City Spectator

Christopher Fildes' personal chronicle of two turbulent decades of financial life, from the City and Suburban column of "The Spectator".

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Giving capital to a bank is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk: you know what will come of it, but you can't know which wall he will choose. I never thought that, this time, the banks would choose a hedge.



Christopher Fildes' weekly City and Suburban column (following on from John Betjeman who started the column in 1954), on the follies and eruptions of markets and boardrooms - peppered with jokes, literary references, character sketches, satirical proposals and diversions onto the Turf and the railways - has been required reading for the financially aware for twenty years.



Students of blood-stock contrast Lester Piggott with the classic winner Zafonic, who, after an unsatisfactory race at Goodwood, has now retired to stud at the age of three. Why, they ask, should Lester, who is 55 years older, still have to be out on the racecourse in all weathers? Horses should work harder for longer, and jockeys should be passing on their qualities to future generations. Proposals for syndicating their services are being discussed in York's champagne bar, though in Lester's case the money would obviously have to be right. - Captain Threadneedle, Turf Correspondent



His observations on the Crash of '87, the ERM crisis, the travails of Lloyds' and Equitable Life, the demise of Robert Maxwell and Barings, the launch of the euro and the rise and fall of dotcom mania, form a uniquely entertaining record of the passing of the old City and the emergence of a new, less certain - and less genial - financial world.



Fildes' Law of Financial Crisis says a crisis will happen at the time when there is no one around who can remember what happened last time.



Some boardrooms have potted plants in them and some have non-executive directors. The question in either case is: are they there for use or for ornament?