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There will be some empty seats in City offices later this month as the Glorious Twelfth marks the start of the grouse-shooting season. Pheasants are as cheap as battery chickens these days but grouse is still a quarry that is highly prized both at the table and by the hunter. The birds are becoming rare, their population ravaged by a tick-carried virus, strongyle worm and two years of heavy rain in their laying season. Even when sighted, a covey can reach speeds of up to 90mph and often elude the most experienced guns. Not that the gentlemen of the City should be overly concerned if they return from the moors brace-less. Most of you will have bagged handsome prizes already this year. If you didn’t celebrate a gong at Euromoney’s wonderfully debauched Awards for Excellence party (mine was, if yours wasn’t), you will no doubt have been filling your boots with record M&A volumes and primary market issuance.
Secondary markets haven’t been too shabby either, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average at a record high, and bourses from Frankfurt to Mumbai in new areas of the stratosphere.