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Essex and the City: my life as a ‘posh bird’ broker

Venetia Thompson

Wednesday, 6th February 2008

Venetia Thompson on how she learnt to fit in with the hard-drinking barrow boys on the trading floor, who live on fish and chips, pickled onions and the most expensive vintage wines

The Essex boy is not a breed that most public-school girls from Devon often encounter. Historically, however, and still today, they make up the gritty backbone and furry underbelly of the City’s inter-dealer brokers, acting as intermediaries in the trading of numerous financial instruments, making money whether the market goes up or down. It is therefore understandable that one of the Germans asks if I too am from Essex like my port-rebuking colleague. I stop short of attempting to explain the nuances of the Essex accent compared to my own when my colleague chips in with ‘Nah mate, she’s a posh bird, ain’t she? But she’s all right.’ My tag of ‘posh, but all right’ has stayed with me over the last year, and is a label I fought hard for. During my first week on the trading floor bets were taken as to whether I’d outlive the last girl, who managed a mere four days; balls were hurled at me from the other side of the room and I was asked countless times what on earth someone with a degree in Russian from a top university was doing rejecting the world of investment banking and grad schemes in favour of broking at the most aggressive, archaic and male-dominated firm in the City.

However, after the initial shock of working with hundreds of marauding barrow boys who shouted and swore from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m., only breaking for football discussions, the odd read of the tabloids and lunch (pie and mash, fish and chips and pickled onions became my staple diet — always eaten at my desk), I ended up fitting in better than I ever did at boarding school or university. My first trade was greeted with the obligatory chants of ‘RUN!’, meaning a lap of the entire floor while other brokers hurled water and hammered their phones on their desks, creating a deafening blast of sound. I soon developed an entirely different language: cockney rhyming slang mixed with trading terms, sprinkled with a hefty dose of obscenities, all said with perfect RP, much to everyone’s amusement. But this wasn’t without various misunderstandings, the most memorable being hearing a colleague referred to as The Ferg and assuming this was simply a nickname. ‘Ferg’ was in fact short for Feargal Sharkey — rhyming slang for ‘Darkie’ — not a nickname you really want to be throwing around indiscriminately.

My boss was a 50-year-old American ex-trader and one of the most disliked and thickest-skinned people in the City. His greed was notorious, which, in an industry where greed is largely taken as read, is really saying something. I had heard various stories of the many times he had been attacked in his career, and the countless phones he had broken by smashing them in a fit of frustration and rage. Every time a fight broke out people would spread rumours in the market that he had been hospitalised or was dead. The news would only ever be greeted with merriment or disbelief that someone had finally got rid of him. Over the past year I have witnessed him being throttled and pulled off his chair in a headlock, and most recently he hurled his Bloomberg keyboard at someone sitting opposite, causing all the keys to fly across the room. Having stormed off the floor he then called and abruptly asked if I could make sure his faulty keyboard was reported, as he would not be returning that afternoon and would be needing his spacebar on Monday.

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Philippe P

February 7th, 2008 11:26am

What a refreshing glimpse into the netherworld of those who neither inherited, nor stole their money. As we're staring down the abyss, people like those described will be our saviours in averting economic melt-down (and enslavement to the Chinese). More of the same please!

Joe Bloggs

February 7th, 2008 4:06pm

You poor girl having to deal with heathens who order Croft in the first place!

Terence Foo

February 7th, 2008 4:10pm

Finally, a candid take on the characters driving our economy. Please write something about Gordon Brown.

Karen

February 8th, 2008 4:01pm

Brilliant article, told like it really is. Been there many years ago, loved it & would not change the experience for the world. I have never been embarrassed by anything that I have had to encounter since!!

james Sleatdog

February 8th, 2008 4:14pm

As a city worker myself, reading your article was refreshing and well written. Lets us have more

Yvonne

February 8th, 2008 5:21pm

Hah! This made me laugh out loud - I've just retired after 13 years in the Front Office... it's all just too true!

gerard

February 11th, 2008 9:26am

A brilliant little piece in both senses. I suppose she'll never be heard of again, but the girl done well

Jeremy Stubbs

March 7th, 2008 9:38am

Brilliant. I hadn't heard of this article until i saw the front page of the Torygraph this morning. Being of a similar age and in a similar line of work, i thoroughly enjoyed the read. Sure it's not the last we've heard of Venetia!

Ram Barkai

March 7th, 2008 9:53am

Hi, I dont know how to get hold of Venetia, but I respect her courage, intelegnce and her article and I want to offer her a job in Cadiz financial services in Cape Town.

Binsey

March 7th, 2008 10:39am

Top Bird!

David H

March 7th, 2008 11:07am

Reflecting on my 'Behaviour in Work Place' and 'Diversity' training courses, it is refreshing to know that some parts of the City remain, reassuringly unchanged.

J

March 7th, 2008 9:48pm

Being from The City, the other one, across the ocean, the one with the really big buildings, and working in the same field...just so you all know, it's just the same here

Kevin

March 8th, 2008 4:54pm

What would be more interesting than this anecdotal article would be an explanation of how it is that a collection of inebriated, sleep-deprived individuals manage to accomplish anything profitable to the wider economy. Surely anything that is genuinely productive, such as designing microchips or building (reliable) cars, requires an alert, educated workforce? On a much smaller scale than City trading, some mortgage lenders siphon off money from the productive economy by scaring customers into taking out more insurance than they could possibly benefit from. Some mobile phone salesmen are similarly merely interested in getting you to pay over the odds for a multi-featured "Swiss army" model with all the trimmings, instead of a regular handset that will allow you to make calls. When we talk about the kind of City traders portrayed in this article, are we talking about the same phenomenon, but just involving far larger sums of money procured from corporate suckers by effectively plying their authorised representatives with drink and sex-related activities? If so, is that any more genuinely beneficial to the economy than bribery or money laundering? Surely this takes away money that could be put to more profitable use by corporations in producing products that improve our quality of life, allowing us more time and disposable income to invest in similarly productive work, such as architecture or interior design. Just a thought.

Actual Broker

March 10th, 2008 5:45pm

So basically, a silly little girl from a minor public school in Devon with a very sheltered background, couldn't get a job with a bank, so ended up working for a city chop-shop as a glamourized telesales person. Decent Banks and brokerage's don't employ 'Essex boys' (were they all from Essex?), sounds like you've got a chip on your shoulder and as a result are insecure about your position in the world.....

Kay Vasey

March 11th, 2008 7:57am

Venetia, you have a great talent for writing... I think you should join MeshMinds.com - We've got a wealth of like-minded people with excellent creative talents. It would be brilliant to hear from you.

a.n other

March 11th, 2008 2:22pm

Amusing little expose. However in comparison to the 'real scams' which are being conducted, the treatment handed down to this junior for her misdemeanor is a bit like giving a life sentense to a 'jay walker'. Countless people are doing the 'items scan' with sales credits and earning huge amounts all virtually without detection.

Lando

March 31st, 2008 4:15pm

Kevin, with your talk of 'plying corporate suckers out of large sums of money' I doubt that you fully understand what trading/inter dealer broking involves but that's fair enough. IDB's (Inter-Dealer Brokers, almost always incorrectly referred to as 'traders') are middlemen between two different real traders, the latter usually working for investment banks. A trader would deal through an IDB to trade size that he or she would be unable to execute on screen. The broker's job is to find a counterpart who wants to do the opposite to the first trader. The brokers takes no actual market risk themselves - hence they really arent 'traders' per se. To a lot of people this may seem pointless ('why not just get traders bypassing the brokers and talking to each other directly?) but to a big trader trying to move a large position the anonymity provided by IDB's is crucial, hence the commission charged. As for the 'entertainment', brokers know that all else being equal traders will choose to trade with their mates and commission being their sole source of income means they need as many mates as possible!
In any case Kevin, an easy mistake to make, perhaps a follow up from Ms Thompson on how trading actually works would clear up some misconceptions?

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