Tomorrow's Business Today
Pinned to the wall, mooed at like a cow
Two stories from the news.
1) Santander hired a law firm to investigate a bankers’ strip club trip.
2) A former Goldman Sachs banker has written an expose which includes the claim, among many others, that she was “Pinned to the wall” and “mooed at like a cow”.
This comes as the City investment bank drama Industry, returns to TV for a second series this month.
It will be full of sex and drugs, general appalling behaviour, and bankers routinely calling each other the worst swear word in the English language.
All of which feels very 80s. Or 90s maybe. It can’t still be like that, in woke 2022, can it?
Plainly vestiges of that culture still exist.
Goldman says it has “a zero-tolerance policy for the discrimination or retaliation against employees reporting misconduct”.
The problem for the banks from a PR and perhaps a recruitment point of view is that whatever the official stance, these things are tolerated at some level, by some senior people.
The banker who tells a colleague “if I could, I’d rip your f***ing face-off”, ought to be sacked.
That he survives is almost this private wink to others. It says, if you make us enough money, we still don’t really care how you behave.
Perhaps the skill of the banks here is to have such awful records that no-one is that surprised by fresh revelations.
It is a PR strategy, of sorts.
Press release of the day
What do small firms want from the government on the energy crisis?
They seem as keen on a windfall tax on the energy giants as most of the rest of us, according to this from Iwoca.
They do also like the mooted reversal in corporation tax and national insurance rises.
Stories that will keep rolling
1) What’s the latest data for the Bank of England and Fed to ponder before rate rises this week?
2) Is there any sense in the Bank trying to move faster than the Fed?
3) Is expanding in the public sector working out for Galliford Try?
4) Which stocks do well when bond yields are rising?
