The week started with a complaint from StanChart’s Ben Constable that he was lobster-red after a weekend playing golf in the West Country. Actually that one is no surprise, a Brit getting sunburnt on a boozy weekend away... I don’t think that’s the first time that’s happened.
Next, Banca Imi’s Antonio Stochino was reminiscing about the demise of the most excessive pre-crises days of banking. But Stochino told the Ranger he was actually happy to see the back of the some of the wilder antics. A parsimonious banker, now that is rare!
Speaking to Citi’s Paul Gibbs later in the week, the Ranger apologised to Gibbon for having dragged him out to a lunch meeting where he didn’t get to eat because his food arrived too late. Poor Gibbs had to face the Ranger and Silver without so much as a glass of wine or a decent lunch.
But astonishingly the Citi banker was not as traumatised as the Ranger expected, in fact he said: “the time flew by.”
We certainly haven’t heard that one before!
The highlight of the week was a true gem of gossip which cropped up on Friday. The Ranger heard the story of a group of loans bankers attending a conference in Vienna.
The gaggle found themselves in a karaoke bar late in the evening, when a certain European banker, now at a Japanese institution, stepped up to the microphone and rapped the whole of Skee-Lo’s 1995 hit "I Wish", from memory!
Can anyone guess who is the loan market’s Dr Dre?! Email suggestions to elly.whittaker@globalcapital.com
Lyrics below to jog your memory:
‘I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her
I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat
And a six four Impala’
