Inside Information Brings Relief

We are all privy to inside information throughout our lives. The most high profile and frowned upon (read: illegal) relates to trading. Let me just say that everybody knows it goes on all the time in the City still, but is indefensible as what is often forgotten is that there is a victim on the other side of all those trades. However most inside information is harmless, and can be obtained by pure random chance - or capitalising on a situation with some covert research.

Given the importance of the impending cull, I have been naturally keen to confirm that my neck is not going to be on the block when the big day comes. It makes a few spending decisions such as my Spring holiday that bit easier to decide - will it by Cyprus or Great Yarmouth?

Whenever I am the last one in the office, which is a frequent occurrence at present even when not that busy (now is a time to be 'seen', which is bullshit I know, but is the way it works), I often take a moment to go around and turn off some people's monitors. I have a strong green streak within me that hates to see energy wasted, even when I am not paying for it.

To my surprise, when I glanced into my Boss' office last night, he had clearly left for the day, but had left his PC on and completely unlocked. What would you do? Perhaps you would feel an ethical dilemma - wanting to respect privacy and not take advantage. To do unto others as they would do to you.

I on the other hand had no such conflict, given that my Boss probably browses our mails, and would stab any of us in the back in a second to save his own well-endowed behind.

So after moving the mouse to ensure his PC did not auto-lock, I quietly went back to my desk for another 15mins to ensure there was no return. I then scouted around the office to confirm nobody important was still around. After that, I completed a highly efficient turnover of his office and mailbox that would have made a professional burglar proud. Let me add I did not look for or read anything personal - none of my business and frankly I have no interest in his family life. There was no wasting time on anything other than a search for those small items of interest.

It took all of about 30 seconds to open his various folder trees and locate the Budget --> Resourcing --> 2009 folder that was most of interest. There was nothing too obvious apart from a locked spreadsheet attached to one mail - a quick search in other mails in the folder revealed the password. So within a minute, to my surprise I had come across a breakdown of what my entire team earned in 2008 (base and bonus), along with base for 2009.

That only made me feel better because I am amazed how little some of them are earning. If ever you needed proof that a strategic move or two throughout your early career - along with renegotiation on the way - pays better than serving your time at the same bank, then I have it. Put it this way, I won't be complaining too much going forwards. What it did *not* do was answer the more important question: so besides taking a print out to browse for my own amusement on the Tube home, I closed that and sifted his folders. Nothing in there I could see of relevance either, and then I found his notebook under some papers on the desk.

Sure enough a number of pages back from the most recent was a header scrawled 'Resource Review'. Here I could see the Boss had listed the entire team's names (except his own, naturally) with a couple of comments. These seemed to be justification (or otherwise) for keeping each of us - perhaps during a roundtable session with other Desk managers to discuss headcount reductions, who knows? Next to mine were the words "business critical work, high experience", which sounded nicely like a justification. Others had similar comments, and by contrast several others who were in my own 'bottom 5' assessment had comments such as "low experience, low impact", "project coming to end", "issues working with xxxx".

It felt rather like a conspiracy reading through those notes, but I am 90% sure I found what I was looking for. It was further confirmed when I noticed a black line next to the left of two of the names. That would tie in with my view of the percentage reduction required for the cull but he might have been idly doodling I suppose.

One is a nice chap who has just joined in January to backfill a voluntary leaver - for me he was only taken on to keep up our numbers and so is prime cannon fodder. The other was the junior trader who has just quit under those somewhat mysterious circumstances. I have also confirmed the date of the cull through a source, but am not going into any details.

Anyway, suffice to say that I am feeling about as relaxed as anybody in the firm can be right now, knowing not only that I am almost certainly safe (this time), but seem to be doing relatively well on the cash front compared to most of my colleagues. Disgraceful I know, I'll down an extra shot of Ruski tonight with my Hail Mary's.

Whispering Rumours, Job Cuts & Backstabbing

It goes without saying that the mood in the City right now is sombre, and as bad as I have ever seen. What's more worrying is that even the old timers who are serving life sentences at the bank also comment on how they have never seen anything this bad.

However as with investing, people need to detach those emotions and put everything into perspective, or we risk sensationalising the situation like the press.

Yes we're in for a tough year or two. For the vast majority of us that simply means a little belt tightening and dealing with some jobs worries. Otherwise there is really no meaningful difference. For that minority who end up out of work or losing their homes it is a different story of course, but that's not something that will happen to me as I'm financially insulated. While I feel sorry for those in that position, you make your own bed in life to a large extent, whether you realise it or not.

Strangely I'm still fending off calls from headhunters despite the downturn, and am delaying final round interviews at a couple of decent firms purely to cover my angles ahead of the next round of job cuts at my bank. It seems a little odd to me to be in such a fortunate position, especially as I know plenty of people who have already been out of work for as much as 15mths now, which I'm sure must be horrendous.

Everyday at work, beyond the buzz of the trading floor, there are whispers as bankers quietly discuss the latest job rumours. Despite assurances from senior management after the last round before Christmas that that was it, these mostly focus upon when the next round will be. I for one am far too cynical to believe the last cull was anything other than the start of the process. Why? I researched and asked old timers what has happened before in these circumstances and they knowingly told me the process.

Senior bankers seem to actively do their best to depress their workforce in times like this. Mostly it's because rather than biting the bullet and cutting 25% of the workforce in one go like they ought to, and being able to convincingly tell all the remainder they are now safe, they instead go about it via 3 or 4 rounds of 10% cuts (or smaller rounds that are not noticed as much), spaced over a year or more. That leaves everybody scared, depressed and fearing they will be next.

The City's an interesting place to work, where people do take a certain malicious glee in discussing and joking about the possibility of job losses in the same way we discuss companies and financial opportunities. I am no exception, and as such have been busy spreading the rumour that a cut is imminent in early February, and bandying around figures as high as 10-15%.

In my case I have analysed the percentage gone so far, and that estimate seems quite realistic. I have even gone so far as to draw up a spreadsheet of my team members, to work out who the next 1 or 2 should be to go in the next round. I'm being honest with myself and don't think I factor in the bottom 5, hence my assumption I should be some way off the firing line at present. Or so I like to comfort myself.

Nonetheless that doesn't take into account the huge amounts of political maneouvering and backstabbing that is an everyday part of City life. You never quite know what else is going on out of sight, particularly in earlier times at some of the other places I worked.

At another bank, when I joined I quickly worked out that a colleague, Irish Al, had a deep loathing of our manager. Not so unusual you might think, until I learned that 'The Dome', as he was known due to his shining, bald head and apparent desire for all of us to worship at his feet whenever possible to feed his ego, had secured a fast promotion from the new group head when he took over. He did this by meeting with him and planting the idea that he had come up with the idea for a new product that was making us lots of money in the markets.

The reality was that Irish Al had devised it, but to his amazement soon found himself working for the underachieving Dome - and suffering his wrath for the classic reason that he was a perceived threat. Actually now I think of it, I found out that Irish Al was fired last Wednesday from the bank.. something tells me that The Dome will still be there in his kingdom. He'll probably have his entire team sacrificed this year in order to save his own skin.

It might just disappoint you by my saying that where I work now is a refreshing improvement. That might be part of what makes it more successful. Having said that, I'm sure as times get tougher we'll see the real character of a few of those around me.