THE OUTSIDER: Unfortunately, banks have become financial factories full of clones

I have always envied the flexibility that allows some people to change course in life dramatically, changing profession, emigrating, recovering from one of life's massive setbacks, or simply deciding enough is enough, they are bored and in a rut - even a very lucrative one - and want a change.

The City does not make it easy. We specialise. Markets, clients, regulations, financial instruments all change, remarkably fast. Take a year off and you're out of date and struggling to catch up. Suggest you want to switch from a successful track record in sales and trading to corporate finance and people look at you as if you are mad.

You're good, you've found your niche, you're making money, so stick with it and don't rock the boat. In an era of professional sudden death at any moment, the pressure is to milk whatever niche we find ourselves in for as much as we can as long as we can, in case the music stops.

The reason I find myself pondering mid career changes is the sudden release of talent from the public sector into the market place as a result of the government spending review.

I started my career in the Foreign Office, and when I wanted a change I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a firm called S G Warburg, which had a policy of actively seeking talent from unconventional sources - not the standard accountancy, legal or MBA backgrounds, but unusual people with interesting experience.

One of my most experienced and successful colleagues made a point of telling me he had never been to university - other than the university of life - and would never have been hired by any other firm. Another recruit joining with me was a former Royal Navy helicopter pilot who went on to become a top ranked research analyst.

The key moment for me came at the end of two days involving seventeen interviews and a handwriting test (Warburg believed in graphology as an indicator of character), when the head of the international division said 'We really like you, but we don't know what to do with you. So we're going to hire you and put you into a different department each month for six months. At the end of six months, we'll either know what to do with you, or we'll fire you.'

The first department I joined was equity syndicate. I loved the team, loved the work, and never went to any of the other departments. They took a chance and it paid off, and I will always be grateful.

Today there are people leaving the Foreign Office, who are in their forties and fifties - almost Jurassic by the standards of much of the City - still with huge energy, enthusiasm, drive and initiative, probably with more than one foreign language, interesting contacts in the places they have served overseas, and almost no relevant financial training or skills whatsoever.

Something similar could be said of the armed forces, who are shedding experienced, senior people who have served their country at the very sharp end.

Do we want them? Can we use them, when we are generally so ruthless with people who have grown up within the industry and who do have the necessary skills without the need for education and re-programming?

I fear in most cases the answer will be no, and I think it is wrong. Warburg thrived in the old days because of the extraordinary mixture of talent that it brought together and bound up in a remarkable culture. Management took the long view on talent, cultivating and nurturing it and assuming we would stay forever. In the end, Warburg failed to survive as an independent firm - for a whole variety of reasons but not, I would argue, because of the quality of its people.

Instead, the industry today is dominated by industrial scale operations that allow little scope for individuality, and almost none for mavericks, and which certainly do not seem to take the long view on talent. And I fear we are all the poorer for it.