Diary of a private banker

What really infuriates our senior private banking colleagues, things that send them into paroxysms of capillary-bursting rage?

Private banking remains, like financial services as a whole, in a state of considerable confusion over ways to get advisers back at head-office, ending the home-working of the past five months.

A hire has lately been made quietly by EFG International, in surely what must be rather a milestone for international private banking in London.

Frankly, should we proud of the super-rich who have just so nobly volunteered to pay higher taxes to help alleviate the fallout of the Covid crisis?

Dear old Coutts has really most cleverly transformed its public image over the past couple of years.

Frankly, chums, rather a mixed reaction to my ‘Guess the Private Banker’ quiz of last Friday. As will be recalled, I showed a number of the Great and the Good of wealth in Covid-proof facemasks, concealing most of their features.

Good gracious, are we all in danger of completely forgetting the visages of the leading women and men of our dear private banking profession as a result of the dire lack of personal interactions since the Covid lockdown?

Zoom and other video conferencing technologies, which have become thoroughly embedded into the working practices of our great private banking houses, are sparking interesting side-effects.

Officially, Karen Frank resigned last week as CEO of Barclays Private Bank in what was called a “personal decision”.

There’s nothing quite like the Vatican when it comes to white (dog) collar crime, as a number of messy financial scandals like the God’s Banker affair at the Holy See have demonstrated repeatedly over the years.