Mr N has been pressing me for his philanthropy consultant. My delaying tactics have not worked. As a result, today I had a certain Dr D come in to see me.
Dr D spent an hour talking about sinking wells in Zambia, bringing justice to the oppressed in Uruguay, protecting widows in India from the contempt of their neighbours, and developing a vaccine for malaria. He managed to sound entirely saintly, and make me feel thoroughly unworthy.
I asked him about his fees.
They were outrageous.
Dr D is taking the piss.
I’m going to find some other way to satisfy Mr N's new-found altruistic urges. I’m damned if Dr D and his ilk will see a penny from the assets under my management.
Thursday 28 June 2007
Tuesday 26 June 2007
Down with the Rich
We seem to be enjoying a resurgence of millionaire-bashing by the Labour Party, as they change their indistinguishable guard, and the feral media, incensed over this private equity nonsense. Presumably it will pass, as indignation in the face of the rich always seems to pass in this country, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let the opportunity to stick my oar in drift by unsnatched.
Let's be grossly simplistic here:
1. No one should pay more tax than they absolutely have to.
2. The rich are able to afford people like me to ensure they abide by 1, even if less well remunerated people do not.
3. This may seem grotesquely unfair, but it is neither a. illegal or b. immoral according to any intelligible natural order.
4. If you want to make the rich pay more tax, you need only persuade the (Socialist) politicians to change the tax code, a thing they are most unlikely to do given how fluid global capital is these days and how quickly it can vanish from an environment that develops hostile characteristics.
The truth is, objecting to the rich is about as productive an occupation as striking one's head repeatedly against a building one has taken a dislike to. Believe me - I've loathed enough of them in my time. And let us not forget that the richer they become, the more likely they are to hire plumbers to install jacuzzis, beauticians to paint their dogs' toenails, and astrologers to advise their children on the seating plans for their fourth birthday parties. It is a myth, these days at least, that the rich do not spend their money. Much as I would love them all to keep every penny locked away under my management, very few do.
And who knows? Your very own most hated billionaire may be about to donate half his net wealth to your favourite charity. It's happening more and more, it grieves me to say.
Thursday 21 June 2007
Private Equity
The grilling of Buffini et al in Parliament: delightful!
My clients have done very well out of private equity over the years, but one can't help enjoying this circus.
Future generations will look back on the current obsession with a cleaner's tax bill in utter bemusement. Since when did cleaners pay tax anyway? I thought they were all undeclared Somalis and Lithuanians. We should surely be commending the private equity crowd for their principled employment practices.
My clients have done very well out of private equity over the years, but one can't help enjoying this circus.
Future generations will look back on the current obsession with a cleaner's tax bill in utter bemusement. Since when did cleaners pay tax anyway? I thought they were all undeclared Somalis and Lithuanians. We should surely be commending the private equity crowd for their principled employment practices.
Monday 18 June 2007
My Island
I’ve been musing on the question of a project to save my soul from financial corruption. My psychotherapist has berated me twice now for not doing anything positive on this front. Go travelling, she says. Learn Arabic. Anything, so long as it’s unrelated to banking or money.
And this is what I’ve come up with.
Adjacent to our house is a small patch of farmland, just six acres, which I bought years ago when the local farmer was in need of a new tractor and offered the land to me cheap. I’ve allowed him to continue using it as before and in return he’s kept our household in fresh lamb and eggs. A happy arrangement, which came to an end this year when he sold up and moved to Florida. The new owner of the farm has no interest in farming, and is busy turning his fields into a sterile parkland complete with non-indigenous deer and the most dreadful uplighting under every newly-installed mature oak. We loathe everything the man, a Norfolk property developer, is doing to our environs (although needless to say, I’ve already been round to enquire discreetly whether he is entirely satisfied with his current banking arrangements).
Anyway, the question is what to do with our six abandoned acres.
I read an article some time ago about the depletion of natural habitat for native British wildlife, and it occurred to me that our little scrap of land could prove a useful refuge for all those birds and hedgehogs and butterflies that are apparently finding the south-east of England an increasingly barren domicile. The theory is that if enough people provide “islands” of pesticide-free, undisturbed wilderness, then all those endangered species can survive even as Mr Prescott’s tarmac and concrete despoil what remains of their one-time home.
My younger daughter loves the idea. She’s six years old and adores anything small and cuddly (which she appears to think hedgehogs are). My son, who’s becoming a science freak at the tender age of thirteen, tells me it will help reduce climate change.
I might have to make a go of it.
And this is what I’ve come up with.
Adjacent to our house is a small patch of farmland, just six acres, which I bought years ago when the local farmer was in need of a new tractor and offered the land to me cheap. I’ve allowed him to continue using it as before and in return he’s kept our household in fresh lamb and eggs. A happy arrangement, which came to an end this year when he sold up and moved to Florida. The new owner of the farm has no interest in farming, and is busy turning his fields into a sterile parkland complete with non-indigenous deer and the most dreadful uplighting under every newly-installed mature oak. We loathe everything the man, a Norfolk property developer, is doing to our environs (although needless to say, I’ve already been round to enquire discreetly whether he is entirely satisfied with his current banking arrangements).
Anyway, the question is what to do with our six abandoned acres.
I read an article some time ago about the depletion of natural habitat for native British wildlife, and it occurred to me that our little scrap of land could prove a useful refuge for all those birds and hedgehogs and butterflies that are apparently finding the south-east of England an increasingly barren domicile. The theory is that if enough people provide “islands” of pesticide-free, undisturbed wilderness, then all those endangered species can survive even as Mr Prescott’s tarmac and concrete despoil what remains of their one-time home.
My younger daughter loves the idea. She’s six years old and adores anything small and cuddly (which she appears to think hedgehogs are). My son, who’s becoming a science freak at the tender age of thirteen, tells me it will help reduce climate change.
I might have to make a go of it.
Tuesday 12 June 2007
Salad Days
Today I had a depressing encounter with a young man in the queue for my favourite salad bar.
The structure of the queue was rather chaotic, with people having to press through it to reach the pre-packed salads and the little pots of extra toppings, and it wasn’t always entirely clear who was where. Still, I was reasonably sure that this young man had been behind me in the queue, so when he pushed forward to the counter I told him so.
‘Excuse me?’ he said tersely.
‘I said, I think I was next.’
‘I don’t think so.’
By now one of the salad wallahs was hovering in front of us, waiting for an order.
‘Look, I don’t want to make a big thing about it,’ I said, ‘but you were behind me.’
He had closely cropped hair, thuggish shoulders, and a leather strap around his wrist. I was rather expecting him to swear at me, or in some other way deliver an attack that would allow me to enjoy the moral high ground even as I lost the battle. But instead he sighed and just said, ‘I’m sorry, I’d let you go ahead, but I’m just too busy. I have to get back to work.’
And with that he turned back to the salad wallah and snapped out a brisk, complicated order involving caramelized onions, pine nuts, roasted red peppers and a dozen other exotic ingredients.
What upset me more than the patronizing and withheld offer to give up his rightful place to me was the suggestion, blatant in his words, that he was busier than me. He had looked at this greying, middle-aged man and assumed I must hold some backwater job, entirely removed from the high-octane responsibilities he bore in corporate finance, or bond trading, or whatever. Because no banker of my age who’d really made it in the City would a. still be here b. be queuing for his own lunch, or c. use such feeble language. The worst of it is that he was right. Private banking is still a sleepy beat. Nothing is so urgent that we can’t take a few minutes longer in the salad queue. And that, of course, is why people like me can still hold on to our jobs. Our competence is not dependent on adrenalin.
It’s a disconcerting thing to walk through the City thinking these thoughts. You start to look around more than is good for you. You realize that of all the people around you, perhaps only one in a hundred is anywhere near your age. The streets of the City come to feel like a university town, where all the students have been given good haircuts, expensive clothes and bristling attitudes. And what does that make me? A don? One of those port-stained figures that the students laugh at behind their backs for their quaint old ways and deficient personal hygiene? A dinosaur, allowed to stay on to add colour and eccentricity to the scene until hard times make his dispatch to penurious early retirement unavoidable.
God, this is an unforgiving place.
The structure of the queue was rather chaotic, with people having to press through it to reach the pre-packed salads and the little pots of extra toppings, and it wasn’t always entirely clear who was where. Still, I was reasonably sure that this young man had been behind me in the queue, so when he pushed forward to the counter I told him so.
‘Excuse me?’ he said tersely.
‘I said, I think I was next.’
‘I don’t think so.’
By now one of the salad wallahs was hovering in front of us, waiting for an order.
‘Look, I don’t want to make a big thing about it,’ I said, ‘but you were behind me.’
He had closely cropped hair, thuggish shoulders, and a leather strap around his wrist. I was rather expecting him to swear at me, or in some other way deliver an attack that would allow me to enjoy the moral high ground even as I lost the battle. But instead he sighed and just said, ‘I’m sorry, I’d let you go ahead, but I’m just too busy. I have to get back to work.’
And with that he turned back to the salad wallah and snapped out a brisk, complicated order involving caramelized onions, pine nuts, roasted red peppers and a dozen other exotic ingredients.
What upset me more than the patronizing and withheld offer to give up his rightful place to me was the suggestion, blatant in his words, that he was busier than me. He had looked at this greying, middle-aged man and assumed I must hold some backwater job, entirely removed from the high-octane responsibilities he bore in corporate finance, or bond trading, or whatever. Because no banker of my age who’d really made it in the City would a. still be here b. be queuing for his own lunch, or c. use such feeble language. The worst of it is that he was right. Private banking is still a sleepy beat. Nothing is so urgent that we can’t take a few minutes longer in the salad queue. And that, of course, is why people like me can still hold on to our jobs. Our competence is not dependent on adrenalin.
It’s a disconcerting thing to walk through the City thinking these thoughts. You start to look around more than is good for you. You realize that of all the people around you, perhaps only one in a hundred is anywhere near your age. The streets of the City come to feel like a university town, where all the students have been given good haircuts, expensive clothes and bristling attitudes. And what does that make me? A don? One of those port-stained figures that the students laugh at behind their backs for their quaint old ways and deficient personal hygiene? A dinosaur, allowed to stay on to add colour and eccentricity to the scene until hard times make his dispatch to penurious early retirement unavoidable.
God, this is an unforgiving place.
Friday 1 June 2007
Good Causes
My client, Mr N, is asking for a philanthropy consultant. He has decided he’s got too much money and wants to give a chunk of it away. This is one of those situations where the human and the banker in me are at severe odds. Of course it’s lovely that Mr N wants to help children in Africa, but every pound he sends them will be a penny less in fees each year. As he’s talking about ridding himself of 25 million quid, that will be 250,000 pounds of annual income lost on my watch. Not great for the bonus.
It’s all the fault of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. When someone goes and donates 37 billion dollars to a good cause, people the world over start wanting to do the same thing. Which isn’t helpful to those of us – parasites that we are – who depend on their fortunes for our living.
The thing that irritates me most is this new industry of “philanthropy consultants”. These are, by and large, former private bankers or management consultants, so we can be fairly sure they’re not out to save the world. They’ve cleverly identified a new market and they’re cashing in fast. But why on earth should Mr N need to pay someone to tell him how to distribute his largesse? What’s wrong with sending a cheque to Oxfam? Mine is the agent’s irrational grief at seeing the boss waste his money on agents.
I’m going to stall him as long as I can. Mr N leads a busy professional life: with any luck he’ll forget about this for a couple of months. And by then, all kinds of scandals may have rocked the charity world. He may yet be dissuaded.
It’s all the fault of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. When someone goes and donates 37 billion dollars to a good cause, people the world over start wanting to do the same thing. Which isn’t helpful to those of us – parasites that we are – who depend on their fortunes for our living.
The thing that irritates me most is this new industry of “philanthropy consultants”. These are, by and large, former private bankers or management consultants, so we can be fairly sure they’re not out to save the world. They’ve cleverly identified a new market and they’re cashing in fast. But why on earth should Mr N need to pay someone to tell him how to distribute his largesse? What’s wrong with sending a cheque to Oxfam? Mine is the agent’s irrational grief at seeing the boss waste his money on agents.
I’m going to stall him as long as I can. Mr N leads a busy professional life: with any luck he’ll forget about this for a couple of months. And by then, all kinds of scandals may have rocked the charity world. He may yet be dissuaded.
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