2012 Intercultural Trophy Cocktail Event

French Radio London Ltd is a unique and committed English radio company promoting and celebrating French culture and language through our bespoke radio shows, podcasts, news reports, city news, sports programs, networking events, and of course French music. Since our launch two years ago we have focussed our efforts on promoting French culture in its various forms (cinema, art, theatre, concerts, exhibitions and much more) in London and across the UK. We are proud to have galvanised our two core audiences: the French/francophones and the English francophiles. It is our principal activity to built cross-cultural ties between French and English people living in London, France's 5th city.

Our audience has dramatically increased this past year and we have outperformed our targets; we now serve with more than 90,000 stable unique listeners per week across DAB, our website and our smartphone app. The returns we get from our listeners demonstrate that FRL is a popular and unique service designed to entertain and inform anyone interested in the rich and longstanding ties that bind our two countries and make our relationship so special. We attract french and english advertisers alike, reflecting the essence and attraction of our offering, building further ties commercially; we are very proud to have amongst our clients, brands such as Renault, Décathlon, TomTom, France 24, Nicolas Feuillatte, TV5, Cityjet, Eurostar, Knight Frank, Barbican and EDF.

Gregory Rowcliffe Milners is a blue-chip, mid-sized London-based law firm that has only recently come to the French market.

As specialists in international inward investment our aim is to help both UK and French clients to overcome the legal complexities of traversing “La Manche” in either direction!

We assist French and UK companies and individuals to achieve their aspirations by ensuring every transaction is underpinned by a robust and appropriate legal framework. Whether a French entrepreneur looking to start up in the UK but unsure of the best legal status to adopt, or a UK citizen pondering the complexities of moving to a warmer climate in Nice we provide proactive advice and pragmatic solutions, maintaining an ongoing interest.

We seek continuously to build links with French professionals to aid our UK clients moving into France while offering French clients the benefit of our long-established networks of UK contacts across a wide spectrum of financial, property and commercial expertise.

We also recognize the value of team-work, collaborating closely with organizations such as the French Chamber of Commerce, UKTI and the Franco-British Chamber. Our approach is hands-on : for example, to encourage smaller French companies or entrepreneurs to expand into the UK we are hosting a seminar in Paris with the Franco British Chamber – we intend this to be the first of many.

Our French team regularly visits Paris offering free initial consultations to individuals and businesses with feedbacks and subsequent action confirming the value of our constructive, easy-to-follow input.

The magazine ici Londres has been founded 14 years ago, in the initial goal of creating a link between the members of the French community via a wide platform of classified ads which was aimed to ease its first steps. Thanks to this global view of the expatriation experience, we became rapidly the reference for the French community in London already living here or planning to move.

Two years ago, ici Londres launched a new version of the magazine, including a diary of French events, interviews of French artists, reviews of French albums or films about to be released in London. This made the magazine indispensable for both artists promotion and readers eager to do the most of their London life, with many opportunities to attend events for free via our competitions. Always with a desire to share great tips, our brand new website, launched one year ago, was a great way to share the Olympics and Paralympics effervescence thanks to our dedicated page.

We also started a proper social network strategy via Facebook and Twitter to communicate more closely and promptly. By making the whole expatriation experience a little bit easier and by being a powerful tool of communication, ici Londres contributes to facilitate the exchanges between Great Britain and France, whether it is economic or cultural.

Ladurée UK opened its very first overseas store in London in 2005. The Franco-British relationship has been at the core of Ladurée expansion and has helped worldwide recognition. London remains the cradle of its international growth. By not taking its cooperation with England for granted, Ladurée constantly keeps on innovating and proactively developing solutions that ultimately enhance Franco-British relationships and give them visibility.Far from being content with its iconic Harrods presence and the historic venue of Burlington Arcade, Ladurée opened another store in the English Heritage site of Covent Garden and a superb retail store in the City of London. Thus, in contrast to the current economic climate, Ladurée is giving jobs to more and more English people.

Ladurée has a growing list of regular customers, including some of the most famous English companies, including London 5* hotels such as the Langham, Landmark and the traditional English institution such as Lords, we also created a beautiful Diamond Jubilee Box. Ladurée is continually striving to strengthen its ties between the French and the English lifestyles.

Intercultural exchanges are thus deeply and increasingly foremost in the mind of a company which tries its hardest to pay tribute to the French lifestyle whilst making noticeable efforts to build even stronger ties with the UK. Ladurée has also striven to support English charity programmes in the UK and abroad.

Ladurée UK also regularly offers work placement to French and English nationals.

Les Petites Etoiles is part of the Bilingual Nursery Group (www.bilingualnurseries.com). The raison d'être of our group is to teach language and promote Franco-British cross-cultural relations. We believe learning a second language brings much more than just a new skill. Culture is implicitly tied-in with language and so by teaching both languages to children from age 2 to 5, we allow them to become bilingual and to tap into the these two cultures from the youngest possible age.

We have children from French families, from mixed French-English Families, from English families, and from other non-French international families. The long term benefits to children and society is remarkable; it opens the minds of young children.

This inter-cultural awareness combines with fluent language ability, to foster a generation of international-minded children who will grow up with strong ties between France and England - and who have grown up from the youngest age thinking of them as two cultures which are intrinsically linked.

REED SMITH LLP, one of the 20th largest law firms in the world, is extremely proud of more than 30 years of cultural and business links with France. Our commitment to France and to our French connections continues to increase year on year. Our Paris office continues to expand and has increased in size by some 500% since it was opened 6 years ago.  

As a firm we undertake many € millions of work involving France. We represent 18 out of the CAC 40 companies  as well as  many well-known French owned multinationals and public bodies as well as non French Groups investing into France.

We are "Francophile" but also "Francophone" with French speaking lawyers not just in Paris but also in London, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Munich, Abu Dhabi, San Francisco and Piraeus. We train our staff on intercultural issues so as to ensure a real sense of cross cultural awareness in all our dealings, both internally and with our clients.

We also continue actively to support worthy French causes including Action Contre la Faim and  Enfance et Partage.  Reed Smith lives and breathes interculturalism, a fact demonstrated, for example, by having Peter ALFANDARY who leads our French Team, assign part of his time as Deputy President of the French Chamber and Chair of its Cross Cultural Relations Forum.