@GSElevator gossip reaches Fevre pitch

It had the world’s best investment bank chasing its own tail for almost three years, secured more than 600,000 followers and landed its anonymous author a six-figure book deal.

Now, the man behind the @GSElevator Twitter account has been revealed as former Asian bond executive John Lefevre.

Euromoney knows Lefevre well from his days as a debt syndicate banker in Hong Kong. We can vouch for the fact that, for him, investment banking was a job, but not the defining point of his existence. He always had a healthy scepticism towards the industry he worked in.

He was generally known by the moniker Fever. He never worked for Goldman Sachs – although he came close to landing a job there in 2010, before backing out.

We’ll never forget one evening when he met a group of friends in a bar in Lan Kwai Fong at around 6pm. Seeing him in the bar was not unusual, especially as he was between jobs at the time, but the fact he turned up in the towelling robe and slippers provided by the Four Seasons serviced apartments overlooking Hong Kong harbour, where he resided, was.

Lefevre gave few clues away through the @GSElevator twitter account as to his true identity, and previous existence as a bond syndicate manager at Citi, which he left in 2008.

One was a dig at his former employer: “Ordering a salad at McDonald’s is like going to Citi for M&A advice.”

Or his take on debt issues from southeast Asia: “I don’t read fiction – unless you count an Indonesian bond offering mandate.”

We’re looking forward to his book, provisionally entitled Straight to Hell – True Tales of Deviance and Excess in Investment Banking.

It could make Lefevre the next Jordan Belfort – or, perhaps more appropriately, the new Wolf of Wan Chai.