If the evidence of a recent competition to find the best-dressed banker in the City is to be believed, bank staff working in credit are more likely to be well dressed than their counterparts on the equity side.
The contest is run each year by London-based tailor Cad & the Dandy (recent nail-biting blog posting: The History of Braces – Part 3) and purports to exhibit the industry’s most stylish practitioners, lured to the competition by the promise of a bespoke tailored suit for the one that garners the most votes.
Given that the tailor seems to design exclusively for men, this will be an interesting exercise as the winner was a woman.
The results, announced in November, saw the number-one spot go to a senior associate in derivatives advisory, number-two to a credit analyst and number-three to a CDS analyst – proving that while derivatives may be weapons of mass destruction, at least they are being fired by people with good taste in business attire.
This link between sharp clobber and dangerous financial instability is further strengthened by the appearance of UBS’s own Kweku Adoboli at number five on the list. But there the association between the two must end, as coming in as the fourth best-dressed banker in London is... Bank of England governor Mervyn King.