CITY AND SUBURBAN
One year on, the plums have stopped falling from the City's trees
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
so plainly destined to end in tears, or Hambros, happily turning its back on the securities markets and taking its business, through estate agency and life assurance, to new markets with high margins. Con- trast the misery of Hill Samuel. Here is a hank whose significance goes far beyond the City, for the list of British companies which it advises is the longest of all. Big Bang has blown it open. Hill Samuel committed itself to the securities markets on a scale which proved too large for a specialist and too small for a major player. It was over this policy that the board fell out with the chief executive. From this has followed all Hill Samuel's other troubles, beginning with the abortive (and perhaps too hurriedly prepared) plan to sell out to the Union Bank of Switzerland. Other merchant banks stand around like well- bred girls from the pages of Trollope, worrying that they may be carried off by suitors below their station, and then wor- rying that the suitors will not turn up at all. (Unhappy Miss Longstaffe, jilting rich Mr Breghert and finally bolting with the cu- rate!) Losses have been cut. Mercantile House is being broken up and sold off, the long-rumoured staff cuts at Shearson are finally announced, Lloyds and the Midland have swung the axe, others are cutting back or have stopped recruiting, plum jobs no longer grow on City trees or fall into City laps. The best business-getters are still paid in proportion to the business they get, but below that level, expectations have come down, and some must have further to fall. We shall soon see losers from the Big Bang, who set themselves up on borrowed money in the belief that the good times and big bonuses were their natural right and would last for ever. It has all happened before, but they were in nappies at the time.
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