Genius for gobbledegook

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Genius for gobbledegook

       
Mona Lau

Investment banks have a genius for gobbledegook. Whether dressing up their activities in meaningless jargon to bamboozle their clients, or giving preposterous job titles to their people to make them feel more important, they are masters of the craft. It is a long time since the appearance of silly-sounding titles such as "global head" first raised a titter. And we have all become jaded by the serial abuse of language carried out by investment banks over the years.

But every once in a while comes a description so fatuous that it warms the heart. So it was with real pleasure that we greeted the appointment by UBS in New York of Mona Lau as a managing director and head of "group diversity initiative".

We wondered, briefly, whether they meant group diversification initiative - getting out of investment banking and into something more profitable, perhaps? But no, UBS assures us that diversity it is.

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