Perhaps his status as an accidental banker informs Geoghegan’s forthright views on the industry, and the people within it, which he sets out here.
My father was a professor of industrial microbiology and I had a place to do business studies at University College Dublin. But when I went to see HSBC, they said to me: "We want you now. We are not sure if we want you in three years’ time. You make that decision yourself". They explained that I was probably worth nothing to them in real management terms in the first five years. I forget the figure they quoted about how much it cost to train me, but they basically thought that having on-the-job training was more valuable than having the degree. Then the whole industry swung – you couldn’t get into financial services unless you had a Masters or a BA at least.