Starting out in banking in the mid 1980s, you had to get used to being thrown in at the deep end pretty quickly; as John St John found when he joined Barings in 1985.
He remembers his first Christmas in the job. As one of the juniors, one of his tasks was to be the last to check the telex machine each night before going home. On Christmas Eve he duly did so, only for the machine to whirr into life as he was preparing to walk out of the office.
