the world of private banking
the world of private banking
the world of private banking
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HEREDItARy CALLING, INHERItED REFINEmENt 265<br />
at Rothschilds – here were three houses in which <strong>the</strong> concept <strong>of</strong> meritocracy could<br />
hardly have been less on <strong>the</strong> agenda, certainly in terms <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> very highest positions.<br />
Almost as strong as <strong>the</strong> instinctive attachment to keeping things in <strong>the</strong> family was<br />
<strong>the</strong> urge to recruit Old Etonians. ‘The O.E. tie was worth £200 a year in <strong>the</strong> City’,<br />
<strong>the</strong> Master <strong>of</strong> Wellington College was informed in 1940, and that was probably<br />
an underestimate. The future corporate financier Andrew Carnwath, for example,<br />
could not have had a simpler route to 8 Bishopsgate, where he arrived in 1928<br />
at <strong>the</strong> age <strong>of</strong> nineteen. ‘I had never heard <strong>of</strong> Barings’, he would dryly reminisce<br />
about Eton recommending him to that bank, ‘but inquiries showed that I would<br />
probably be wise to explore <strong>the</strong> matter fur<strong>the</strong>r.’ Or take a ra<strong>the</strong>r more flamboyant<br />
merchant banker, Michael Verey, three years younger than Carnwath. Born into<br />
a family that invariably sent its sons to Eton, he came down from Cambridge in<br />
1934 and began to consider <strong>the</strong> City:<br />
I talked to my fa<strong>the</strong>r [a solicitor] and he said, ‘I will speak to my friend, Alfred<br />
Wagg.’ He and Alfred [chairman <strong>of</strong> Helbert Wagg] had been friends since <strong>the</strong>y<br />
were little boys at <strong>the</strong> same <strong>private</strong> school toge<strong>the</strong>r and were very close friends<br />
at Eton and Cambridge and <strong>the</strong>reafter. There was a, for me, ghastly, agonizing<br />
dinner party which was held in Alfred’s very grand flat in Berkeley Square with<br />
a butler and footman.... My fa<strong>the</strong>r and I wore dinner jackets and I said to my<br />
fa<strong>the</strong>r, ‘I’ll just stay doggo so that he can’t take against me. You do <strong>the</strong> talking.’<br />
So my fa<strong>the</strong>r was frightfully good and swept Alfred along.... <br />
The wider point, with no disrespect to <strong>the</strong> individual ability <strong>of</strong> ei<strong>the</strong>r Carnwath or<br />
Verey, hardly needs labouring. ‘To <strong>the</strong> Old Etonians’, concluded <strong>the</strong> stockbroker<br />
and financial journalist Nicholas Davenport in his memoirs, ‘every financial door<br />
in <strong>the</strong> City was open.... It was a sort <strong>of</strong> Mafia in reverse – a gang based on honest<br />
dealing instead <strong>of</strong> blackmail, on good “hard” money (lots <strong>of</strong> it) instead <strong>of</strong> easy loot<br />
and on simplicity instead <strong>of</strong> cunning. The only rules were playing safe, resisting<br />
change, opposing new ideas, upholding <strong>the</strong> Establishment and being willing to<br />
dress up and go on <strong>the</strong> pompous dinner parade in <strong>the</strong> City halls....’ 10<br />
How easy was it for outsiders up to <strong>the</strong> 1950s to break into this charmed circle?<br />
Probably about <strong>the</strong> same as during <strong>the</strong> long nineteenth century: difficult, but not<br />
impossible. Three obvious examples, all coming through soon after 1945 as<br />
heavyweight merchant bankers, were Siegmund Warburg, Lionel Fraser <strong>of</strong> Helbert<br />
Wagg, and Kenneth Keith <strong>of</strong> Philip Hill. Verey, in <strong>the</strong> City Lives anthology <strong>of</strong> oral<br />
history, talks revealingly as well as entertainingly about <strong>the</strong> first two:<br />
<br />
D. Newsome, A History <strong>of</strong> Wellington College, 1859–1959 (London, 1959), p. 361.<br />
<br />
The Times, 5 Jan. 1996.<br />
<br />
C. Courtney and P. Thompson, City Lives: <strong>the</strong> Changing Voices <strong>of</strong> British Finance<br />
(London, 1996), p. 36.<br />
10<br />
N. Davenport, Memoirs <strong>of</strong> a City Radical (London, 1974), pp. 42–3.