38 Years Later

I have just approved my final piece of research. SA approved – SJP is no more! I know I have retired before but this time it’s for keeps.

So I wanted to share some thoughts. My first job in the ‘City’ was as a database administrator at BZW in June 1987 just 4 months before the October crash. I got the temporary job through a friend of my dad’s. That was how it was. At BZW, I met Richard Kersley who was working as a graduate trainee in the strategy team. Little did I know that 25 years later we would work together again. But that’s how a lot of my working life has been.

It would be easy to give a potted history of where I worked, and how my work life unfolded. For me, it is more about the people I’ve met who had a big impact on my life. Given that I have worked in 11 investment banks over the last 38 years, I am bound to forget someone. If that is you, I apologise. You still meant a lot to me.

After a year or so at BZW, I moved to Phillips & Drew – or by the time I arrived, UBS Phillips & Drew. It was there that I met Jo Fontaina who became Jo Powell when she married my brother, Nick. And it was there I met someone who was a big influence on my career, the lovely John Smith. He fought for me when Terrible Smith made me redundant -and later he hired me in my best-ever job at DLJ. But I am missing out some important people. After UBS P&D, it was Gavyn Davies and Nicola Clark who saw something in me. I remember being asked in my Goldman Sachs interview if I had any questions. The only one I had was whether they would ever employ Terrible Smith who seemed to have followed me from BZW to UBS.

I had my kids while at Goldman Sachs – being a working woman with kids was quite a new concept in investment banking at that time. I had only been working at Goldman Sachs for 3 months when I fell pregnant so telling my boss was more scary than telling my mum. Charlie Brown was very supportive and I was given 12 weeks maternity leave plus the option of getting my job back. This was an amazing deal. Given that my daughter was a week late meant that I went back to full time work when she was 10 weeks old. Regrets? That’s a tough one. I was able to take the full 3 months off when my son was born and relished the time with my daughter – a full month we had together before he was born. Amazingly Goldman Sachs allowed me to return part time – very forward thinking for 1995! I met another woman who was to play a significant part in my life – the amazing Helen Cavendish (Nee Karney) who has continued to be a great friend and travelling companion. She even swapped clothes with me one time when I was going to an interview at Banca IMI for a new job. I got the job mainly because of the sharp suit I was wearing. Helen went home in a maternity dress – I often wonder what Adam might have said. I took my first ever business class trip to spend a week in New York with the lovely Lynne Sherwood and her team in the US – thanks to Liz Christie I stayed at The Carlyle Hotel where Lady Di used to stay. I also am indebted to Paul Krikler who at that time was a pharmaceuticals analyst. He guided me through the whole process of how to get the research out the door and to the printers when I was left to run the team unexpectedly in my third week. I also met my second husband while interviewing him as my maternity cover. I was keen to hire him but the worry was that he played football on a Monday night so wouldn’t be able to stay late if needed. Thank goodness that has all changed. We were destined to meet much later…

So a small Italian bank was great as a single mum with two little ones. Stefano Mazzola and Paolo Bergamaschi (also ex Goldman) helped me change my working life so I could spend more time with my kids by working one day a week from home. The technology was excruciatingly slow with a dial-up and high pitch squeal the only way to work remotely. And then along came my hero John Smith who offered me a job at DLJ. It was such a great place to work. I met up with loads of people with whom I had already worked and we had fun. Proper dot com boom fun. Although it lasted only 2 years, it was very full on and busy. It was my first job as a Supervisory Analyst – I had been trying to pass the Series 16 exam for a number of years – too many to count. I got to fly to Hong Kong where I met Virgina Mumford, another incredibly inspiring woman who introduced me to the jade markets and acupuncture. We had a great team and I loved working with Alison Anderson (Docherty) and Annabel Sykes.

When DLJ got bought by CS I wasn’t that keen on joining a firm by default and John Smith negotiated a redundancy package for me. Such a great man. I was fortunate to go straight to Lehman Brothers where John Wilson (ex UBS) hired me as the first and only Supervisory Analyst in London. I spent nearly 10 years at Lehman and we had such a great time. Alicia Ogawa was a great mentor and encouraged me to step up to a global role for which I am so grateful. She was so wise. Too many fab people and I don’t just want to write a list. But I do want to thank Martin Haas, Andrea Johns, Riaan Meyer and Jennie Cornell for being fab.

Ian Colley was the best compliance person I ever worked with, followed closely by Jane Regan. And, of course, the lovely Gary Peters who later became my Husbant.

It would be remiss not to mention the IT guys – Matt Kinsella and Raks Sondhi. They made our lives bearable, particularly for Martin and Gary when somehow the IT guys managed to get the World Cup games streamed onto the workstations….

The demise of Lehman was a hard blow – and I felt really sad that the magic of being in a globally cohesive team was blown apart. Bloodied and bruised (ok, bit dramatic), some of us ended up at Nomura. I stayed my statutory two years and hit a glass ceiling for the first time in my working life. I took a step down from a “managing” role and convinced the two Credit Suisse greats, Richard Kersley from BZW days, and Steve East that I would love a regular job working at the coal face. So began the longest job of my career. Again, some familiar faces were there including Andrea Johns. Was funny how 10 years earlier I chose not to join CS when it bought DLJ. I made lifelong friends at CS, including Chris Counihan, the best chemicals analyst the world has ever seen (pay me later, Chris) Matthew Weston (ex DLJ, ex Lehman), the loveliest pharma guy, fellow muppets Patrick Stewart and Monique Tremblay. And two of the best humans, the lovely Angus Coats and Pat Gowdie.

CS allowed me to take a two-month sabbatical so after working non-stop since records began, and throughout my life as a working mum, I did my own Eat, Pray, Love – but for me it was more like Eat, Eat, Pray. My first day back in the office I bumped into Richard and Steve on their way out for a coffee (or maybe a meeting). I felt that I had changed a lot in that two months but in reality, nothing had changed in the working environment. I realised I wanted to work part time and while it seemed a little ironic that I started working less once the kids had left home, I loved it.

For the third time in my career, the firm I worked for collapsed/got bought out. Thankfully, I was made redundant a couple of months before it happened, recruited by Steve East to build an SA team at Redburn. It was an interesting time but I felt I was a little too tired to start all over, working full time again was difficult. I did get to work with Lucy Heming who I think is the youngest SA globally. I went on to work at HSBC with Alison and Andrea again – but the world had changed enormously since COVID and I knew I wasn’t in the right place at the right time. I decided to retire so I had a few months off before I was offered the best SA job in the world by Nilendra at Deutsche Bank. The perfect job for a matured, experienced old timer – just a few weeks every few months. Some old colleagues were quite envious. I hope I have been able to introduce a new way of allowing SAs to enjoy an easy slide into final retirement.

All good things come to an end and I took the decision to leave my life as a Supervisory Analyst. It has been so much fun. Most people I met outside work never understood exactly what I did. “Sort of editing and compliance. I have a license which means I can approve research.” Too many words that they didn’t understand and their eyes would glaze over. So having the best job meant living a great life – and I managed to find that balance so that I worked to live. Am sure the world of Supervisory Analysts will change significantly in the next few years. We often used to joke that robots could do our jobs and then found numerous reasons why they couldn’t (but they could build a robot to check stocks!). With Lucy bringing the average age of the global SA universe below 60, am sure there will be a new cohort of SAs just loving the idea of reading weeklies/dailies/pre-results/breaking news/flashes/post-results/quarterly reviews/outlooks….. the list is endless but at least one person is reading every word. And my son has thought he might consider becoming a Supervisory Analyst…