Hangover remedy for bankers

It can all be rather stressful. It is well known that the Samaritans, a UK telephone-counselling service for the public, receives a higher than average number of calls over Christmas. Less well known is that investment bankers are also more likely to telephone employee assistance lines when they come back to work in the New Year.

Many banks provide assistance lines all year round as a confidential outlet for employees' problems. Robert Westlake, managing director of the Personal Effectiveness Centre, which runs the telephone counselling services at Credit Suisse First Boston and others, says calls to assistance lines fall quiet just before Christmas and then leap in January.

"People have incurred debt, behaved foolishly while drunk, or argued with their partners because they've been with them for longer than they are used to," Westlake says.

Problems are compounded by drunken faux pas with colleagues at office festivities. Banking parties will be far from lavish this year, but they are taking place none the less. Kai Ferrer, a party organiser at Pure Consulting, says some investment banks have cut spending per head to 75 (€118.5), the maximum level that is tax allowable. Two years ago, spending per head was 250, she says.

A mere 75 may not buy a three-course meal with free-flowing champagne but it will buy a lot of wine. Here lies the danger. Excessive alcohol consumption seems to be a trait of the financial services industry, particularly at Christmas. Illegal drugs may be in demand, too.

Alden Cass, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, was one of the first to highlight a relationship between financial services and heavy drinking. His 1999 study of 26 Wall Street stockbrokers aged between 22 and 32 showed the average broker took illicit substances such as cocaine, marijuana, or amphetamines twice a week, as well as drinking more than three units of alcohol five times a week.

Cass is planning a more detailed study. While insobriety in the late 1990s was often related to the intoxication of the dot-com boom, Cass says drinking has now become a more collegiate affair. He believes Wall Street financiers drink a lot together after work to medicate themselves against the stress of redundancies, erratic markets, and the continuing effects of the World Trade Center bombing.

Financial services staff in London are also drinking, although not always for the same reasons. Terry McGinnie, head of the addiction management centre at the Priory Hospital in Bromley, estimates that the Priory's London hospitals treat 1,500 City of London employees annually for drink and drug-related problems.

Heavy drinking is part of the City culture, suggests McGinnie: "Everybody drinks or takes cocaine to relieve pressure." Like Cass, he says drinking is often a form of self-medication against excessive stress.

Tackling stress is therefore a first step on the route to sobriety. Tom Conlon is a former banker who retrained as a psychologist and organisational consultant after being made redundant from an investment bank last year. He says stress and anxiety have become systemic in banking. Poor bonuses are the source of the angst.

"People went into banking to make a lot of money. Now the myth of high pay has disappeared, they're sitting there and wondering why they're doing their job," says Conlon.

Employees who were prepared to put up with long hours and looming redundancy in return for huge pay packets will not do so now that packages are reduced. Until this is acknowledged, managers and employees will feel themselves victims of the changing environment; stress is inevitable, says Conlon.

As a remedy, Conlon prescribes neither Christmas parties nor after-work drinks. He says angst can be dealt with only by rebuilding trust between employers and employees. This means bankers must be partners in decision-making, instead of hirelings bought off with high pay.

Conlon is set to put his theory into practice after Christmas, when he will begin working at an investment bank to "resurrect the partnership between employees and their managers".

In the meantime, bankers can take matters into their own hands. Instead of countering stress through drink or telephone counselling, the wise will use the Christmas party as an opportunity to bond with their boss.