By far the most cheering thing in this newspaper last week was a letter from Robert Pickering, the man who used to run Cazenove. In it, he took a potshot at Antony Jenkins, the Barclays boss, for trotting out the dreary old cliché of the death spiral to justify his bankers’ bonuses. There is absolutely no need, Mr Pickering pointed out, to pay ever bigger sums to prevent investment bankers from quitting – no bank ever went under because its people got poached. Bankers come and go and the world goes on turning.
The letter was delightful because a) it was right; b) it came from someone who knows what he’s talking about; and c) it is always terrific spectator sport when bankers start attacking each other.
Mr Pickering says there is no point spraying money at people who are threatening to leave, because you can survive without them. That is true; but from where I sit, outside the warped world of investment banking, there is another truth. There is no point spraying money at people because, to quote Jessie J, it’s not about the money.