Perhaps it has something to do with the Six Nations, but questions of national identity always seem to surface around this season. We have highlighted a couple including the quests for a Welsh stock exchange.
In private, advisers often run down this idea. After all, London is pretty close and how many companies want to float in Cardiff anyway?
In my view such a scheme would form just part of a range of funding alternatives. Companies could still float in London if they wanted to, and costs could be kept down by using computer technology and borrowing systems from elsewhere.
But it would have to be watertight. As we have seen recently, traditional investors have been burned by speculators who have a canny knack of calling share price rises and falls just right. That kind of activity would spell the end for a local exchange, which should be focused on growth capital and longer-term investment.
Ultimately it will come down to whether Wales’ army of family-owned companies choose to float. And here the downturn could lend the scheme a hand. If banks are lending less and the Welsh exchange is the only way to raise funds, what ambitious business owner would turn it down?
Then there is the question of whether private companies will be required to communicate with their customers in Welsh. For me, there is a simple test. Are those companies compelled by law to communicate with customers in English? If so, there is a case for asking them to provide a Welsh alternative. If not, it will be difficult to make such a law without raising claims of discrimination.
Many companies already communicate in Welsh because they can win and retain customers that way. In the longer term you can imagine a compromise being reached where businesses apply for grants to provide their services in Welsh.
Not that grants are needed to get people to sing Land of My Fathers. With the country in an economic funk, this may seem like a strange time for Insider to be writing about hospitality. But, if anything, business people need more time now to get together informally and share ideal and experiences. If they can dip into a rugby, football or cricket match to inspire and lift the spirits at the same time, so much the better.
Douglas Friedli, editor
Also in: March 2009
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Plenty of action off the pitch
Wales likes sport and Wales likes to socialise. With a range of venues built with corporate hospitality in mind, sporting hospitality is coming into its own. Douglas Friedli reports.
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Wall Street on the Taff
Would Wales benefit from its own stock exchange? With two projects already under way to turn the fantasy into a reality, Douglas Friedli weighs up the prospects for establishing a cyfnewidfa in Cardiff.