Sunday, July 26, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Book Review : CityBoy by Geraint Anderson
Rating : 3/5
Overall, its a quick read book. Nothing spectacular about it. Fairly crude!
It takes atleast 3 chapters for one to start getting into the book and be actually convinced that Geraint is not trying to write a book to make things sound cool, but that they are actual events of his life. A lot of the talk about chinese wall breakdown and analyts maintaining the "buy" or "hold" strategies based on the quality of beer they get treated to, is already common knowldge to the investment banking junta. But its shocking to realise that it still exists today after it was blamed as a major cause of the dot com bubble (refer "Blood on the street") .
Neverthless its interesting to view the City through an Analyst's lens. Now when I bump into one of them in the office, I'll probably just be looking for the blood shot eyes and black circles to prove my conviction. Though he tries to stereotype every investment banker as a druggie who takes part in sex orgies (like himself), those characteristics dont match with any of the bankers I work with on a daily basis. But it seems very possible to have a few Geraints in some of the desks, as it seems to be a very critical component in some of the the client schmoozing businesses that run in the banks.
I completely give it to Geraint to have the ba$%s to openly offend each and every banker on the street. But he should know better than any of us that these ppl are mentally so tough, and even lashing them in public is not going to stop them from doing whatever possible to continue minting money. (That doesn't mean to say they should be lashed, because then I might be an indirect victim since I feed into this rich food chain:)
The bank aliases are intriguing, but very easy to google and hunt down.
Megashite - Dresdner Kleinwort
Banque Inutile - Soc Gen
Scheissebank - Commerzbank
Mighty Yankbank - Citigroup
Managed to dig this out as well :http://excellence.thomsonreuters.com/awards/extel/brokerage-rankings/2004/pan-european-survey- Go to Equity Sectors -> Utilities
Overall, its a quick read book. Nothing spectacular about it. Fairly crude!
It takes atleast 3 chapters for one to start getting into the book and be actually convinced that Geraint is not trying to write a book to make things sound cool, but that they are actual events of his life. A lot of the talk about chinese wall breakdown and analyts maintaining the "buy" or "hold" strategies based on the quality of beer they get treated to, is already common knowldge to the investment banking junta. But its shocking to realise that it still exists today after it was blamed as a major cause of the dot com bubble (refer "Blood on the street") .
Neverthless its interesting to view the City through an Analyst's lens. Now when I bump into one of them in the office, I'll probably just be looking for the blood shot eyes and black circles to prove my conviction. Though he tries to stereotype every investment banker as a druggie who takes part in sex orgies (like himself), those characteristics dont match with any of the bankers I work with on a daily basis. But it seems very possible to have a few Geraints in some of the desks, as it seems to be a very critical component in some of the the client schmoozing businesses that run in the banks.
I completely give it to Geraint to have the ba$%s to openly offend each and every banker on the street. But he should know better than any of us that these ppl are mentally so tough, and even lashing them in public is not going to stop them from doing whatever possible to continue minting money. (That doesn't mean to say they should be lashed, because then I might be an indirect victim since I feed into this rich food chain:)
The bank aliases are intriguing, but very easy to google and hunt down.
Megashite - Dresdner Kleinwort
Banque Inutile - Soc Gen
Scheissebank - Commerzbank
Mighty Yankbank - Citigroup
Managed to dig this out as well :http://excellence.thomsonreuters.com/awards/extel/brokerage-rankings/2004/pan-european-survey- Go to Equity Sectors -> Utilities
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)