New Year's Resolution

It's been a grey old Christmas, and the family's going through a swill trough of bad feeling because of some misunderstanding over the placement of the angel on the Christmas tree. Two of the dogs are sick, a favourite plate from my college days has been broken (culprit to remain unnamed), and some poor bird has gone and blocked the woodburner chimney, meaning that we are without that comforting glow in the corner of the kitchen until we can find a sweep willing to interrupt his holidays. Saddam has been killed, so Blair and Bush can tell themselves they've achieved something, while in Romania and Bulgaria officious leaflets are apparently being circulated by the Home Office to spoil the EU accession celebrations with grim warnings about work permits and heavy fines. Actually, my sense of gloom stems mostly from the realization that this will be my nineteenth year as banker to the wealthy. One can't help dying a little inside at that thought.

I don't mean I want to get out. It's a stable job, well paid, and pleasant enough most of the time. And anyway, I'm too old to change career now. But something about my work has been bothering me the last few months and I don't know what it is. I've never really reflected much on the job - just got on with the business of making the wealthy even wealthier. Now I find myself trying to grasp at some ill-defined source of unease. My New Year's resolution is to tackle the question head on, and writing a blog seems as good a way as any of doing that.

So this is just a kind of therapy, really, as I don't suppose anyone will read this. A middle-aged banker doesn't have quite the same draw as a London call girl (although we probably share a number of clients). But then, who knows? Above all, people have always been interested in sex and money, and if forced to choose, they usually plump for the latter.

Private bankers – the kind who deign to serve only the very rich – know a lot of secrets. We look a boring lot, but you can’t deny the insides of our heads are interesting places. Rich people tell things to their bankers that doctors and priests won’t hear. Never having been rich myself, I can only guess why they do it. My theory is this: if you’re rich, the thing you care about most is your money; you have to trust someone with it, so you might as well trust that person with everything else (those embarrassing little secrets). Sometimes there are good reasons to confide in a banker, for example if there’s an illegitimate son to provide for that the wife doesn’t know about. But it’s hard to explain the more bizarre revelations.

A few weeks ago, I was required to travel to a certain small village west of Turin so that an ageing patriarch worth ninety million euros could share with me his guilty secret: for twenty years he has been putting vinegar in his favourite daughter’s fish tank. The fish have been dying prematurely, causing the poor girl continuous grief, and the patriarch has no idea why he keeps doing it. He just felt the need to confess to someone. When I asked if he’d like to consider a restructuring of his portfolio, he smiled faintly and told me I could go. A whole day wasted, with nothing to show for it – it’s not like we can charge for our time in this business.

The trouble is, these days we really are the only confessors around. Hardly anyone bothers with a priest, and the Hippocratic oath is difficult to take seriously after the Green Wing. Only private bankers really look like they will keep a secret. That’s the Swiss marketing machine for you. The odd thing is, it seems to work. Occasionally I try to wheedle client gossip out of my colleagues, but they always turn grave and say things like well of course I can’t go into that, now, can I?

Makes you want to explode sometimes, the confidentiality. Some days I long to get up on my desk and yell the truth about that fat bastard in Italy who’s been emotionally torturing his daughter.

Perhaps that’s the real attraction of writing an anonymous blog.