Bussing the Bankers

Every decent high-school movie has to have a scene in a school bus.

The protagonist gets on the bus and he knows everyone. The cute girls are ogling at him whilst he walks past the usual selection of stereotypical schoolmates, the jock, the nerd, the wallflower etc etc.

Getting on the bus to work I recently felt like straight out of that movie. I have been getting on the same bus for a while and finally you realize, you have seen all of them before.

You know who is getting on where, who is leaving at which stop, who is going to work and who is dropping off their kids at school.

You also realize that some people are already at work when they get on the bus. They have their Blackberry out and type furiously, others approach the morning commute more leisurely.

Time passing is symbolized by kids who have been not reading recently are suddenly being quizzed by their mom over the spelling of "amazing". Occasionally, a woman starts showing a baby bump, others reappear from being gone on maternity leave.

The one thing that is different from all the high school movies, their is no chatting. It if like Ferris Bueller's Day off with the sound turned off. Because everybody provides their own soundtrack on their shiny MP3 players.

Which means everybody is in their own movie.

Let's hope everybody is enjoying it.

Smart Phone - Dumb User

Apparently, as I read recently in the press, this is the summer of smartphones.

So that's what it has come to. Our parents had the luck of living through summers of love in the 60s. On the flipside, they also had winters of discontent in the 70s, but at least it involved some kind of emotion.

Our generation, however, has summers of smartphones.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone. It's fun to have a cool little computer in your pocket and I find myself surfing the web on it at home, despite the proximity of a proper computer that I could use to display webpages on a 17' screen rather than 3.5'.

Does it make my summer however? Surely not. In fact, I could well do without it. My old dumbphone the size of a brick was able to do phone calls just as well, and whilst I was recharging my batteries on holiday, it rarely ever needed to. My smartphone however, needs even more recharging than I do.

Admittedly, surfing the web on the go is a lovely thing. A confessed news-addict, I enjoy staying updated wherever I am. But there is a slight difference between information and knowledge. Being able to google something everywhere doesn't make me cleverer, it makes me better informed.

Whilst waiting to pick the family up at the airport the other week, I found myself stuck in a crowded Costa Coffee with just my phone and TheLondonPaper I had picked up on the way. After the usual Facebook shenanigans and a round of Trism and Scrabble each, I found myself reading the (rather-trashy-but-not-as-bad-as-London-Lite) paper and solving crossword puzzles.

The whole world is at my fingertips, and all I worry about is "verse-type, 6 letters, ending with T".

Maybe it's just me who isn't smart enough. I am afraid that once my phone finds out, it will leave me for somebody smarter.

After my contract runs out that is.

When in June...

I'd be tempted to say "Shoot for the moon" but that would be dumb.

And cheap, for reasons to difficult to explain to most people, in particular those without a Bloomberg account.

But as a random observation, I realised that there is a clear seasonal cycle of blogging activity which seems to be peaking in June.

Which is right now. Maybe it's the long days resulting from a combination of, ahem, long days (summer solstice and all that) and early morning wake-up calls from the little man.

But if history will tell us anything, this will come to an end very quickly, so maybe:

When in July, let the ink run dry?

28 Gazillions Later

Since a career in banking is no longer guaranteed to make for glamourous living, it is time to branch out into entertainment. Here is my pitch for a movie project...

The movie starts with a pre-credit sequence showing a few well-groomed men in a high-rise office building in London. They stand in front of a Bloomberg terminal, applauding the launch of a new type of asset, one that is not shown to the audience.

Our unnamed hero is introduced as a successful, mid-level banker who has just been discharged from the Priory where he spent an unspecified period of time after suffering from burn-out.

Upon his return to work, he finds the City of London completely deserted, although it is rush hour. He manages to find local coffee vendor, Mr Frothy, who is hiding. Mr Frothy viciously attacks him until our protagonist manages to convince him that he does not pose a threat.

Frothy then reveals what has happened during his absence: Bankers created toxic assets which spread like wildfire across the financial markets. Once unleashed, anyone who came in contact with those assets directly - or with those who had been exposed to them - underwent a rapid transformation and became a mindless, raging lunatic. The first sign of infection was lack of consumer spending - to the extent those infected started bringing packed lunches to work. This was quickly followed by a descent into general man-slaughtering madness.

The Government reacted by quarantining the infected at Canary Wharf, turning it into a high-security area they labelled 'The Bad Bank'. But despite their efforts, there were more infected citizens still on the loose.

Our hero persuades Frothy to join him on a mission to Canary Wharf to get a better picture of the catastrophe that has befallen London.

There they discover the sinister truth behind the authorities' actions. The military had been trying to design toxic assets for decades, but the resourceful bankers succeeded first. Hence the bankers were being contained to bring the knowledge of those assets into the hand of the state.

Our protagonist is shocked by the plan to nationalise bankers in order to turn them into deadly government weapons, and decides to flee the country. Uninformed because of his recent 'holiday', he believes that the phenomenon is specific to the UK, and considers continental Europe a safe haven.

After being chased through London by hordes of raging bankers, our hero and Frothy make it to St Pancras, and collapse into their seats on the Eurostar.

Frothy, the trustworthy companion who has been serving the banking community for decades, unpacks a sandwich from home, and offers a bite to our hero with a smile on his face.

Published first on Here is the City Life on February 1st, the original can be found here.

Do you still Google?

Or do you already Bing?

Odds are: The former rather than the latter.

First things first: As far as I am concerned, Bing does not seem to lend itself naturally to being used as a verb. Binging the web, maybe? Web-binging? Doesn't roll of the tongue. But then again, when Google was chosen as a company name, being in the Oxford Dictionary was probably not on the top of the list of what the founders where after either.

In any case, the exciting news was the other day, that Bing has made it in at Number 2 in the list of most used search engines. While this is impressive, the small print revealed that in terms of search engine usage, there is Google, and then there is nothing for a VERY long time. Being Number 2 means that you have a market share of about 2%.

Nevertheless, exciting enough to test drive the new Bing on the Block. Rumour has it that its strength is the image search.

I did what every respectable tester would do and googled (sorry, binged) my name as search term. And voila, it came up with a picture of me and my son. Apart from the fact that I didn't like that in terms of privacy, it turned out to be my own fault since it happened to be a Facebook profile picture.

Nevertheless much closer to the truth than a picture of some red chilli peppers that Google came up with. Taken by a photographer who shares my name.

And indeed much better than Cuil which chooses not to know me at all. This very non-representative sample of one explains however why the latter seems to have already joined Altavista on the scrapyard of Search Engines.

Time will tell whether Microsoft has finally scored some points on the web. I guess there's only a factor of 40 in terms of market share to go.

For Rent: London

Yes, all of it.

Ah, those green shoots. People are seeing them everywhere they look. Optimism is on the rise and before we know it, we will all take out 95% LTV interest-only mortgages not worrying about such mundane things like repayments.

There is a saying that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the latter is better informed. And in another word of wisdom, a colleague once told me, about 3 or 4 years ago, that a sure-fire indicator of the economy heading for a recession is the number of cranes that are up in the City.

Well, a few years ago that number was very large indeed and last time I checked we were still in a recession, green shoots are not.

Also, since builders have been busy a few years ago there is now a copious amount of office space in the City. Unfortunately, that space becomes available at about the same time as firms in the Financial Sector are clearing the desks in the space that they have already available.

If the demand for hiring is a good proxy for the demand for office space, I would not expect those "For Rent" signs to come down anytime soon.

So maybe if we are optimistically looking for green shots, it is best to cast a blind eye on commercial real estate.

Obituary: The Bonus

It is with great sadness that we report the loss of a beloved friend who has been an inspiration to many of us. It was he who has been the incentive to work hard, and who has lifted us from mediocrity to excellence: the investment-banking bonus.

During his short existence the deceased touched the lives of hundreds of thousands in a remarkable fashion. Born into a world where 'leverage' was not deemed a swear word, he showed early signs of almost messianic leadership skills. When he spoke people listened, and his admirers craved his friendship and wanted to align themselves with him to form long-standing bonds.

Those close to him would not hesitate to testify how enriching his friendship was, and how it had elevated their lives to levels they could never have reached without his acquaintance.

However his life was not without controversy. Often his friendship was flighty. Those who relied too much on his alliance found themselves in a state of despair when they discovered that his favours had changed and that he had moved on to other partners.

Since people were aware of his volatile nature, they sometimes demanded written assurance of his loyalty, a practice which earned him huge criticism, in particular from those who could not secure this type of guarantee.

In the later stages of his life many of his friends were found to be involved in a global network of fraud, dodgy dealings and other misdemeanours. After the extent of these activities came to light, the late bonus was - maybe wrongly - singled out for his negative influence on the key decision makers at the heart of these aberrations.

Finding himself under intense scrutiny from media and politics, he finally succumbed to the pressure when he decided to end his colourful existence.

He is survived by his modest long-term partner, the base salary. He will be sorely missed.

First published on HereIsTheCity Life on the 4th March 2009.

Sacked or Just Offline?

In this day and age, somebody being offline on his Bloomberg can only mean one thing, right?

When I meet with a friend of mine last weekend (who happens to work in Derivatives in a large investment bank) he mentioned that he had been given information about another round of layoffs being announced the following Monday. When wondering whether he could potentially affected, he assured me this would not be the case since he had been doing well over the course of the year, and was continuing to do good business. He rated the chances of him being part of the alleged 15% of the workforce to be let go as fairly slim.

A few days later, I thought I would check with him that everything was fine and tried contacting him via Bloomberg (so it looked like work). He was showing as 'Offline', so I decided to follow up the next day just to make sure. When he was still showing as offline, I started getting concerned since this clearly could only mean one thing: his optimism must have been poor judgement.

As I was about to contact his wife to check whether he was OK, I started remembering that the to-be-announced-layoff was not the only thing we had talked about over drinks, but clearly the only thing that was present in my mind.

It occurred to me that aside from that he had mentioned something about embarking on his long-delayed honeymoon the day after we met up.

Whilst I had already pictured him down at the local Job Centre, it turned out he was enjoying himself in sunnier climes, a few hours flight away from the corporate bloodshed at home.

And that's a much better reason to be offline.

Unfortunately, it's just not necessarily the first reason that springs to mind nowadays.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life, the original can be found here.

An Apple a Day

keeps the doctor away, an entry a month the readers. If only the max no. of characters was 140, I'd be done by now. Ugh, now.

Crunch Time for Soul-Searching

When bankers got together they used to talk money, cars and houses. Nowadays, they talk about 'What If' they lost their jobs. Or is it more a matter of 'What When'?

When the number of people losing their jobs goes into the hundreds of thousands, it is not surprising that people in your immediate circle of friends, if not yourself, become affected.

Recently I was taking stock of how my friends fared, and concluded that almost two-thirds of my banking acquaintances had lost their jobs. Given that bad news and disastrous results in banking come out more often now than bad results for Tottenham Hotspurs, it is understandable that my fellow bankers, those who still have jobs, are nervous.

At recent birthday drinks with a finance friend in Canary Wharf, unsurprisingly, the No. 1 topic was the employment situation, the likelihood of more redundancies, and how people perceive the threat of themselves being in the firing line.

And since nobody - not even the boldest optimists - consider themselves safe, a lot of thought is spent on what to do when the pink slip finds its way to you.

After a quick poll, it's clear that very few of my friends are in banking because they love it. It has been an industry that paid over the odds in the past, and therefore attracted bright individuals by the mere fact that salaries were so much higher than anywhere outside of banking.

It is obvious that the banking world is becoming smaller and it will not accommodate as many as it used to. For all of us who never have done anything but, it yields the question of what else there is to do. And unfortunately, retirement is not an option since most of us joined the industry too late to have reaped in the big bucks.

Interestingly enough, I recently met a former banker who has set up a recruitment agency placing former bankers into other industries. Her USP was: "What do you really want to do?" Her argument was that if you ignore your bonus, other industries don't pay that badly in comparison.

If banking has never been one's passion and the absence of bonuses means that the pay gap is narrowing, that suddenly sounds like a decent proposition.

And with bonus season upon us, I suspect the soul searching will continue.

Published on HereIsTheCity Life on 2nd December 2008, the original can be found here.

No Jobs, No Coffee, No Insurance

How do you know things are really bad? When you can't even get a headhunter to buy you a coffee anymore!

Oh well, I do remember the good old days.

Our knowledge on funky derivatives was a sparse asset and when you wanted to be treated to a coffee, you could just call up a headhunter of your choice, tell them that you were interested in opportunities. They would meet you for a coffee, on their expenses of course.

As a sign how far the market has plummeted, I recently got a phone call from a recruitment agent about some opportunity, which was the first call of that sort in a long, long time.

We met up at a local Starbucks and while the recruiter was going on about the exciting opportunity (just like the old days) we were sitting at Starbucks for the biggest part of half an hour - WITHOUT BUYING ANY COFFEE!

Nobody mentioned it, nobody offered it, they didn't have any beverage, and neither did I.

Of course, I could have bought one for me, but that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Slightly bemused by the fact I went back to the office, where I found an e-mail from my financial adviser about how insurers do not underwrite unemployment insurance for anyone working in the Financial Services Industry anymore.

So nobody pays me when I lose my job, nobody pays me to take on a new job and nobody buys
me a coffee to tell me about any jobs.

Looks like I'll be downsizing from a Venti Caramel Frappucinos to a regular filter coffee.

7 Reasons to Hate January

With the New Year upon us, it is sometimes a little difficult to be excited about what's ahead of us. In particular since every new year starts with the month of January which seems amongst the grimmest of them all.

Here are some reasons why we hate January:

1. Overcrowded gyms. The gyms are overcrowded with people who have either just subscribed to a membership they are going to use for about one month or with those who have subscribed in one of the previous year's January. Again, they will be gone by February but nevertheless a nuisance for the next few weeks.
2. Feeling the Weight. The excess weight that is. After eggnog lattes and mince pies galore it is impossible not to feel slightly heavy.
3. The Cold. Currently, London does not get anywhere above 0 degrees. But is it a charming, picturesque Winter Wonderland? No. It's just effing cold.
4. The Time to Bonus. With bonuses (albeit small) either already in your account or at least announced, the clock has effectively been set to zero again. Last year's achievements might not have paid off last year. They definitely won't count for this.
5. Detox. And by that we don't mean the rather dreadful Sylvester Stallone movie (which was D-Tox anyway) but rather the fact that there is a peer pressure of giving up booze and washing those toxins out of you. If only to make room for more toxins come February.
6. The aftermath of New Year's Resolutions. Let's face it - nobody ever keeps them, but that doesn't mean that one cannot feel a bit guilty about not living up to all those promises of New Year's Eve. Even if all those promises were born out of too much champagne.
7. Getting Older. Ok, it's a personal thing due to being born in January. Still counts though.

There might be some other things working in favour of good old Janus. But we will deal with those separately.

Bad Present = Bad Relationship?

Does a gift indicate the state of a relationship? Lots of women think so and lots of men worry so. Which does not help to take the pressure off something that already can be a nerve-racking experience.

As everybody knows, women are sensitive creatures. Men assume relationships are fine unless they are told otherwise. They'll assume everything is great until they come home and either find all their personal belongings packed up in suitcases, or realise that the keys to the front door don't fit anymore. That's when they'll start to suspect that things might not be that rosy anymore.

Women however have a more refined approach and constantly question the state of their relationships. Whilst a lot of comments and actions can serve as a barometer of the emotional climate, presents by partners are the most welcome tool to judge the relationship. A not-very-thoughtful - or outright bad - present is read as an indicator that the partner has lost touch with what is important to her, and is seen as a sign of marital decline.

To be fair, it seems to work both ways: good gifts prove that their partner still cares about them and jumps through hoops to keep them happy.

As an example, I once gave my ex (a well-travelled, curious, worldly person) a huge, leather-bound atlas. Of course, she HATED it and if it hadn't been that oversized and heavy probably would have hit me over the head with it straightaway. Needless to say, it was a sure-fire sign that something was wrong, and not very much later I found myself in divorce court with little material possession left apart from said coffee-table atlas.

Then again, it is much easier to please somebody you are generally fond of. Over the years, I learned that diamonds are in fact, a girl's best friend, and that in general you can never go wrong with jewellery. Since you don't want to come across as an uninventive gift-giver however, there is a dangerous requirement to vary gifts. This can prove to be a lethal combination with the perceived pressure that any mishap on the gift front can be the entry ticket to marital counselling.

So when last year's Christmas shopping dawned, I thought long and carefully and finally came up with something I thought would be the perfect present for my significant other.

However, when wrapping up the present, the shop assistant asked me "Who's the lucky guy getting this gift?"

Needless to say, I was left wondering what that says about the state of my marriage.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life on 19th Dec 2007, the original can be viewed here.

The Return of the (Long) Lunch Break

In times where employers cut pay by omitting bonuses, it seems that employees are getting even by cutting down on work hours and reviving a long lost treasure: The Lunch Break.

It does not take the skill of clairvoyance to figure out that come the end of this year, your annual discretionary payment will be - at the discretion of your employer - a lot smaller than it used to be.

While a lot of people came through last year's bonus season relatively unscathed, that is unlikely to happen this year where the number of banks doing well does not exceed the counting skills of a 4-year old.

And with this unfortunate outcome seemingly unavoidable, employees have drawn their own conclusions and seem to be acting accordingly.

Three years ago there was hardly a night when the trading floor was not well-manned at 9pm. It now seems difficult to find anyone around come 7pm.

Furthermore, people seem to have rediscovered socialising at lunch in order to brighten up the gloomy day-to-day proceedings.

Around St Paul's, a number of restaurants have opened in the last few weeks, and - as if the working population had only been waiting for more lunch joints - the likes of D Sum 2 and Le Pain Quotidien have been crowded from day one.

Bumping into a friend at LPQ, his only comment was: "If you look at how crowded this place is, you could wonder exactly where that recession is."

Right now, bankers sans bonus are not committed enough to spend their lunch breaks with a soggy sandwich, surfing the web at their desks. Nor are they too stretched to not be able to afford a sit-down lunch several times a week. We are after all, still speaking about suffering on a fairly high level.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life on 08-Sep-08. The original can be found here.

It's Raining Cabs. Not.

There are 21,000 black cabs in London.

Unless it's raining and you need one, then there are none.

Agreed, there is a recession upon us and I know we all have to tighten our belts, but every once in a while I take the liberty to take a black cab.

And most of the time, the cabbies are perfectly fine, sometimes up for a chat, sometimes not. Sometimes you end up with one monologueing about how foreigners take all our jobs (clearly not recognising that he is driving around a foreigner) and sometimes they are just too busy handling their mobiles, a bag of crisp and driving a car at the same time.

Sometimes you find the ones with the light off who agree to pick you up because it's on the way, sometimes you find those with the light on who don't pick you up because they don't like the destination.

However, it seems that once it starts raining, they all disappear. It is impossible to find a taxi in the City when it pours down. Agreed that demand probably spikes, but hey - 21,000 cabs?

Maybe it's just that when there is a prolonged period of precipitation in London, all cabbies decide to go back to their houses in sunny Florida.

If you don't believe - try it: Ask your next cab driver about his house in Florida! Chances are he'll have one and he'll happily tell you about the benefits of hibernating in warmer climes.

Because that's what he does when you are being left in the rain.

Don't Ask Me, I Just Work Here!

For some time I have been increasingly underwhelmed by the shop assistants you find in many high street stores.

What is the point of asking them if they know as much about what they are selling as you do?

From what I recall, it all started out with a visit to a electronic store because my camera (that I had bought in a store of the same chain) was not working properly. The person behind the counter clearly had neither knowledge about cameras nor any intention to help me and recommended going to Jessops. That was a surprising recommendation since I had not bought the camera there and I would have thought their inclination to help would probably be even smaller.

A similar incident occurred when buying a phone which we wanted to make sure that it could be muted. Asking the shop assistant she started reading the pack (which I had done before) and then concluded that the pack didn't say anything. I thought: "Thank you for being my reading assistant, I do have trouble with this occasionally".

I ended up asking her whether we could return the phone if it did not have the feature and simply unpacked it once I had left the store to check. If the mute button hadn't been that apparent I would have returned it right away.

It simply makes you think why anyone should not buy their goods online since the added value of buying offline seems to be fairly limited.

Then again, there are pleasant exceptions: In a standard High Street shop of all places, an employee surprised us with being helpful, knowledgable and - what seems to be very rare - feeling quite passionately about what he was trying to sell.

And you certainly don't want this rare passion to disappear simply because we all end up buying everything from Amazon.

The Traffic Warden From Heaven

I always thought traffic wardens are supposed to write tickets and not point out to you that you shouldn't park where you park but that there is space on the other side of the street.

Who knew how wrong I could be?

Last Sunday, after a pub lunch out of town, we went into Kensington to meet a friend in the afternoon. After navigating our way through a maze of one-way streets, we finally found our destination and a parking spot right across the street from it.

Whilst we were still packing our things and our baby, a traffic warden walked past, but from our side there was no cause for concern since I thought I had legitimately parked the car.

Whilst walking past us he said: "I don't suppose you have a resident's permit, but let's assume I haven't seen that. However, if you want peace of mind, why don't you just pull your car over to the other side where there is a single yellow line which means it is allowed to park there this time of the day?"

From previous experiences, traffic wardens are usually fairly un-approachable and not susceptible to common sense at all.

Whether it was the fact that we were in the middle of getting our baby out of the car (which usually gets young a "young family" bonus) or he was just having a good day, I don't know .

And it doesn't matter, it's the result that counts.

And the fact that he played a role in rounding off a very pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Effortlessly.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

A recent re-connect with a friend, the lack of quality drinking locations in the City and general depression brought us to grab a pint at "The Bolt Hole" off Cannon Street which turned into a after-work horror trip.

While the price of £6.40 for two 275ml bottles of Beck's (that being probably the worst beer that Germany could come up with) is already quite shocking, a more frightening experience occurred when visiting the gents'.

Looking into the bathroom mirror, suddenly an image appeared on that mirror announcing the release of the movie "Mirrors". I was surprised and intrigued about how nifty the projection on the mirror worked but what was being shown was fairly standard "Mirrors - In Theatres October 08" fare and therefore unremarkable.

Continuing to go about my business I turned my head away, and the next time I looked back towards the mirror, I was shell-shocked.

A rather distressed woman was seemingly behind the mirror, pressing her hands against it and screaming, eager to break through.

The announcement had changed to "There is evil on the other side."

And on this side, I was left wondering how small bottles of bad beer can cause such a trip.

Feel Free to Comment on My Life

Where did this come from? Initially we liked Facebook because we could post pictures and connect with friends we had lost touch with (apart from the fact that it was probably ok to lose touch with them).

Then we all felt compelled to update our online status whereever we were and whatever we did (well, probably not to that extent, but it felt as if people were giving away a lot of information about their whereabouts and whatabouts).

And at some point, probably when Facebook updated themselves to a new version, they introduced that people could comment on your status.

So, when doing innocuous little updates such as

"[mdtb] is at the gym."

you suddenly find people leaving comments like

"What are you doing this for, Fatboy?"

That's when I realised you're not only putting up your life, you're actually putting it up for debate.

So you better have a good reason for it.

Random Thought #4: Look Up!

Dogs can't do it, but you can. And in a very "Dead Poet's Society" way, it does in fact open up a new perspective.

As I recently walked through St. Katherine's Dock, a location I pass through with quite some regularity, I found myself waiting in a queue at the ATM, killing time, leaning backwards and spotting some artefact on a wall I hadn't seen before since I had never looked up there.

It turned out (as indicated by a plaque) that the artefact, a block of clear perspex showing a picture of a crown (more on it here) was planned to be featured in the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but was then replaced by the very well-known monolith.

I was fairly surprised that such a thing had escaped my attention for all the times I had walked past but felt that it simply confirms common sense.

Most of the time we only pay attention to what is clear view, usually at eye level and below. This is why supermarkets put whatever they want to sell you right there and not at a height of 7 feet. You wouldn't simply notice things up there (and you wouldn't be able to reach them but that's secondary).

On occasions it is great fun to walk through London and force yourself to pay attention to everything higher than let's say 10 feet.

You will be surprised about the amount of Gargoyles and statues you will find, as much as you will be simply putting a new angle on buildings that you might have walked past hundreds of times.

It beats reading the METRO hands down.

And by the way, dogs can look up as well but I thought it would make for a good opener.