Cityboy with a Brain
Written by SuenMike Sunday, 06 February 2011 00:00
If you’re a boring, tax-paying member of the public who’s not the type to get breast implants or have an affair, perhaps you should take some time to read Geraint Anderson’s book, Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile. After reading his sordid descriptions of city high-finance, your life will suddenly seem to take on a meaning and a quiet sort of dignity it did not have before.
Mr Anderson takes us through the career of an investment broker, Steve, who is a fictionalisation of Mr Anderson’s own experience in the City. Steve seems to be an honest bloke from a hard-working family who stumbles and bumbles his way into a brokerage job. Fortunately for us, he manages to maintain a by-stander’s approach throughout and is able to see the craziness and hypocrisy of the banking world. This is a world that is based half on intelligent analysis and concern for creating value, and half on bravado, hyperbole, one-upmanship and just plain lying. The daily chores of charts and spread-sheets are “balanced” by strip clubs, prostitutes and cocaine binges.
I like how Mr Anderson questions why the world is the way it is. Why is it that so much money is being earned by these devils? Why are clients so easily buttered-up by fast-talking investment brokers? Why is money the central commodity of all this activity, and why is money so important anyway? The author brings in historical water-sheds to put things in context: the great Depression, Black Monday, the Enron scandal, etc. He also talks about other aspects to the banking world: gold-digging women, personal rivalries between brokers, making money out of adversity, how business leaders pressure brokers to artificially inflate stock prices.
The book is not for the delicate-minded or those easily offended. This isn’t your mild throat-lozenge sort of read. It’s Fisherman’s Friend for the mind. The author has an off-handed writing style that uses colourful language. In other words, he swears a lot. He doesn’t need to rely so much on the swear words; I think his writing is impactful enough. That said, it’s a rich and multi-textured book that raises a lot of questions. One of the main questions left in my mind is: how is the culture of the City affecting life outside the City? How is does the anger, jealousy, fear and competition affect us common folk? Perhaps that’s a topic for Mr Anderson’s next book.