Rules and regulation played a big part of the Loan Ranger's experience last week. Perhaps the most affronting example was at the GlobalCapital and Euromoney Corporate Finance Summit in Paris, where banks and ratings agencies laid out stalls giving away goodie-bags.
The motley crew had a field-day with all the freebies.
From Santander, there was a moleskin diary and a video memo recorder (for recording reminders such as “Don’t forget to apply for your Catalonian visa”).
Commerzbank had its familiar army of rubber ducks out in force - this time each wearing some kind of Roman helmet. One had to wonder, with the proximity of the Seine, how many would later meet it in their bid for freedom.
But Natixis stole the show with some dazzling power bars for charging phones on the run and some excellent thermoses.
At the end of the day — by chance — the Natixis stand was unattended and the Ranger reached over to take a thermos.
Feeling self-consciousness, the Ranger said to the Commerzbank banker standing next to her, “Oh, it doesn’t feel quite right when there is no one on the stand. It almost feels like stealing”.
Without taking breath, the banker replied: “I’m sure you’ve done worse as a journalist.”
Ouch.
On the second day of the conference, Tonto (who has sadly taken leave of his role - or his senses - in the loans crew) was moderating a panel discussion with a group of bonds heavyweights.
Tonto posed a question to one of the bankers, along the lines of: "Do you think this corporate should be higher-rated than BB+?"
The banker sallied forth and crushed Tonto’s probe with a swift, authoritative blow.
“That is not the right question," he admonished. "That is the wrong question to ask”.
Tonto had been told. The moderator moderated. Fortunately, he was able to think of many questions and eventually found the right one.
But the most brutal run-in with the law last week stemmed from an innocuous photograph.
After an evening of raucous celebrations at the GlobalCapital Derivatives Awards, the Ranger and crew returned to the office on Friday with hefty hangovers - barely missing another luminary of the evening who had "nodded off" at his desk in a tux.
The hangovers quickly worsened when an email arrived from the press team from a big American bank, requesting the right to publish a picture of the Ranger on its Twitter page.
‘Be my guest!’ replied the Ranger.
But the bank was not satisfied - instead cheerily requesting the cowboys sign a ‘Name and likeness release’, which included agreeing to allow the bank to:
“...use my name, voice, other sounds of mine, or to substitute another's voice for mine, biographical information, or to substitute another's biographical information for mine, likeness, and any other indicia of my identity, or to substitute another's indicia for mine, and any statements made by me, or to substitute another's statements for mine…in all forms of media throughout the world in perpetuity…(sic)."
"Hell no!" said the Ranger, and high-tailed it as far away from the contract as possible. The Ranger may take pains to disguise his identity, but he doesn't want to end up being billed as Zorro.
