After reading a Sept. 5 P&I Frontlines about Prince Wenceslas von Liechtenstein becoming chief executive officer of Dalton Strategic Partnership LLP, I wondered if the Council of Institutional Investors could accommodate such a title in the online registration for its fall conference.
That is, should the prince decide to attend.
Indeed, I discovered the CII can do so. In fact, the CII online registration for a Sept. 28-30 conference at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago offered 95 dropdown titles from which attendees could choose.
The registration creates the expectation of attendees from all walks of life.
Swami is one option. The list also includes other titles less associated with institutional investment management — bishop, cantor, cardinal, imam, pastor, rabbi — although many in the business might at times consider turning to them for prayer to enhance performance.
Other titles include PFC (private first class), PO1 (petty officer, first class), Cpl. (corporal), LCpl. (lance corporal), MGySgt (master gunnery sergeant) and fleet admiral.
The CII list includes unfamiliar titles, such as Cmst. and Ma. (periods included). The titles include the standard Mr. and Mrs., Miss and Ms. as well as Sr., Sra., and Srta. Is there a Spanish equivalent for Ms.?
The list has royalty and nobility, such as baron and baroness, count and countess, duke and duchess, lord and lady. But it has no princess. It also leaves out CIO, CEO, CFO, executive director or portfolio manager.
Michael Miller, CII communications manager, said in an e-mail: “The form we use for conference registrations is made with a number of default fields so we did not put those titles in there ourselves. To my knowledge, nobody with those titles has attended one of our conferences. We collect the titles of attendees for our own internal tracking purposes.”
On some titles, Mr. Miller said: “Honestly, I have no idea what those are abbreviations for.”
