2010-10-20 09:57:49
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.