The financial services industry is never too far away from its next scandal or public relations disaster, so it is hardly surprising that it has become cautious to the extent that change is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. While the vast majority of firms are not implicated in these incidents, their executives and staff sometimes become cautious as the public perception of financial services is impacted. So it was with no little warmth that the Spring Conference embraced Sahar Hashemi, the charismatic founder of Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy, who urged fund managers to think of themselves as entrepreneurs rather than as functionaries of large organisations. Ms Hashemi described how she founded Coffee Republic in the mid-1990s. I was going to these new style coffee bars...
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