THE OUTSIDER: How old is too old?
Have you noticed how few old people there are on the trading floor? I don't mean geriatric. I mean over fifty.
Most trading floors have a number of people in their forties, but generally speaking the age profile is pretty young - twenties and thirties, and predominantly male, though that is another story.
I've been trying to work out what happens to the old timers. In some cases they undoubtedly leave because they can afford to retire young. Or they may not have made a huge fortune, but have at least made enough to do something they consider more interesting or worthwhile, with greater leisure potential.
Of course in many cases it is not a matter of choice - they have the decision taken for them. If they have not made it on to the management committee - and sometimes even if they have - they may not survive one of those periodic culls that make room for new and emerging talent from further down the food chain. It's a natural evolutionary process.
Or is it? When I look at other professions, which are in their different ways at least as demanding as the City - politics, say, or barristers, or the armed forces engaged on active service overseas - people are often at their best in their forties and fifties, taking on great responsibility in senior leadership positions, or heavier and more complex caseloads, drawing on wisdom and experience gained over a couple of decades, and enduring a workload that in some cases can dwarf anything most of us see in the Square Mile.
So are we getting it wrong, and failing to recognise and harness talent and experience? Undoubtedly yes.
The worst prejudices are those we do not know we have. Look at a trading floor and you expect to see young men with their shirtsleeves rolled up, ties loosened, shouting into telephones, high on testosterone. The City is the weaker for it, and never more so than when things go wrong.
Not having the wisdom and experience to draw upon out there on the trading floor means we have to re-learn the same lessons each generation.
The answer is balance. Don't see the age, see the person. Henry Grunfeld, one of the founding fathers of the last great British merchant bank, S G Warburg, carried on working till he died at 95. If more of us at least made it into our fifties before being put out to grass, the City would be stronger for it.
David Charters is a partner at advisory firm Partner Capital. He was formerly head of equity syndicate at Warburg and Deutsche in London. His latest book, 'Where Egos Dare', is published by Elliott and Thompson, price 6.99.
