Our little team comprised myself, Alex Chambers, Euromoney’s fixed income editor, Chris Hunt – or Chunt as we called him – the publisher of www.euromoney.com, Ben Weinberg from options pricing and risk management vendor SuperDerivatives and the legendary Ron Smith-Galer, the man apparently behind Yoursmineshag.com.
Early bragging rights went to Chambers, who bumped into some ‘billy big dogs’ from the world of credit at Gatwick Airport. They were on their way to Verbier, where half the City seems to go at weekends. Chambers strutted his stuff, revelling in his supposed importance from knowing a few blokes who are eight feet tall when they stand on their wallets. Ron and me were less impressed. “FX is a real business where people have to work hard, so they can’t shoot off willy nilly to the slopes every time there’s some fresh powder. FX is a mature market. It’s not just a case of booking profits now and letting some poor bugger sort the mess out when they learn how to price properly in 10 years’ time,” I argued.
Chambers said my view was narrow-minded and possibly defamatory, so I told him to “poke it.” Ron, who can still menace even at his advanced age, backed me up – so perhaps for the first time since I’ve known him, Chambers shut up.