Philip Augar is a former funding banker and the writer of many articles and several other books on the Metropolis and Wall Road.
The astonishing profession of the banker Sir Win Bischoff — the previous chair of Schroders, Citigroup and Lloyds Banking Group who died final week — spanned 60 years.
MainFT’s Patrick Jenkins wrote a beautiful obituary of Sir Win, which you’ll be able to learn right here. However I’d wish to dwell slightly extra on the backdrop to his exceptional profession. For there can scarcely have been one other interval through which the tradition, practices and enterprise mannequin of the trade modified a lot because it did through the working lifetime of 1 man.
Even for these of us who labored with Bischoff within the center and later phases of his profession (I did so for 5 years) it’s tough to think about the simplicity of the trade he entered in 1962, initially with Chase after which with Schroders.
Enterprise on Wall Road wasn’t precisely a teddy bears’ picnic again then, however battle of curiosity was minimised by the separation of banking features. US deposit-taking banks have been prevented from dealing in securities by the Glass-Steagall Act, handed after the crash of 1929. With the large boys saved out, partnerships with pores and skin within the recreation and modest quantities of capital had the sector to themselves.
Fastened fee charges on share dealing gave them a cushty residing and competitors was a matter of pleasant rivalry. Company purchasers have been thought of to be for all times, and an funding financial institution would by no means act in a hostile takeover towards one other financial institution’s consumer.
In line with former Goldman Sachs accomplice Geoffrey Boisi:
“The notion that you’d raid an organization was so ungentlemanly that within the early phases it was nearly thought of an immoral act. Within the late Nineteen Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies it was thought of improper by the generalist banker to even recommend to a CEO that he take into account promoting his enterprise. It was like asking him to promote one among his kids.”
Issues modified within the mid-Nineteen Seventies. In 1974 Morgan Stanley led an assault on Electrical Storage Battery (a Goldman Sachs consumer) and kicked off the period of hostile takeovers and fierce inter-bank competitors. The next yr the abolition of fastened commissions on Wall Road led to intense competitors between merchants.
Then in 1979 the established syndicate construction was damaged when IBM dropped its conventional banker, Morgan Stanley, as lead supervisor of its first ever bond subject in favour of Salomon Brothers and Merrill Lynch. Relationship banking was effectively and actually over.
The turning level within the Metropolis got here later, with the 1986 Huge Bang deregulation of the London Inventory Change. The US built-in funding banking mannequin — with securities dealing and company recommendation below the identical roof — changed the Metropolis’s beforehand separate service provider banks, brokers and sellers.
Conflicts of curiosity was one thing the Metropolis hadn’t needed to take care of earlier than, and a few managed it higher than others. With the rewards growing and the boundaries down, ‘purchaser beware’ changed ‘my phrase is my bond’ because the Metropolis’s code. Michael Lewis’s 1989 e-book Liar’s Poker shone a light-weight on this.
Who do you’re employed for, this man or Salomon Brothers? Who do you’re employed for? That query haunted salesmen. Every time a dealer screwed a buyer and the salesperson turned upset, the dealer would ask the salesperson, “Who do you’re employed for anyway?” The message was clear: You’re employed for Salomon Brothers. You’re employed for me. I pay your bonus on the finish of the yr. So simply shut up, you geek.
Lewis didn’t shut up however most different critics did. The Chicago faculty held sway within the Eighties and 90s, and as cheer leaders for the free market economic system, the funding banks have been in cost.
A former JPMorgan director, Alan Greenspan, was chair of the Fed and in his pomp. Inflation was below management, alternate charges secure and markets roaring. The banks persuaded the Fed to melt its enforcement of Glass Steagall and the act was lastly repealed in 1999. That opened the door to monetary providers conglomerates of breathtaking scale and complexity.
“MARKETS RULE” was Newsweek’s headline to one among its first options of the twenty first century. With it got here new advanced monetary methods and merchandise claiming to have tamed threat. “Let the market resolve” seemed to be the reply to each drawback.
After all, it didn’t work out fairly like that . . .
We have been rapidly into the dot.com crash, the accounting scandals of the early 2000s, the horror of the International Monetary Disaster and right now’s ongoing banking collapses.
Billions of {dollars} of fines, restitutions and compensation for rigging markets, busting sanctions and deceptive prospects inform us that the trade had develop into a haven for malpractice, dishonest and greed. Not solely are the merchandise offered by the trendy monetary providers trade unrecognisable from these offered sixty years in the past, so too are its values.
Which brings us again to the start. It’s telling that of their hour of want, troubled banks like Citigroup in 2007 and Lloyds in 2009 ought to have turned for management to a person schooled within the values of a unique age.
Bischoff’s life-long perception was that banks ought to put consumer pursuits first and their very own pursuits second. He noticed it not solely as the precise factor to do however one of the simplest ways to construct long run shareholder worth. It was a perception that served his purchasers, shareholders and colleagues very effectively.
“Who do you’re employed for, this man or Salomon Brothers?” I’m fairly certain I understand how Sir Win Bischoff would have answered that query. Might his spirit dwell on, in an trade that at all times wants to recollect its objective.
