Swiss rolls over
BEHIND his sleek exterior the investment banker is a worried man. He works for one of the two big Swiss banks which are merg- ing, they expect to lose 3,000 jobs in the City, and what worries him is that his may not be one of them. By the time he has col- lected this year's bonus and has been paid off as his contract provides, he need never work again for anyone, least of all for the intolerable Swiss. It may be time to quit. Investment banking has been a great busi- ness for people like him but less rewarding for its owners. Some have gone bust, like Yamaichi or Barings, which sank beneath the waves paying bonuses to the last. Some are retiring hurt, like BZW and NatWest Markets. The survivors will find better ways of bringing their performers' risks and rewards into line with their own. So, for all the talk of £1 billion of City bonuses, the winners, as Edward Heathcoat Amory notes, are not spraying their money around as they used to. They have lost the urge to keep up with the Horlicks in the Bolions, for what (they ask) is going to service their enormous mortgage next year and the year after? How much better, like my worried banker, to hope to pay cash.
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