Giving as good as they get

Bankers are a competitive bunch, though competing to give money away seems an unusual form of behaviour.

But the charity Save the Children has benefited enormously in the past two years from a strange expression of bankerly machismo. The lesson of the last two ifr annual awards gala dinners is that if you dress 1,300 bankers in black tie, stick them in a ballroom, feed them a good dinner, let an acerbic comic insult them, and ply them with enough drink, they will be dead keen to throw away more money than the next guy.