So it looks like the credit crunch hasn’t been bad news for everyone…
In any catastrophe there are always those who will thrive amidst the chaos. HBOS Seniors and Directors must be congratulating themselves after raking in a collective £1.25m in a bid to save the high street lender after ‘malicious’ and suspiciously well timed rumours caused its share price to drop.
Bear Stearns’ Chief Executive Jimmy Cayne has also emerged from the wreckage of his company unscathed, and in fact as a very rich man. As the bank, recently acquired by JP Morgan, began losing a great deal of money Cayne was in Nashville, Tennessee playing in a bridge tournament. To avoid any unwanted distractions, such as emails from panicked employees about the queue of investors wanting to withdraw their money, he didn’t take a mobile or email device. He did check in by phone in the mornings but afternoons were dedicated to the important matter of a card game – it’s all a matter of priorities.
Of course not everyone will get out of the crisis unscathed. In London alone we’ve seen around 2,000 financial jobs disappear so far – and the trend only looks set to worsen.
In October last year the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggested that London’s finance sector should prepare itself for around 6,500 redundancies. That figure has just been raised to 10,000.
Of course, all these estimates and guesses never tell us the real story – that’s where you guys come in. Have there been redundancies in your company? Have you been personally hit by the credit crunch? Come on…have a rant…you know you want to!
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