RBS London – The 2:00 p.m. Alarm

Snippets from my childhood play out in a dream like a movie montage. “You only care about music and reading books; you’re going to be a failure,” my dad tells me. “If you want to be a success, you need to learn math,” my older brother advises. I ignore them, and then, years later, graduate with a degree in engineering and move to Wall Street to prove them wrong.

I jolt awake and process where I am in an all-enveloping darkness. A London hotel room in late December with the curtains drawn. Recollections of flying in yesterday and struggling to fall asleep come to me. A commotion coming through the walls of the historic hotel breaks into my consciousness: vacuuming, the thumping of bed linens being changed, the rattle of a heavy cart being pushed down the hallway. The hotel staff are cleaning the chaos left by departed guests.

This shouldn’t be happening during normal sleeping hours.

I bolt upright, locate the glowing clock on the counter, and cold terror floods my veins.

It’s 2:00 p.m.

I have slept through most of the business day in London, in the middle of a management power struggle that will decide my future. My mentor, Neil, was fired three months ago. I am visiting London, the head office, in a desperate attempt to patch things up with his rival, Ruddy, who is now running the show.

Why didn’t I wake up? Jet lag, business-class drinks on the flight, forgetting to bring any pills to help me to sleep last night. I am in deep shit. I throw on a wrinkled suit I grab from my suitcase and half-sprint through the chill, grey London streets to the RBS building, ashamed of myself.

My own trading position is part of my worry. Back in New York I’m sitting on a $10 million loss in dividend swaps. Officially I’ve marked it as roughly $5 million, aggressive but still “within model.” In reality, I know it’s worse. I’ve been holding a live grenade, hoping the market turns before anyone looks at the marks too closely.

At 2:30 p.m. I step onto the RBS trading floor, heart pounding. The afternoon trading flurry is in full swing: prices shouted across the desks, salesmen bantering on phones with clients, Bloomberg News blaring from overhead screens. No one notices my arrival, but I feel exposed, as if they can smell my fear.

Scanning the trading floor, I see the racial and gender profile of RBS is a microcosm of the financial world in 2006. Any and all “diversity” resides in the quant section, which resembles an international chess meet—Russians, Chinese, and Middle Eastern PhD techies hunched over C++ code and exotic derivatives formulas. They are the ones who actually make the complex machinery work while the “front office” takes the credit. The front office means sales and trading, a desk that is uniformly white European males with big hair, Ferrari and Lambo keychain holders on their desks, leaning back in their chairs, half-watching football scores while shouting into microphones at counterparts all across the City.

I must be bold. I am a math whiz, fluent in foreign languages, attentive to detail, and can properly calculate the day count on a Convertible Bond and the Implied Vol on a Multi-Currency Knock-out Option.

As I stand there looking at the floor full of finance bros, it hits me: no one cares. In this world, it’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know, whose ear you have, and how confidently you play the game. Swagger.

I wander the aisles repeating the same thing to anyone who looks up at my outstretched hand. “Hi Scott, from the New York office, in London for a few days…” The cursory replies and averted eyes make it brutally clear. I am unwelcome. I don’t have the ear of anyone who matters anymore. My sponsor is gone, and the new regime has already moved on.

When my mentor Neil was in charge, my successes were showcased in weekly meetings and my mistakes were blamed on others. Now, my successes are credited to the work of younger, hungrier traders, and my mistakes are highlighted for public discussion. “What is the status of New York’s dividend swap position?” The losing position, and New York basically stands for my name. I wonder if prisoners on death row are also talked about in the third person to soften the blow.

Looking for a social anchor, I locate Matthew. In Asia, we worked together for a few years. He raises an eyebrow. “3 p.m.…Late night?”

I almost confess the humiliating truth about jet lag, then catch sight of the trading bros and their keychains and choose swagger instead. “Have a friend at JP Morgan London, had a big night.” I wink.

He buys it. Better to be a party animal than the quant guy turned trader who can’t set an alarm clock.

I swing past the quant team. Over there, it is different. They appreciate my ability to calculate vols, gammas, and betas. I sink gratefully beneath the cubicle walls in their corner, surrounded by techies with Star Trek toys displayed on their desks. We swap stories about grad school, tech news, and the latest updates to the trade booking system. For a while, I feel safe. As if I still belong here—even though my job title puts me out there with the finance bros.

Then I remember, why I am here: survival.

And in the back of my mind, my other motive for the trip, delusionally equal in importance, drinking. As a “high functioning” alcoholic, London in pre-Christmas season feels like nirvana. Every night is another after works drinks.

My buddy, Matthew, is one of the few derivative desk employees who can exist in both worlds. He can talk football with the finance guys and then nerd out with the quants on pricing models.

“Christmas Party tomorrow,” he says, looking as if he wants to cheer me up.

“Really? Do you think I can drop by?” I’ve known the party has been on the schedule for weeks.

Knowing I am on a mission, I manage to stay sober that night and arrive to work early the next day. As people begin to register that someone from New York is visiting, Max, a brilliant Danish physics PhD, takes me to lunch. We order food and a beer each. Something most bankers would never do in New York. The table of suited types next to us has clearly been there for hours, their table a forest of empty pint glasses. As we prepare to leave at 1:30, they are ordering their next round. I wonder if I can get transferred to London.

Max follows my gaze. “I need to get back to the office,” he says, then leans in. “Busy day. And we’re all worried about the convertible bond desk’s position. They’re sitting on a hundred-million-dollar unrealized loss.” Unrealized is banking euphemism for hidden.

That evening the RBS derivatives department Christmas party is at the swanky terraced restaurant with sweeping views of the Thames and London Bridge lit up across the water. A towering man with steel braces on his teeth and strange clothes serves me an appetizer. “Goat cheese tartlet,” he says, gritting his teeth in a forced smile that looks almost painful. Other servers are dressed in odd attire.

“Who are these people?” I ask Matthew, nodding toward them.

“James Bond film impersonators.”

“Oh!” I am slow on the uptake, as usual. Now recognizing “jaws” from the early James Bond films. That is how you entertain finance bros, make them feel like James Bond being served by a cast of extras..

Ruddy, the head of trading is boisterous, holding court with a drink in hand. He is known to be unhappy with management’s cautious pace and vocal with his desire to shift expansion to full rocket-ship speed.

Ruddy takes the podium. “Bob…” he says, tipping his glass toward the department head who is holding him back. “Bob asked me to say a few words.” He pauses dramatically. “A few words. Now let’s drink!” He takes a slow, deliberate sip while the entire room watches in hushed silence, everyone terrified of upsetting either man in case the power struggle tips their way.

Soon the music cranks back up and everyone tries to forget that open jab between the factioms just happened. Bob is surrounded by his loyal supporters and Ruddy has his crew of Euro bros. I’m distant from both.

“The party is ending at 10 p.m.,” someone grumbles. “They’ve cut the budget this year. You should have seen the last year! All the drinks you wanted until 1 a.m.”

“Too bad I missed it…” I mutter, regretful.

Bob, the conservative department head, disappears early with a few loyal lieutenants. Ruddy, a big swinger, orders a full bottle of champagne and starts half-dancing, half-bro-emoting across the floor, pistol fingers and all.

“They’re going to an after-party,” Matthew tells me. “We’re not invited.” Matthew always fills me in on the things I should have caught on myself.

I wind up with Matt and the tech guys at a local pub, nursing a pint of bitter. The sweet, malty taste of ale and the calm rational conversation pull me back to earth after the naked alpha aggression on display at the restaurant.

Paul from accounting slides in beside me later, cheeks flushed. “Great night!” He then says quietly. “But I'm a bit worried. “The lending desk has a seventy-five million mismark. Eventually this is going to get to management.” I catch that he means management above our department.

It doesn’t take a math expert to add up the losses that now, four different unconnected people have now casually mentioned to me about “another team” sitting on. It begins to feel news-worthy. Or at least the kind of thing that would light up an industry magazine.

On Friday afternoon, Ruddy’s secretary grants me ten minutes with our new head of trading. I enter Ruddy’s office and prostrate myself as if interviewing all over again—promising I won’t let him down, that I am opening trading opportunities, making in-roads in New York. I am eternally grateful to be working in his team.

Ruddy watches my performance, then shakes my hand firmly, looks me in the eye, and says, “I’m glad you stopped by.”

The meeting actually feels good. It went well. Then I recall someone saying Ruddy makes people feel like they’re his best friend after meeting him for a few minutes. It explains how he’s moved up in the world so fast, apparently he originally wanted to go into politics.

The next morning, I catch an early flight back to New York.

In the coming months, I meet customers and pitch deals, and talk as if I am representing the “RBS team”, without knowing if it's real or not. The pressure in trading meetings only escalates, yet by some miracle, I keep my job and, on paper, the same position and authority. Around me, I watch Ruddy’s crew work operate without my input, closing deals with American sales teams. I don't react, and laugh at their jokes and do some of my own profitable deals, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

The losses I heard about in London never leave the back of my mind. After an especially bad day in the office, the impulse strikes me. I need to do something different. I turn in my resignation. When colleagues ask where I am going, I shrug and say, “to do something on my own.” They look at me like I have lost my mind.

After I left, I gave up excessive drinking. Looking back, alcohol gave me a temporary feeling of belonging in a culture that valued confidence over competence, swagger over substance. The constant parties were compensation for brutal work hours. The real story was I was trapped in a career that felt like a prison. I overslept my alarm, but eventually woke up to what actually matters in life.

***

Author Note: Based on my real experiences from around 2005 to 2008. Many names have been changed, some characters are composites of multiple people, and events have been compressed in time for readability. Much of this story happens at ABN AMRO Bank, which was being acquired by RBS Bank during this time. For ease of reading, I simply use the term "RBS" for both companies in this condensed retelling.