Cyprus Mail 12 October 2020 - by Andrew Rosenbaum
“Cypriots in the City,” (https://www.cypriotsinthecity.org/), a platform that aims to bring together Cypriots and Cypriots in the UK who work in (or study) in the areas of finance, law, accounting, consulting and wider financial services has launched on Saturday.
“Our objectives,” says Cypriot Phanos Theophanous, a banker in London who is one of the founders of the platform, “are to create a network of Cypriots who work in the City so that we can share know-how, mentor young people as well as those who are more advanced in their careers, and create events to enhance knowledge for our members and the wider Cypriot diaspora across our verticals in the UK.” he told the Cyprus Mail in an interview.
“But helping the financial community in Cyprus with knowledge-sharing is also a critical objective,” he added.
The founders had brought together more than 120 members in financial services even before the launch of the website. Theophanous says Cypriots in the City clearly fills a significant gap in the Cypriot diaspora in London.
Theophanous has been part of the Cypriot community in London for many years. “I was born and raised in Cyprus, I came to the UK to do my bachelor’s degree and when I completed my postgraduate studies I stayed here working in the City. In 2005, I moved from Deloitte UK to Deloitte Cyprus. I was a partner at Deloitte in Cyprus when I took the decision in 2011 to return back to London and switch from the accounting to the banking sector.”
I lived in Cyprus for a good 5 years on the ground, and I and some of my fellow advisory board and executive committee members have a very good feel for what’s going on there.”
Theophanous has a Cypriot wife who is also a banker and two children. Although he lives in central London, he feels very connected to the large Cypriot community still located in North London, at places like Southgate and Cockfosters, and this has contributed to the desire to create the platform.
“I’ve been in London for some time. The thinking when we started this with the other founding members was that the Cypriot community was very badly served in terms of networking in our sectors. In many sectors there’s a breadth of knowledge that is not noticed by others and should be shared,” he explained.
Theophanous and his group looked at other ethnic groups, and saw that the high level of networking they achieved was needed by UK Cypriots. “A lot of young people reached out over the years to start initiatives to connect the UK Cypriot diaspora in finance but myself and the other founding members felt that we needed to be multidisciplinary as this would enable to our members to look at a bigger picture and at the same time be focused.”
The founders want this forum to be a networking hub for Cypriots and be part of the wider Cypriot community and hence the Association became a Member of the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK. “We want to mentor Cypriots to progress in their careers, especially in financial services, banking, law, consulting and accounting sectors.”
On the Advisory Board executive committee there are people who are very senior, at Managing Director/Partner level, but there are also analysts, are very junior, because we want to have the whole spectrum on the committee.
Cypriots in the City Association will also mentor students who will be looking for a job in London. These are people who are finishing university, who want to enter the City in law, banking, consulting, accounting and so on.
“At the same time,” Theophanous continues, “being multidisciplinary, for me, is key because in today’s world you touch on every angle of things. We need to be able to run some events to raise knowledge about what’s going on across the spectrum, and how this relates to a members specific sector.”
Theophanous feels that many Cypriots working in London lack the mentoring support that others have. “We want to help every member of our community to excel in their careers. This is something other ethnic groups do very successfully, and we want to offer the same.”
With all that, sharing knowledge with the financial sector in Cyprus is also one of the organisation’s key objective. “I think that Cypriots in the City could become a knowledge exchange platform between the Cypriot financial community in London and our friends back in Cyprus. We want to create a link. We will try to open our events to them, and already have been asked by some in Cyprus to do so.
Theophanos says that his group has gotten very positive messages from our UK diaspora as well as from people in Cyprus on this initiative. “This was needed and sixty years overdue,” a very senior Accounting Partner in Cyprus who studied and trained as a Chartered Accountant and worked in London before moving back to Cyprus, told me this morning when he called from Cyprus to say “amazing initiative and well done by all of you who made this happen.”
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