Upgrade and outreach
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Upgrade and outreach

Last National Bank of Boot Hill,
Moorgate, London EC2

Sometimes I figure we put Holey Buckett in the wrong job, he oughta quit Hillboot Intergalactic and run the World Bank, I tell him he must review his cost base, and what happens, just like good old Jim, he comes up with proposals for making it costlier.

All these investment bankers think big, with Jim it is head offices and mission statements, but with Holey it is upgrading, and team-building too, or that is what his spiel says, investment in human capital, depreciation and renewal, critical mass, global outreach, Mom, you get the picture, he plans to fire everybody in the building and hire a new batch at three times the price.

He gets the idea from Barclays, which has this investment bank called bzw and throws a tenth birthday party for it, with fireworks and pageants and a corporate history to take away and read, but these are just diversions, to get the guys out of Ebbgate House while the mechanic greases the revolving door, which does not stop whirring ever since.

They spend $60 million just on paying guys to go away, which some of them will do for nothing, once they know that the alternative is being posted to Canary Wharf, this is in the script as part of the strategic upgrade, which one way and another costs enough money for Barclays to notice, in a year when they are booked to make billions they have to get by with a few dollars less.

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