Chairman, Editor, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am that versatile and ubiquitous sportsman, A N Other, stepping in between these two grand fellows, the Chairman and the Editor. But as is the case fairly frequently with A N Other, my innings will be a mercifully short one.

We’re here, of course, as the Chairman has already said, to celebrate this great new publishing venture. But it’s more, I think, than just a publishing venture. Because I think it has the potential of making a real contribution to the effective and fruitful conduct of business and finance and commerce in this country and the City of London in particular.

One recalls the father of commercial law, Lord Mansfield, observing “In all mercantile transactions” he famously said, “the great object should be certainty. And therefore, it is of more consequence that a rule should be certain than whether [it] is established one way or the other. Because speculators in trade then know what ground to go upon.” [See Vallejo v Wheeler (1774) 1 Cowp 143, 153.]

But it is of course no use the law being certain and wise and wonderful unless it is readily accessible to those with no time to visit the library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies but with a client and a problem on the other end of a telephone. And the great boon as I see it of this new series is that it would not trouble those engaged in advising on business transactions with the arcane niceties of wills and bona vacantia and treasure trove, or about the intent necessary for rape or the legality of control orders or the duties of the Parole Board. But what it will do is keep business practitioners in touch with developments affecting the conduct of business in this country today. And I think that all of us should be ready to congratulate the Chairman and the Editor on the attractiveness as well as the selectiveness and choice evident in the first issue and to express our fervent hope that everybody with an interest in this area will recognise this new series as something they can’t live another week without.

So with that, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps I — I didn’t know I was launching anything — but perhaps we can launch it, and then invite the editor to tell us what it’s all really about.

[Raises his glass]: The Business Law Reports.

[Applause.]