1970-01-01 02:00:00
rlp
Last updated at 1:42 AM on 25th June 2008
His dad's a Labour peer, his mum a missionary, but Geraint chose a career in
the Square Mile. Now, with millions under his belt, he's revealing what really
makes the City tick - and prostitution, cocaine and fraud are the least of it!
Even when he was just another Cityboy making a fortune inside London's Square
Mile, there was something odd about Geraint Anderson.
While other filthy-rich analysts, stockbrokers and hedgefund managers spent
their obscenely large bonuses on Porsches and Rolex watches, Anderson clung on
to his 6 second-hand suit and 20-year-old Vauxhall Cavalier.
The only 'Rolex' the former utilities research analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort
bank has ever owned, he insists, is a 10 fake he bought on holiday in Turkey.
Enlarge Whistleblower: Geraint Anderson aka City Boy has turned his back on the
million pound lifestyle and written a book of his experiences
It wasn't that he didn't join in with the hedonist spend, spend, spend culture
of the City - or the unsavoury behaviour that went with it - but rather that
deep down he struggled with the uneasy thought that he might have sold his soul
to the devil.
'I always had this nagging doubt at the back of my mind that what I was doing
was somehow wrong,' he says, 'and that I was part of a system that was making
things worse.'
For the past two years, the 35-yearold Cambridge University graduate has
assuaged his guilt (while continuing to rake in his six-figure bonuses) by
penning an anonymous newspaper column called 'Cityboy' about the monstrous
egos, drugtaking, insider dealing and other immoral behaviour that pervades the
nation's financial heartland.
And this week, with the publication of his book, Cityboy: Beer And Loathing In
The Square Mile, Anderson has unmasked himself as the City's whistleblower.
Having built up a rather tidy nest egg to cushion his fall - more than 3
million in all - he has finally jumped ship, ready to dish the dirt on his
former colleagues and some of their more dubious practices.
Many will see it as a bit rich for Anderson to make a few million and then tell
everyone what a dreadful place the City is.
But in light of Britain's current credit crunch, his timing couldn't be better.
His account of an industry notorious for its lax regulation confirms what we
suspected all along.
'They don't care about anything other than next year's bonus,' he says. 'They
don't care about gambling with the money of ordinary people because they're
making millions.
'I truly believe the credit crunch is a direct result of the City's short-term
gambling and the bonus culture.'
While other filthy-rich analysts, stockbrokers and hedgefund managers spent
their obscenely large bonuses on Porsches and Rolex watches, Anderson clung on
to his 6 second-hand suit and 20-year-old Vauxhall Cavalier
Delve into the murky depths of the book and London's pernicious financial world
reveals itself in all its ugliness.
At one stage, Anderson's account takes in a 25,000 private-jet trip to Ibiza
where a group of wealthy financiers and traders are met by a limousine filled
with naked prostitutes and cocaine.
In another episode, an evening drink with banking colleagues turns into a night
at a debauched strip club where - in full view of the entire group present -
some have sex with prostitutes.
There are copious amounts of cocaine and liver-destroying alcohol consumption -
300-a-bottle champagne and whisky at 100 a shot.
Anderson himself is a bundle of contradictions: on the one hand claiming to be
'slightly Left of Trotsky' and ranting about the 'sick and twisted world' he
inhabited, on the other admitting: 'I didn't despise it when I was enjoying
1,000 meals at Le Gavroche.'
And it's only fair to point out that he didn't hand in his resignation until
his last bonus was safely in his bank.
On December 19 last year - bonus day - he was sitting on a beach in Goa, India,
with a margarita in his hand when he made the call to his boss in London.
He recalls: 'I wasn't sure if he was going to say: "We know you're Cityboy.
Goodbye" or "Here's half a million pounds".' Fortunately, it was the latter.
'I know people will call me a hypocrite,' he says. 'I did sell out, but now I
want to give something back. I wrote the book to expose the nasty element of
the City and the irreversibly destructive effect it's having on society.
'The whole business world runs on people schmoozing others and using
shareholders' cash for privilege. Greed runs the City. It's about gambling with
other people's money. All that matters is next year's bonus.'
But just how far Anderson himself got sucked in to the vices of City life is
unclear. The book is narrated by a character called Steve Jones, who bears
astonishing biographical similarities to Anderson, but - when the going gets
morally dubious - is not necessarily Anderson.
His book opens with the disclaimer that 'just as Steve Jones is not me, so the
characters in the book are made up - they are classic City types'.
Anderson is sheepish when it comes to admitting which bits of the book happened
to him and which bits to those he knew.
Geraint says that the lifestyle was life 'gambling with other people's money
'Everything did happen but not necessarily to me and not necessarily at the
time I say it happened,' he says. 'Some of them are experiences I heard about.
It's not about individual banks or people, but about the whole culture of the
City.'
Despite his Oxbridge credentials, Anderson was never classic City material. His
father Donald is Lord Anderson of Swansea and a former Labour MP.
His devoutly religious mother Dorothy is the daughter of Bolivian missionaries.
Anderson, the youngest of three sons raised in London's Notting Hill, was
taught by his parents that 'worldly riches do not bring happiness' - words
which would later come back to haunt him.
As a teenager at Latymer Upper School in West London, he was a self-confessed
'rebellious hippy' complete with ponytail, goatee beard and earring.
Before Cambridge, he spent a year smoking dope on beaches in Asia.
Enlarge Geraint says that when he took his first job as a banker he 'sold his
soul to the devil'
After finishing his history degree, his fascination with rebellion led him to
take an MA in revolutions at Sussex University, before heading back to the
beaches of Goa.
'I decided I'd spend the next five years travelling the world, selling trinkets
from India,' says Anderson. 'I had it all worked out. I was going to learn
karate so I could defend myself and learn Spanish so I could go to South
America.'
But his family had other ideas. 'I think my parents thought: "We've done
alright with the other two, but this one's going off the rails,"' he says.
It was his older brother, Hugh, a City fund manager, who set up an interview
for him with Dutch investment bank ABN Amro in 1996. Not long after, Hugh left
the City to train as a Baptist minister.
'He swung that job for me,' says Anderson. 'At that time, the most I knew about
banking was asking for an overdraft extension at Barclays.'
The interview took place in a City bar over several bottles of champagne and
Anderson was hired on the spot, despite admitting: 'I didn't know anything
about numbers.
'From the word go, I had concerns about how it was. It just seemed to me like a
tight-knit club dedicated to making its young, mostly male, white members as
much cash as humanly possible. It's soulless.'
But he didn't let that put him off. 'I thought I'd do it for five years and get
a nest egg. Maybe save 200,000. I knew I was selling my soul to the devil, but
I thought that at least I'd get a good price for it. That was my attitude.'
His job as a utilities analyst meant composing models of publicly listed
companies with a view to deciding if shares should be bought or sold.
'The City was full of intelligent people who knew a lot more than I did,' he
admits.
'I have a reasonably analytical brain but most analysts are quite dull. My
unique selling point was to take clients out drinking and show them a brilliant
time.'
But he quickly got sucked into the competitive, aggressive, macho culture where
one-upmanship is the order of the day. And once he had started, Anderson found
it hard to give up.
Within five years, his salary had jumped from 24,000 to 120,000.
His first annual bonus was 14,000. His second was 55,000 and his third
140,000.
Even his Left-wing father was seduced by his son's success. 'He was punching
the air when I told him how much I was earning,' says Anderson.
'Within two years I was earning more than he had ever done and he had worked
his a*** off all his life. I was just sitting around getting drunk. I was just
a hippy who got lucky. It seemed so bizarre to me.'
But over the 12 years he worked in the City, Anderson was transformed from
idealistic hippy into a shallow, egotistical money-maker.
'Making money became more important than friendship, more important than
anything. I was as competitive and greedy as the next person,' he admits.
And throughout that time he soaked up stories of insider trading, tax evasion
and the illegal practice of spreading false rumours to inflate or deflate share
prices.
'It's the bankrobber syndrome,' he explains. 'Just one last job - or in my
case, just one last bonus.'
At the same, it was clear he was turning into somebody he didn't like very
much.
'My friends started saying that my ego was out of control. Even my parents told
me I was becoming money-obsessed. I didn't like the person I'd become.'
While other colleagues were happily bedding the gold- diggers glued to the bars
of the Square Mile, Anderson insists he remained faithful during a six-year
relationship which foundered anyway under the pressure of gargantuan nights out
and frequent jollies abroad.
'I screwed up a perfectly good relationship', he admits. 'I had planned to
marry this woman but I was in a mindset that was not conducive to a long-term
relationship.'
The irony is, of course, that ultimately, his parents' lectures about money
being the root of all evil came true.
'My parents were right,' he says. 'I've seen all these 45-year-old red-faced
alcoholics, on their second divorce, but rich.
'The richer they are, the unhappier they are. It's a very loose foundation upon
which to base your confidence. Your sense of selfworth is directly tied into
the size of your bonus as opposed to your heart and soul and mind.
'You are constantly comparing yourself to the person next to you. It's a
commonplace tragedy that we Cityboys throw away the best years of our lives and
destroy our health while creating fantasies about what we'll do once we
retire.'
He goes on: 'People will be annoyed by someone who's made loads of cash saying
this, but I've never seen a correlation between money and happiness in the
City.'
Yet despite being a victim of the City's greed, Anderson found it just as hard
to let go.
'If you don't have an alternative job to go to, you know you could be kicking
yourself in a few years' time,' he says.
'Even this time, when I'd resigned, everyone said: "What the hell are you
doing? You're at the top of your game?"'
In fact, it took a near brush with death to make Anderson finally decide to
quit the City. Last August, he crashed his scooter on a busy London street.
His knee was ripped open to the cap, his hands were scarred, his teeth went
through his lips, but it could have been much worse.
Unable to walk for three weeks, he had plenty of time to contemplate his
shallow existence.
By then he had already been approached to write a book based on his
increasingly popular column.
'I wasn't being brave,' he says. 'But I started standing back from things and
thinking: "I could lose this all in an instant." You only get one go at life.
'You see so many people sleepwalking their way towards death. That was what I
was doing. During those three weeks, I started writing the book. It was
incredibly cathartic.'
While his old chums in the City have been flocking to get their hands on a
copy, wondering, no doubt, if they recognise themselves within its pages,
Anderson has begged his own parents not to read it.
'I'm sure my father will,' he says, grimacing. 'I've asked him not to but I've
also said that not all of this happened to me.'
He says his father is aware of his past drug taking. 'But it hasn't been
discussed,' he says. 'And I'm very much a good boy now. Cocaine turns people
into monsters.'
Having killed the golden goose, Anderson must decide what to do next. Thanks to
that nest egg, he doesn't need to work for a while.
'I am not at all materialistic,' he insists, but then it's easy to say that
when you own a 750,000 house in Shepherd's Bush and have another 2.5 million
in the bank.
He is planning to write a second book - 'about why I really had to leave,' he
teases - as well as a new column.
He is also toying with the idea of setting up a commune in Pembrokeshire in
Wales.
While he isn't planning on growing back the ponytail, it seems that he is
reverting to his Trotskyite, hippy roots, talking about 'wanting to give
something back'.
'I despair that the pure unfettered materialistic forces will lead to a world
of greed, increasing the division between rich and poor, increasing violence in
society,' he says.
'The City is at the cutting edge of this process. It has succeeded in making
people think they must get rich or die trying.
'It's a shallow, superficial society. It's full of intelligent, creative people
who would love to be doing something different, but it offers you so much more
cash that it sucks up all the talent this country has to offer.'
Such lyrical talk inevitably leads to the question of whether he'd like to
follow his father into politics. 'Are you crazy?' he says. 'I've got so many
skeletons in my closet. I wouldn't last two seconds.'
He stops to think for moment. 'Mind you,' he adds, 'I have it all out there
now, don't I? There are no secrets left. Maybe I'd be untouchable now.'
CITYBOY: Beer And Loathing In The Square Mile by Geraint Anderson, published by
Headline, is on sale now priced 17.99.