It has gone from the preserve of a few muddy fanatics up from the shires to the premier networking event for smooth, rich investment bankers, but as the Chelsea Flower Show holds its opening gala preview this evening, the question is: will the Masters of the Universe be there this year?

Chelsea became popular with the City crowd for several reasons: it is rather more convenient than Royal Ascot or Glyndebourne - indeed, those who inhabit the higher echelons of high finance probably live around the corner; it is more attractive to corporate wives than rugby or football; and since the turn of the century the flower show and the gala opening have been sponsored by the fund management side of Merrill Lynch.

Saga took on the sponsorship for a year but then ditched it, allegedly because the Royal Horticultural Society asked for too much money. The sponsor is Marshalls, a Yorkshire firm that appropriately enough makes paving slabs but perhaps lacks the sophisticated elan of Merrills. The gala evening will be sponsored by Lloyds TSB Corporate markets.

Merrill's departure has already lowered the event's profile in the City. Has the Square Mile's interest in the event reduced? “It hasn't waned at all,” Stephen Bennett, the show's director, said. He insists that there will be plenty of FTSE chairmen and chief executives at today's gala opening: “The demand for a corporate presence on Monday is, if anything, stronger than ever and we've already sold most of the corporate facilities for Monday night 2009.”

A lot of big corporates are, indeed, entertaining there, but, one entertainer said: “The international investment banks may be much less conspicuous.”

An unofficial and very limited straw poll of the City's great and the good by The Times failed to find anyone who would definitely be staying away. Perhaps, in the light of the sub-prime crisis and the dearth of big deals, bankers have decided that some concentrated networking among the alliums is just what is called for.

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