Lunchtime Links: The nightmare that is being married to a banker
There are upsides to being married to someone who works in investment banking, (assuming they're very successful). You will probably not, for example, have to fold your own clothes, or cook your own dinner. On the other hand, however, you probably will have to put up with long periods of neglect by your spouse, and to tolerate the company of ultra-competitive rival WAGs.
An excerpt from a new book on Lehman, printed in Vanity Fair, shows just how bad marrying into banking can be. Although it describes how Joe Gregory's wife had a 'personal staff of about 30' and therefore absolutely no need to lay the
table herself for dinner parties, the sacrifices made in the name of banking appear to be immense.
"As a Lehman wife, you raised your kids by yourself," says Karin Jack, spouse of another former Lehman COO. "You had your babies by yourself in the hospital. And then you were supposed to be happy and pretty and smiling when there was an event, and you really would have liked to strangle somebody."
Jack goes on to describe how her child had a seizure and she wanted to take him to a doctor, but couldn't because the Lehman men were waiting for her in a helicopter and refused to leave until she came too.
Other banks may be less extreme than Lehman was, but there were vague echoes of the all-consuming lifestyle in Fortune's recent portrait of Jon Winkelreid, the former Goldman COO and co-president turned rancher. The extreme demands of senior-bankerdom seemed to get to Winkelreid: "In the executive office of Goldman we had something called 'executive office whereabouts.' They know where you are every minute. They should know where you are every minute," he reflected.
Former Lehman COO becomes head of MacBank EMEA. (Financial Times)
Goldman shareholders wanted to claw back 'excessive compensation' of previous years. (The Times)
Warren Buffett says Goldman Sachs has got a place in the universe. (Telegraph)
Goldman made $100m in net trading revenues on 131 days last year, beating previous high of 90 days. (Financial Times)
Goldman admits that adverse publicity has become a major threat. (Curious Capitalist)
Tweets from (the fake) Lucas Van Praag. (FT)
UK banks took no notice of Alistair Darling when setting pay. (Bloomberg)
Stuart Gulliver considers his 10m package justified. (Bloomberg)
Stuart Gulliver is underpaid. (DealBook)
"Mr Green's determination to push on pay is a bad misjudgment." (Financial Times)
John St John makes a comeback. (Financial News)
Former UKFI head of market investments John Crompton is to become global head of equity capital markets at HSBC. (Financial Times)
Easy money trumps the weak economy. (Reuters)
