSAGE FROM THE RT HON THE LORD MAYOR 20TH DECEMBER 2023:

Fellow Liverymen

The Lady Mayoress and I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and our very best wishes for 2024.
My mayoral theme in office, Connect to Prosper, is about celebrating the many ‘Knowledge Miles’ of our Square Mile and reviving our proud coffee house tradition, thereby promoting the City as the world’s ‘coffee house’ – a place where people come together, from across the globe, to find solutions. I am looking forward to connecting with as many of you as possible during my year in office, celebrating the vital work of our livery companies in providing commercial, social and civic connections.

I would like to thank all livery companies that participated in events in the weekend of the Lord Mayor’s Show. Viewing figures reached two million, making the Show the most watched programme between 9am-5pm across all channels on the day, and over a quarter of a million lined the City’s streets and took part. To reflect my Mayoral theme, and to underline the importance of the City’s international connections, I was proud that eight international cities participated in this year’s procession: Shenzhen, Zhejiang, Hong Kong, Kyiv, Mongolia, Genoa, Zurich, and Lagos. The Show demonstrated the City of London and the Livery at their very best and Lady Mayoress and I thank you for your support, kindness and guidance in contributing to a truly magical Show weekend.

Our City is the world’s oldest democratic workers’ and residents’ cooperative and our livery companies are uniquely placed to make connections that make the City the special place it is. In this vein, I am sponsoring the 695th Lord Mayor’s Knowledge Miles Lecture Series, an online webinar series that explores the connections of the Square Mile and its role in addressing diverse global challenges. I am proud many livery companies have already agreed to sponsor different lectures on a range of topics.

The series kicked off with a lecture on the rule of law and will be exploring a range of subjects across 2024, from quantum computing to financial literacy and undersea cultural heritage to fusion. The lecture series is a wonderful opportunity to connect the Livery, academics, businesses, charities and think tanks with each other, as well as with the wider public. Full information on the series can be found here. I hope many of you will be able to watch online, or even take part.

We are also holding 20 ‘coffee colloquies’ in Mansion House over the course of the year on a variety of different global challenges, such as water and sanitation, gender equality and quality education. Each colloquy will allow up to 10 expert presentations on the topic, before a Q&A and networking. We held our inaugural coffee colloquy on the 5th December on the challenge of space debris. I am keen for as many liverymen as possible to attend and take part, especially where they have a subject specialism. Full information on the coffee colloquies, as well as the dates set in 2024, can be found at this link.

I am also hosting my own series of six virtual coffee mornings with all Livery Masters and Prime Wardens in January. These are forums for Masters, Prime Wardens and the Upper Bailiff to inform me of their plans for 2024, as well as to discuss livery progress on diversity, youth engagement and wider links with the City of London Corporation. These coffee mornings have previously worked very successfully in providing a direct link between our Livery Masters, Prime Wardens and the Corporation and I look forward to keeping the channels of communication open throughout my term in office.

During my visits to Dubai and New York earlier this month, I hosted my first Livery overseas drop-in sessions – ‘Livery-Coffee-Connect-Teas’. Essentially, this is time set aside in the diary during a mayoral overseas visit for any liverymen to come and meet me if they happen to be in the country at that time. It was great to catch up with liverymen in Dubai and New York and it is something I will be repeating during some of my overseas visits in 2024. I will be posting details of the drop-in sessions on my LinkedIn page.

For any liverymen already on LinkedIn, I would encourage you to join the City of London Livery Community LinkedIn group. It is a growing and active group of nearly 1,000 members and a great way for liverymen to reinforce their business links and to inform each other of latest initiatives and events.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Alderman Nicholas Lyons, and the late Lady Mayoress, Felicity Lyons, who served the City with distinction in a truly historic year.
I know Nicholas was honoured to represent the entire City of London at His Majesty the King’s Coronation on 6th May 2023 and, in turn, welcome His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen to Mansion House in October for a historic Banquet to mark the Coronation and celebrate the centuries-old friendship between the City and the Crown. I am delighted so many of the livery companies who contributed to the Coronation were able to attend the Banquet.

The late Lord Mayor’s theme, ‘Financing Our Future’, has certainly been a great success. I pay tribute to his work convening 11 of the UK’s biggest pension funds to sign the Mansion House Compact, as well as his work on pension reform and the ‘Mansion House Reforms’, which the City Corporation will continue to work on. I wish him and Felicity a peaceful Christmas and look forward to welcoming him back to the City at Easter after a well-deserved break.

It has been honour and a privilege to serve you, the Livery, and the wider City of London, and I am excited by what the New Year holds. I look forward to seeing many more of you in 2024, connecting both in the City and internationally. Elisabeth and I send you our warmest wishes to you, and your families, for a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, New Year.

Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli
The Rt Hon the Lord Mayor