EM:Is it true that your FX options desk has done their cods?
PR: “I’m sorry, what do you mean by cods?”
The Tom Hanks Castaway award for delivery of an essential document goes to the bank that spent a huge amount of time and effort preparing a glossy pitch document for Euromoney’s CDO house award but failed to actually submit it to us.
The Lance Armstrong award for backpedalling goes to a New York-based banker who had the following exchange with Euromoney:
Banker: “[A rival bank] may say they’re our competitor but I’ve never lost business to them.”
Euromoney hack asks rival bank about this and returns to banker.
Euromoney: “Perhaps they’ve been unfair to you then, as they mentioned a few deals” [EM lists about 25 impressive deals provided by the rival in which they won mandates from this banker]
Banker: [pause] “Ah, well what I meant was I’ve never lost a MAJOR piece of business to them. Ok, thanks mate. ’Bye.”
The Mrs Malaprop awards for rewriting perfectly reasonable quotations could have gone to any one of the following investment bank PRs:
“Ooh, I don’t think that’s what he really meant to say.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense, but they told me to change it anyway.”
“I know he didn’t say that, but we still want to change it – that’s why we asked to check the quotes.”
And a seasonal song for our readers:
On the twelfth day of banking
A PR sent to me
Twelve award pitches
Eleven contacts griping
Ten ‘off the records’
Nine ‘real exclusives’
Eight quotes a-changing
Seven bankers spinning
Six fears allaying
Five pointless rings!
Four conference calls
Three bum steers
Two no comments
And a useless press release