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To London’s Porchester Hall, as a guest of Barclays, to attend Finance Fight Night, a white-collar boxing event organized by Legacy Boxing as a fundraiser for St Giles Trust.
The charity is well supported by the banking community in London and works to help people overcome disadvantages such as homelessness, unemployment, addiction or previous prison sentences.
The fighters on the night included current or former finance professionals, with the climax of the evening a contest featuring Sam Dean, who retired from banking in the summer after 25 years, mostly spent in equity capital markets (ECM), and who was most recently head of European corporate finance at Barclays.
His fight followed a long card of nine other pairings. He didn’t lack support, familiar ECM faces among the crowd serenading his entry with chants of “Dean-o! Dean-o!” as he jumped and shadowboxed like De Niro in the title sequence of Raging Bull. An hour and a half of daily training for the past two months was about to be tested.
Round one, with Deano in the blue corner. It was a slow start for him, with his younger, more experienced and non-finance-based opponent getting the upper hand quickly with a few blows around the head and Deano struggling to make use of his height advantage and extended reach.
