Fraser
The star turn from the City is provided by Ian Fraser, Chairman of Lazards and of the Accepting Houses Committee, the merchant bankers' club. It is a masterly performance. Its theme is the periodic madnesses that have seized bankers since the invention of the bill of exchange in ancient Nineveh. The Bardi of Florence were broken by a king of England whose war they financed — he unsportingly de- faulted after winning. Even 'my ancestors, the Medici', says Mr Fraser, take their knocks. Just such a madness, he maintains, consumed the world banks in the last two decades. They hired keen young men to rush out and lend money, paying them by results — though not the results they intended. They piled the debts onto their own books, where they have stayed. 'There is no cause for the self- congratulation we saw at the IMF meeting in Washington,' warned Mr Fraser, and he went on to propose a contemporary Gresham's Law: 'Bad banking drives out good'. And, to his Indian audience: 'I hope that India does not embark on a Brazilian spree.' They hope so, too, so how fortun- ate they feel to have come upon a like- minded banker.
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