People: Last supper

The death of Alan MacDonald, one-time public relations luminary at Midland Bank, has caused much sadness in the City and beyond. An amiable and deceptively self-effacing figure, he policed the corridors of power with consummate tact during the bank’s takeover by Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank to create HSBC, representing Midland’s then chairman Sir Kit McMahon.

It is ironic that Alan died after choking on a canapé at a diplomatic reception he had gatecrashed. He was a past master at steering friends and contacts to ‘useful’ functions whose hosts had neglected to invite them.

This skill came into its own at the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. One called Alan and he supplied a list of where and when to present one’s card with impunity.

At one such jamboree in Berlin, Alan’s direction led to an afternoon reception held by the south German Bayerische Landesbank. The spectacle of bibulous financiers confronted by Bavarians in traditional brown shorts cracking long whips over nervous Turkish waiters dispensing sweet champagne remains an indelible image of the international banking scene.