In recent years, well, ever since Tom Wolfe wrote ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ anyway, major players in the financial world seem to have become imbued with the obsession with their desire for membership of an exclusive club.
In order to get in, you don’t have to know anything, you don’t have to be particularly well-qualified, and you can get admitted for free, but never-the-less, it still manages to maintain its exclusivity.
All you need is an overbearing manner, a bullying temperament, an overweening belief in your own self-importance, an obsession with the importance of utter irrelevancies, oh, and I almost forgot, to have overseen the complete collapse of a major financial institution with world record-breaking losses.
To lose a few quid is easy; while to count among the ranks of the big global wreckers, you have to be able to count in millions; but to get into this club, you have to count your losses in billions, anything less, and you are just a piker!
This ‘vaulting ambition’ as it was described fitted no one more clearly than Dick Fuld, referred to in a Times article, as ‘…the almost unbearably intense man who had been chairman and chief executive of Lehman since 1993, surrounded with a cult of personality, a “command-and-control CEO”, those closest to him slaved like courtiers to a medieval monarch, second-guessing his moods and predilections…’
Then there is Adam Applegarth, the cricket-loving Tynesider with no banking qualifications who took Northern Rock straight down the tubes.
Finally and probably keeping the best to last there is ‘Fred the Shred’ as he was known by the disgruntled employees whom he threw on the street in his periodical cost-cutting episodes. Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, some will feel, is the leading contender for the title of world’s worst banker. I can’t imagine any of the lower orders whom he so cavalierly removed along the way in support of his share-price, will shed any salt tears for him.
What connects these hapless three apart from their egos!
Their obsession with complete irrelevancies appears to be a common thread.
Fuld inspired great fear, his staff fretting over minute details of his schedule down to the flower arrangements in his surroundings, oh, and insulating him from trouble – from almost anything he might not want to hear.
Flower arranging, God help us, or sports figures!
Applegarth was described in an article in the Times as having a brash, and at times arrogant, personality who was obsessed by cricket statistics.
"He had a habit of asking people who their top five fast bowlers were," said one observer. "And when they gave their opinion he would fire back that they were wrong and the real answer was X, Y and Z." Those who disagreed with Applegarth or questioned his decisions were brushed aside.
Another obsession seems to be clothing.
Fuld’s ferocity was said to be intimidating, ‘…his eyebrows beetling tight over his hard eyes, his brutally angular brow appearing to contort in rage. He would regularly upbraid colleagues for minor wardrobe malfunctions – in Dick’s book, that tended to mean anything other than a dark suit and a white shirt…’
Goodwin was the same, obsessed with clothing!
‘…Sir Fred ran a tight ship and, according to one former colleague, brooked no criticism. He had curious fads, insisting that his executives dress conservatively and that every senior male wear a tie with the RBS logo…’
Boy, mustn’t that have been fun. There you are, a senior executive of a major bank, probably earning £3-400,000 easily, don’t tell me you buy your suits at C&A. Just how elegant must some tacky, greasy, polyester RBS logo tie look with your Gieves and Hawkes bespoke double worsted and your Turnbull and Asser shirt?
I could go on but I think the point is made.
What all these men, and a whole load of others I could name, all seem to have in common is the fact that they had left their humanity behind. They had lost sight of their ordinary commonality and they had begun to believe the bullshit that got periodically written about them. They had begun to believe their own press releases, always a dangerous temptation.
Of even greater concern however, is that they had all allowed their egos to rule their common sense, and they had begun to think that they could go on and on pushing the margins of risk and financial experimentation without ever bothering to think of the consequences.
Trouble is, there are still a lot like them, still out there, and still, for now, in command of their financial institutions. I wonder who will be the next to add to the list of club members?
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