BANKING’S TOP TEAMS SEEK NEW PASTURES
THE EXODUS of senior banking talent continues – and with it, some interesting tales emerge.
Take Merrill Lynch’s broking star Simon Fraser, who has informed his clients Man, Meggitt and Capital One Shopping Centres he is leaving them at the end of the year for pastures new. Quite literally, in this case, as Fraser owns an estate in Suffolk and is abandoning the City for a life as a farmer.
Meanwhile, you may know David Tait, who resigned from UBS Investment Bank last Friday after his trading team was axed, as the global head of macro directional trading at the Swiss bank.
Or perhaps you will recognise him as the lunatic who has scaled Everest four times, “dancing with death” on the Khumbu icefall on his most recent ascent in May. “It was an ordeal from start to finish,” said Tait at the time.
Although it’s arguably nothing compared to working 14-hour days to help the UBS bottom line for the last two years, only to see a rogue trader “throw a spanner in the works”. “People feel the rug has been pulled out from under their feet,” said one battle-scarred UBS mole.
GOING WITH A BANG
CALLING anyone who can remember the City before the Big Bang. On 26 October, Brian Winterflood of Winterflood Securities (right), Alan Yarrow from The Securities Institute and the London Stock Exchange are holding a twenty-fifth anniversary reunion for anyone who worked on the LSE floor before 1985.
The youngest person expected at the Drapers Hall party will be 45, and the oldest would have been 101 – except Jimmy Herbert, who started his stockbroking career as an office boy in 1929, unfortunately died two weeks ago. “We hoped to have him as the guest of honour,” said organiser Simon Cowan of Redmayne Bentley, who used the Big Bang to launch the first interdealer broker First Equity.
Tickets for the charity event are on sale for £100 – for cocktails, “light music” and “very nice gifts” from the LSE, RSVP to Yasmin Kazi on 0207 696 5471.
PINK LADIES
THEY weren’t pushed – they jumped. Out of a plane, at 12,000 feet, in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer.
Step forward Deloitte partner Ellie Patsalos and Linda Taylor, the managing director of beauty distributor Kenneth Green Associates, who were part of a team of seven pink ladies (pictured top right) who raised £165,000 by completing the tandem sky dive.
Meanwhile, Kreab Gavin Anderson associate Natalie Biasin did an all-nighter last Saturday by taking part in the Shine nocturnal marathon with four colleagues.
Help them beat their target of raising £3,000 for Cancer Research UK by visiting http://www.justgiving.com/Kreab-Gavin-Anderson2
CHAMPAGNE FOR LIFE
HURRY while stocks last: hedge fund godfather Lord Stanley Fink and his business partner David Johnstone are offering all the women in the City free champagne through their Free Holdings venture.
Anyone who signs up for a Champagne for Life card before Sunday will receive a free case of Laurent Perrier with their lifelong membership that ensures a glass of champagne on the house every time members visit one of London’s 50 affiliated venues. The catch? A one-off fee of £500. See http://champagneforlife.com/joinus