“..Is this the end of investment banking as we know it?
To Andrew Gowers, the former editor of the Financial Times and latterly head of communications for Lehman Brothers in Europe, it must seem that way.
There he was, hitting the phones to the London press to put the best possible gloss on a truly disastrous set of announcements.
An hour later, the story went round that he was being axed along with great swaths of others, the latest victim of Lehman’s increasingly desperate bid for survival.
To be fair on Mr Gowers, that’s not quite what happened.
He is indeed planning to leave, but he’s not yet been asked to, even following the departure of his chief mentor at Lehman’s, Jeremy Isaacs.
Yet the story nonetheless seems to epitomise the febrile atmosphere of destruction that now stalks the City.
There’s a gallows humour about the place quite unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed before.
As the sense of crisis builds, few expect to survive for long.
The purges are becoming relentless.
Nobody knows where they will strike next.
Perhaps the best that can be said about the shocker of a statement from Lehman Brothers yesterday is that it could have been even worse.
Everyone was expecting a death sentence after news that Lehman’s Korean fairy godmother would not be coming forward with the hoped-for dollop of new capital.
Yet in the event, it wasn’t quite that bad.
The set of initiatives outlined yesterday amount to at least a reprieve, and may even mean that Lehman survives.
Yet in whatever form, it will be a pale shadow of its former self.
By the time the credit crunch is over..
..the investment banking landscape will be changed beyond recognition..”
go to source/story>>Jeremy Warner’s Outlook: There’s a gallows humour about the City. Few expect to survive for long – Jeremy Warner, Business Comment – The Independent
