Some hostility towards New Year celebrations, as well as some novel ways of marking this symbol of the passage of time
For this year-end issue, I thought I would write about New Year's Eve. After some research, I can now report that never before have I hit such a wall of indifference. At times I thought my phone had gone dead when my queries concerning what was fun about the night were greeted with a silence that made the line static seem loud. Speechlessness is an unusual state for people in the investor relations profession but if you ever need to impose it, I can tell you how.
Not that I disagree. I personally have not made it to midnight on New Year's Eve in more years than I can count. I often intend to stay up but then the opportunity to catch up on some sleep just proves too enticing. I assumed, however, that I was unique in my disregard for the festivities and that everybody else enjoyed the evening and the revelry that typifies it.
So, in addition to my usual conversations with IR peers, I thought I would deviate a bit and talk to Jack Wyszomierski, the colleague on whom I rely most frequently for IR presentations. You may also recall from a past article that Jack comes from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my home town, and is Schering-Plough's treasurer and soon to be (from January 1996) its CFO. Who could have a better reason to celebrate the end of 1995? But his silence was absolutely deafening; he could barely respond to my question. Then again he does have four children and is presumably too worn out from celebrating Christmas to be anything but a couch potato for New Year's Eve.
There are many reasons why this holiday provokes such negative sentiments. Hans Richard Schmitz, with RWE Energie AG in Germany and president of Deutscher Investor Relations Kreis, says he doesn't like New Year's Eve because it focuses too much on the passage of time and the inevitable ageing that accompanies it. To paraphrase Charles Dickens' character Scrooge, it is a time for finding yourself a year older but not a pound richer.
Stefano Marini of Ina in Italy and a member of the IIRF's executive board, told me that in the south of Italy New Year's Eve can be dangerous. In this region people save up during the year all the things they want to discard; they then throw them out of the window on New Year's Eve. Taking an evening stroll in Naples, for example, is to be avoided as you run the risk of having a refrigerator land on your head.
New Year's Eve is not without its element of danger here in the US either, though this is more likely to take the form of careless driving than falling objects. Mark Steinkraus of Fruit of the Loom in Chicago reflects this uneasiness as he explains that he and his wife stay at home on New Year's Eve in case one of their children needs them.
Rusty Page of NationsBank Corp in North Carolina says that for him New Year's Eve does not have much meaning. He calls it a night of revelry for amateurs. In his opinion, if you live and work each day to its fullest, you do not need a special occasion to celebrate for the sake of celebrating.
The traditional manner of celebrating New Year's Eve in the US often includes over-indulging in one or more ingestible substances (including wine, spirits and food) which, taken in excess, can leave one feeling less than fit the following day. Kate Duncan, the administrative assistant for the IIRF, reports that the UK tradition is much the same. It's taken to its greatest excess in Scotland, where the New Year celebration, called Hogmanay, is followed by two bank holidays - rather than the single day in the rest of the UK. To provide sufficient time for recovery, one presumes.
In Japan, on the other hand, according to Soichi Numata of Fuji Bank, New Year's Eve is a much more family-oriented event, more like a western Christmas with people gathering to relax and enjoy each other's company. Yoshiko Sato, with the Japan Investor Relations Association, also mentioned that some people go to shrines on New Year's Eve to pray for happiness in the new year. Skiing is also a popular alternative, and as most Japanese companies are closed from December 29 to January 3, people can enjoy a long weekend on the slopes.
The shift towards New Year's Eve as a family occasion seems to be catching on in many countries. Karin Liwendahl of Ericsson, one of Sweden's members of the IIRF Governing Council, likes to spend New Year's Eve with just her husband and her two-year old daughter.
Here in the US, many cities now celebrate First Night, which is a combination of Octoberfest, Independence Day and New Year's Eve - without the alcohol but with the children. I believe it began in Boston so I talked with Kate Woods, who works there for Waban, Inc. She says she has taken part in First Night festivities including fireworks, ice sculptures and games organised by the neighbourhood stores, which stay open for the night.
The only factors which can mar the evening are the cold and the wind which, as visitors to Boston in January know, can be truly piercing. There are at least two ways to interpret Kate's statement that New Year's Eve generally leaves her cold.
The people I spoke to who enjoy New Year's Eve most are those who have found some special way to celebrate it. Max Gurtner of F Hoffman-La Roche AG goes every year to the Appenzell region of Switzerland which is in the eastern, German-speaking part of the country. Here there are about a dozen villages that celebrate something called Silvester Klause, for which people dress up in traditional costumes of either beautiful or wild spirits and go from house to house singing special songs which sound like yodelling. The costumes include elaborately decorated wooden masks and cow bells for the wild ones. Max does not perform himself, but enjoys watching and listening to those that do.
Travelling is another way some people choose for greeting the new year. In the last few years, Ralph Allen of ITT Corporation has gone to the Cayman Islands, Sun Valley and St Vincents at New Year. This year he is heading for Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of Baja California in Mexico.
Larry Bishop of Boeing is another New Year's Eve voyager. For the past 17 years, he and his wife have met up with another couple they have known since the days they both worked for a commercial airline - which made flying long distances for short periods of time an affordable proposition. So far the four of them have spent New Year's Eve together in Paris, Hong Kong, Rio, San Diego, Seattle and New Orleans.
Of course, no discussion of New Year's Eve would be complete without mentioning resolutions. It is interesting that there seems to be the same two-part tradition in many countries, the first part being to make them, the second to break them.
With this in mind, I have a device for making resolutions which makes the selection process easy. Every year I take the next letter of the alphabet and do what it says. As I have been doing this for 22 years, 1996 will be the year of the W. Therefore, I will try to be wiser, warmer, wittier, more worthwhile, less wan, more well, more winning, less wintry, more watchful, less wrenching, more with-it, less wiseacre, more wishful, less wistful, more write, less wrong and in general more wonderful. This may sound like a lot, but compared to 1995 with its vices and virtues, it should be easy.
May you all have a happy and prosperous 1996. Good luck to Jack Wyszomierski. I do hope his New Year's Resolution is not to cut my budget: after all, how could he do that to his own home town kin?