CITY AND SUBURBAN
Betting on a touch of class in the Lloyd's of London stakes
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Vote, vote, vote for Rona, Lady Delves Broughton. Now is the time when that vocal electorate, the 31,000 members of Lloyd's of London, can take their opinions and their grievances to the ballot- box. They must choose two among six candidates to represent them on the ruling council, and in an otherwise uninspiring field one runner stands out. She is, for a start, the only candidate who has taken the trouble to write to the members and tell them what she stands for — most of all, for looking at Lloyd's as a business, and directing the rules and the systems and central policy towards reversing the decline in Lloyd's market share. She is the first candidate I can remember who says that elected council members should be accessi- ble to the electorate; as things now stand, they have no constituencies, or consti- tuents. She ran a good race in last year's election, finishing not far behind Mary Archer, and on that line of form must be fancied — as indeed on another line of form, through the picture on her manifes- to, where she appears no less fragrant. She is right in arguing that priorities have changed at Lloyd's. In the seven years since the scandals hit the fan, Lloyd's has had to concentrate on cleaning its house; luckily, in the early years the business and the members continued to roll in. In the leaner years that have followed, Lloyd's has suddenly looked, for the first time in memory, a less than competitive place to do business.
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