Barclays European research head has a story to make you retire
What’s life all about? If you ask a bank junior, it might be about yachts, fine wines, fast cars, or wagyu beef. If you ask Barclays’ head of European equity research, it’s much simpler: fishing, wine, and playing the guitar with your friends.
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Last week, Vicki Stern announced her retirement. Stern is (for the time being) still Barclays’ head of European leisure research, and has been with the with bank for over 16 years. Nonetheless, she is stepping away – and in a philosophical post shared on social media, Stern said that her decision was influenced by her boss, who appears to be Barclays’ head of European equity research, Rupert Jones. She credited a story sent around during Covid by Jones as having “rung true for me for some time now”.
The story is that of The Mexican Fisherman, written by Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll, that you may have been forwarded by an elderly relative at some point in your life: the basic premise is that a fisherman (either Mexican or Spanish, but inevitably Spanish-speaking) is confronted by a capitalistically-minded tourist who sees him relaxing in the coastal afternoon sun.
The tourist (occasionally a Harvard MBA) encourages the fisherman to fish more and buy a bigger boat and a canning factory etc., with the inevitable goal of being able to relax in the afternoon sun without stress. In an ironic “gotcha!” moment, the fisherman is unimpressed with the proposal, as he is already enjoying the life described by the tourist as an end-goal.
Ironically, the parable seems to only really ring true for the “tourists” rather than the “fishermen” reading it. “Having learnt so much about hotels/leisure in general given the wonderful sector I landed myself on, the next chapter of my life will see me leverage all that great knowledge on a personal level,” Stern said on social media. We would be very curious to know how many leisurely Latin fishermen who had never bought a bigger boat or canning factory could afford such comforts.
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