GUEST COMMENT: Excuse me, but who are you to ask me why I haven't got a degree?

So, let me get this straight....you are one of the geeks who helped invent the raft of derivatives that blew the world economy into the weeds. Somehow, despite your desk of 22 year old nerds decking billions of dollars and forcing the real world to bail you out, you managed to hang onto your 'European head of blah....' role. Well done.

By contrast, having been forced out of my own, 'Head of' role by one of your geeky mates, I have spent the past five years in a much reduced capacity in Hedgefundland.

My only crime? Being a bond dinosaur in the newfangled world of Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs). Yet now, at your behest, I sit before you because you want me to return to the fold. Cash bonds are back, your TLAs are so 2007.

Your teenage 'F9' monkeys wouldn't know a bond if it rushed up and bit them on their virginal white bottoms; so here we sit, uneasily eyeing each other. Even as you regard me, 8 years your senior, through your little round stainless steel specs, you can't quite bring yourself to give it up, can you?

Your opening gambit as you seek to woo me to come and rebuild your cash trading business from the dying embers?

"Don't you find that you don't have a degree a real disadvantage in our line of business?"

I resist the temptation to push back my chair and return from my 'dentist's appointment' to the loving embrace of my Mayfair employer. The reality is that despite you and your cohort having besmirched the good name of 'investment banker', I am drawn as a moth to a flame, back to the sellside. I want to work in banking again.

But before I commit, I want to see whether you have taken the medicine and admitted the faults of the past few years. Your opening question suggests not. Despite droning on about how the, "cash business is at the core of our strategy going forward," I know in my heart of hearts that this is a façade.

Asking me why I haven't got a degree is calculated to prey upon the one weakness in my long and (though I say so myself), pretty glittering CV. In that moment you reveal to me the cancer that lies at the heart of your bank: you have no humility. You are not prepared to accept that you were wrong, to ask me for the help you need to rebuild a business and focus on what banks are supposed to do - raise money for borrowers and syndicate that risk to a wider market.

Instead, you hide behind your habit of interrupting and talking over the top of me, whilst resorting to trying to pick holes in my education of nearly 30 years ago.

The answer to your question, by the way, is "no." Nobody, in the 28 years and 6 jobs I have held has ever mentioned my lack of a degree when it has come to assessing my worth for a role.

And yes...given how badly you screwed up, despite your university education, I do resent you asking.