Cowslip's Warren

picture by letneo

You can tell a lot about an Investment Banker's career by the manner of her leaving it.

The hierarchy of styles-of-exit is subtle and complex; but also well-studied and instinctively understood so even the greenest, youngest, Assistant Vice President will be able to describe the three basic manners:

The grandest (but not, curiously, the most prestigious) is by way of the Obituary in  CorporateNews

Fred T. Bigwig has left the bank to pursue other opportunities. He joined in 2002 as Director in charge of Complex Transactions EMEA (exc. South Africa) and in 2004 was promoted to Co-Head of Financial Engineering, APAC where he oversaw three-fold growth in revenues. In 2006 he was honoured by Risk Magazine for his contribution to Diversity in the City. He is leaving to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

Translation: Outer Party, Owsla time-server: eased out with nothing but several million Euros in shares to salve his pride. No genuine rainmaker ever gets a send off like that - for then no genuine rainmaker ever leaves on good terms. Fired, retired, competitively hired, whatever: they all get Exit Style #2.

Please congratulate  AnneT Bigwig on her promotion to Global Co-Head of Deal-Making. She replaces A Rainmaker who after 6 years with the bank has left for personal reason.

But in the time of the Credit Crunch the most common style of exit we see is neither of the above. It's the hushed but steady, unmistakable departure of the RIFfed, and it's a quiet sort of event, an embarassed type of event, a please-step-up-to-the-27th-floor-to-see-HR type of event and there are no individual announcements of the names of the At Risk, just suddenly empty cubicles, hushed water-cooler conversations and in the email directory a give-away #.  

#Parsons, Tom is out-of-the-office and is not responding to emails. Thank you for not mentioning his name.