As part of our research for the features in this 50th anniversary issue, we have spent many entertaining hours dusting off bound copies of Euromoney from our archive, gasping in disbelief at some of the advertising and chuckling at both the glasses and computers that were oh-so cutting edge over the decades.
This process has also thrown up many pearls of wisdom from yesteryear, some of which appear throughout this issue. But there are many more that shed light on just how much this industry has changed over the last half century.
“Most bankers lead rather pedestrian, middle-class lives. You don’t find many who get divorced or swap wives,” a practitioner at the Institute of Psychotherapy in London told us in October 1982.
These days, not so much. And some bankers even have husbands.
In the same issue, a European banker who travelled frequently to Japan, outlined business trip etiquette: “Japanese bankers in Tokyo go out on the town and drink staggering amounts. But there’s a kind of rule that no matter whom you insult, or how badly, you won’t be held responsible for anything you say while you are drunk.”