Half of City accused of being drunk

Last month, City broker Venetia Thompson wrote a tell-all tale of hedonism and debauchery in London's trading rooms, which was published in the Spectator.  This month, according to the Daily Mail, Venetia Thompson is on the dole queue (see endnote).   

Mind you, looking at what she was saying, I'm not surprised. 

Her article was titled, "Essex and the City: My life as a 'posh bird' broker", and tells the romps and high jinks at broker Cantor Fitzgerald.  In the shockgen write up she tells of "getting up at 5.45 a.m. having often been out until past midnight with clients ... I discovered that getting up so early invariably meant not having enough time to sleep off the alcohol and thus meant turning up at my desk at 7 a.m. still drunk."

Now she is writing everywhere. 

In the Daily Telegraph, she recounts the pleasant story of "the "six-hour lunch when I heard a colleague say to the sommelier: 'Just keep each bottle under £600', only to be asked by his client if he would mind if he ordered a particular Brunello that came in just short of £800."

And how everyone in the City is drunk.

"I'd been drinking since 11.30am and, after an hour of staggering around trying to find people I knew, while avoiding the perilous wooden decking in my Louboutins, I retired to the bathroom for a nap.  I arrived home at 4.30am. One of my clients was still on the dancefloor as I left, and another had passed out under the chocolate fountain. I was at my desk by 7am. Was I still a little drunk? Perhaps, along with every other trader and broker at the party.  The reality is that half the City is functioning on very little sleep at least two days a week, and more often than not still drunk from the night before."

Half of the City drunk?  More like all of Britain according to most claims.

Well, at least she isn't hooked on Quaaludes, cocaine and all sorts of other concoctions, like the Wolf of Wall Street. 

The thing is, are traders unlike everyone else?

Apparently so.  Jason Zweig, author of the book "Your Money and Your Brain: How the New  Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich", found that images of the brains of drug addicts about to take another hit were indistinguishable from the brain scans of traders about to place another trade.

Maybe that's why they are addicted personalities.

The motto must therefore be that to make loadsamoney in the City of London or Wall Street, you've got to be a drugged out crazy alcoholic with no manners.

No wonder, we're so good at this in Britain!

 

Postnote:

(a) she received her FSA licence in November 2007 and hence was only fully working away in this environment for a max of three months before being thrown out by Cantors, which is why she is telling all of the little she knows;

(b) her title "Essex and the City" is ripped off from my blog "Sexism and the City" written way back in September 2007;

(c) I live in Essex and don't like the aspersion of being typified as a 'typical Essex boy';

(d) anyway mate, I'm orf to get a Bacardi Breezer or 20 wiv me chav dealer chums darn at the old Bull and Bear in our yella fewawwis ...

Comments

[Nick]

Actually, she worked in that environment for over a year, I know that as fact. And it was as she said, and as several of my friends and acquaintances in the city will attest to as well. get it right fella

[Chris Skinner]

Nick

You obviously don't read my blog very often as it's meant to be funny and factual. In this column, I did not say she was lying, just that she was accredited for only three months. Get it right back!

Chris