For bankers in some of the world’s more crisis-hit economies, their markets must have seemed like deserts of late, bereft of liquidity and empty of activity. Some more intrepid individuals from the financial services industry had that metaphor become reality when they took part in the Gobi March on June 14. A seven-day, six-stage, 250 kilometre race across the desert in China, the contest sounds gruelling enough but perhaps will have come as light relief after the last 18 months of hardship in the workplace. It can’t have been easy working at AIG lately, for example, so credit to Blair Turnbull, head of wealth management Asia-Pacific at the firm, for his 11th place finish. Ex-Citi analyst Eric LaHaie, a 28-year-old veteran of global marathon events, placed first. In third place was Sean Abbott, an associate director at Standard Chartered in New York, who was raising funds for the charity Seeing is Believing, which fights preventable blindness worldwide.