Off the record

"The biggest mistake Dick Fuld ever made in his career was not working for Goldman Sachs"

“The biggest mistake Dick Fuld ever made in his career was not working for Goldman Sachs”
A commentator solves the mystery of why Lehman Brothers went bust

“A bunch of scumbags from Carinthia linking up with a bunch of scumbags from central and eastern Europe to create a disaster”

A bank chief executive pulls no punches in his view of Austria’s Hypo Alpe Adria, nationalized in December

Euromoney: So you say the M&A and equity league tables don’t really reflect the real meat behind the business… where do the majority of your revenues really come from? What is the real money-spinner in your LatAm platform?

Banker: Yes, that’s very true. The real meat and two veg of this platform can only be unmasked when you dig a little deeper than the league tables do …

A banker seems to have got a bit confused about his metaphors

“Honestly we don’t start with the objective of let’s be number one in the league tables – it just happens! We must be good”

A banker is fittingly modest when asked about his league table position

“It’s very clear even to institutions that have even come out of this pretty well, that there are a bunch of idiots on the same bus, and that whole bus risks being diverted to the asylum. People don’t want that to happen again”

The lead trader at a large London-based investment bank comments on proposed regulation of the OTC derivatives market, and its one-size-fits-all approach in attempting to rein in risk taking