basis.point Battle of the Firms Virtual Table Quiz unites the industry in some healthy rivalry

Louise McClatchie, Michelle Diamond Kelly, Eleanor Horgan and Niamh Clifford of Northern Trust’s team “Nerd Immunity” enjoying the challenge.

Overcoming quiz fatigue, 180 professionals from over 25 different organisations within the Irish funds sector, pulled up their chairs, opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed a wonderful evening of comradery from the comfort of their own homes!

Once again it was a fiercely contested battle, with Montlake and Blackrock both demonstrating their brilliance by only dropping 4 questions. Defending champions Maples put up a good fight, finishing just two questions short of the eventual winners.

It took the boggle tie breaker to decide who came out on top, with Montlake A’s narrowly beating the aptly named Blackrock team “We get locked down, but we get back up again!”.

Runners up in last year’s event, Blackrock were caught out by another tie breaker, they will have to live up to their name, dust themselves down and come back again next year!

Worthy of mention were the Northern Trust “New Hampshire Primary” team, who managed to identify 22 separate words in the boggle word challenge! And we loved the humour involved in many of your team names with “Nphet stole my Christmas Jumper” resonating with most of us!

Clive Bellows, chairperson of basis.point welcomed everyone to the event and took the opportunity to show our short video which powerfully communicates the power of education to break the cycle of disadvantage and how we have been putting donations to good use over the past year.

Compere for the night was Chris Lee of Table Fish. Chris and his friends set up Table Fish during the first lockdown to help their community overcome a sense of isolation. It was well received and they now run quizzes every Tuesday and Friday night, donating proceeds from the events to charity.

Chris managed to balance the task of keeping engagement high, interspersing the more serious rounds with music, pictures and sport.

Not surprisingly the highest scoring rounds for most teams were the basis.point and the business round, yet it was the sports round that separated the winners from losers!

Sincere thanks to Marion Mellett of William Fry and Michelle Diamond Kelly of Northern Trust for organising such a successful event on behalf of the basis.point supporters committee, under difficult circumstances.

Edel O’Malley, basis.point CEO popped up on screen at the end to thank everyone for participating, congratulating the prize winners and to make a virtual trophy presentation!

Congratulations to everyone for taking part and particularly to this year’s prize winners

1st Place Montlake Dan Murphy, Eoin Carroll, Niamh Lennon, David Hammond
2nd Place Blackrock Kathleen Hennessy, Ellen Healy, Aoibheann Reddy, Peter Cahill
3rd Place Linedata Ciaran Whooley, Jenni Kavanagh, Justin Hayes, Brian Tansey

Thanks also to all our sponsors Brown Brothers Harriman, BNY Mellon, Carne Group, Citco, Davy, Matheson, Northern Trust, RBC, State Street and William Fry.

Restricted by social distancing requirements, the basis.point Battle of the Firms Table Quiz non-the-less provided a great opportunity to engage with other industry colleagues in support of basis.point. For the third Battle of the Firms, we hope to be able to meet up again in person.

Book early for next year!