FOR the aspiring boardroom member, attending the prestigious Champions League group-stage draw must be the equivalent of competing in the celebrated competition for the players. All those years of corporate, number-crunching, HR-appeasing, memo-drafting preparation have led to this point as they slip inside the Grimaldi Forum event centre in Monaco to the rippling applause of the air conditioning system in full flow. This din drowned out by the smooth-jazz rendition of Zadok the Priest playing in the lift in the lobby.

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