40 years of change- An Anniversary Today

Forty years ago today I rolled up in the City to report for work at my first job (Surprisingly my then work entrance has survived in Austin Friars, though the front doors on Old Broad Street have long since gone).

Such anniversaries provoke astonishment at the passage of time, but inevitably, when looking back, surprise at the pace of change. Learn, adapt, survive (or just ‘duck and weave’) probably sums up my strategy for a long career. But it is also a key attribute of the City of London, where I have worked most of my four decades, as it has constantly adapted to the world around it. Long may that continue.

In 1981 I joined Samuel Montagu, one of the cornerstones of the City’s financial landscape back then, but now just a part of its history. Today I work for Bank of China, not only a very large business in the UK and the City, but now one of the world’s largest banks and certainly part of the future of finance.

I wrote a brief account of the ups and downs of a City career in ‘The Banker’ in April this year: https://www.thebanker.com/Comment-Profiles/Viewpoint/Lessons-from-a-long-and-bumpy-career-in-banking

Since the early ‘80s, we have made our way from the silos of the Cold War to the more nuanced and complex, economically more integrated world of today. The four decades of my career witnessed not only a long list of booms and busts, but great shifts in the geopolitical tectonic plates – from the crumbling of the Soviet Union to the astonishing rise of China. Moreover, the world I started working in back then, and which I criss-crossed throughout the ‘80s with my backpack, is now a radically different place. The relentless advance of technology, global air travel, the rise of the internet and social media have all both brought people closer together, but also created fresh divisions and misunderstandings.

Today’s world brings us a confused picture of intermingled and blurred politics and business interests set against social issues, the impact of Covid, rising nationalism and the threat of global warming. Collectively business, finance and the world’s politicians need to refresh their ideas, pragmatically seek common ground and find ways of building a prosperous future beyond the pandemic and the huge challenge of climate change. Learn, adapt and survive needs to be the strategy for the world of the twenty-twenties.

Today I look ahead to my next decade in the City, working with the great people at Bank of China, helping the creative teams at NPL Markets, Finance Unlocked and the International Capital Market Association, supporting the work of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers, lecturing at Reading and Birmingham Business School and other activities. I hope to stay busy for some time yet.

?