The comedian hosting our fabulous and glittering Insider Honours ceremony last week very amusingly played on the different characteristics of the multiple nationalities that were present at a London-based global industry gathering a couple of days before Monte Carlo.
Indeed, listing the passport holdings of the people on my own table sounded like the beginning of a very corny joke: There was an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German and an American...
The international theme naturally carried on into the more market-related conversations we started to have once we got back to dinner.
After a year that has seen the London specialty quoted sector reduced to just four, a month that has experienced a bid for RSA and a week that has witnessed one of the last independent Lloyd's jewels be carried off by a Japanese giant, I turned to my French dining companion and remarked that this sort of thing simply wouldn't happen in a more closed economy such as France, or indeed Japan, where national champions are encouraged and positively nurtured.
His response was considered and telling: "Yes, we might have our Axa and the Japanese have their big three, but you have the market - that is why I am here and not in France."
He had a very strong point. Japan and France are already here and have been for years. Mapfre has looked, Axa and Generali too. China Re and Fosun are the first, but will surely not be the last entrants from the Middle Kingdom. Korean Re and GIC Re are in as are Arig and the Qataris.The Latin Americans are well on their way too. Now that Everest has joined Lloyd's that leaves PartnerRe as the only major Bermuda or US specialty player outwith the market - and they would have been in in fold too if events with Axis had taken a different turn.
In a surprisingly short amount of time, a far more diverse capital and cultural structure has been constructed in London than would have been imaginable before the arrival of John Nelson and his Vision 2025.
He was absolutely right to embrace diversity in all things. For if Lloyd's had decided to pull up the drawbridge and remain an underwriting bourse by and for the English speaking peoples of the world it would have been missing out on the best growth opportunities of the century, and would be facing long-term relative decline.
Nelson's success has been based, like the market itself, on the promise of mutuality. "You let us fish in your domestic pond and then you can come and fish in our global one." There are many in the market who will be sad to see firms like Amlin and Catlin give up their independence, but such deals are part of the same transformation of the marketplace.
And if London can get that right and build a truly global hub that brings together capital, risk and expertise from the four corners of the earth, it will assure Lloyd's future for another three centuries.
Now, this is not to say that it will all be plain sailing - far from it. There will be culture clashes and some of the new entrants are bound to fail, but as we get somewhere slightly nearer the possible end of a visionary Nelson chairmanship, Londoners and all the global traders attending Monte Carlo have an awful lot more to be optimistic about regarding the long-term future of the market than when we somewhat sceptically began this journey four and a half years ago.
To read the first of our Monte Carlo dailies click here
Mark Geoghegan,
Editor-in-Chief,
The Insurance Insider