Capital markets: Courting disaster

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Capital markets: Courting disaster

How do you explain the credit crunch to those outside financial circles? One banker recently told Euromoney that investment banks used to be dating agencies for capital markets:

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"There were a bunch of investors. They’re the boys. And you had a whole group of people who needed money, they’re the girls. We put them together – it was beautiful.

"As we moved to the 1990s we started to take the best-looking dates for ourselves. Even more sinister than that, we actually started creating robot women and giving them to investors. They looked great at first but when you took off the clothes they didn’t live up to expectations.

"Because of this bad behavior all of the boys and the girls stopped using the dating agency.

"My assertion is that all the boys and girls are still there. It’s like one of those school discos – the boys are on one side of the room and girls are on the other – someone has just got to put the music on and away we go!"

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