Gekko

BACK in the Eighties, many of the Eurotrash I’d meet in Manhattan nightclubs were in the “private banking” business. Even as the Citibank and Manufacturers Hanover workout people would be burning the midnight oil over the “restructuring” of bum Latin American loans, their colleagues in the private-banking divisions would be entertaining rich Latinos at Mortimer’s and the Surf Club, in the hopes of persuading them to leave their questionably sourced assets in the very banks whose sovereign loans had been looted. It wasn’t a completely closed system— some of the money siphoned from the exchequers south of the border trickled off to lawyers and cocaine dealers—but enough money was left in New York to help start the Latin equity boom of the Nineties.

Alas, another Wall Street business is in decline, and this time we can’t really blame ex-Governor Cuomo. I had dinner a short while ago with, among other people, the manager of a Swiss bank’s New York branch. In the old days, people in his position needed fluent Spanish and a familiarity with Buenos Aires restaurants. But times, he told me, have changed.

JD

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John Dizard

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BACK in the Eighties, many of the Eurotrash I’d meet in Manhattan nightclubs were in the “private banking” business. Even as the Citibank and Manufacturers Hanover workout people would be burning the midnight oil over the “restructuring” of bum Latin American loans, their colleagues in the private-banking divisions would be entertaining rich Latinos at Mortimer’s and the Surf Club, in the hopes of persuading them to leave their questionably sourced assets in the very banks whose sovereign loans had been looted. It wasn’t a completely closed system— some of the money siphoned from the exchequers south of the border trickled off to lawyers and cocaine dealers—but enough money was left in New York to help start the Latin equity boom of the Nineties.

Alas, another Wall Street business is in decline, and this time we can’t really blame ex-Governor Cuomo. I had dinner a short while ago with, among other people, the manager of a Swiss bank’s New York branch. In the old days, people in his position needed fluent Spanish and a familiarity with Buenos Aires restaurants. But times, he told me, have changed.