Review: "Cityboy" by Geraint Anderson

Ever wondered why bankers make so much money? This book won't give you the answer but it will tell you all sorts of other things about bankers... Stuff that seems too outrageous to be true. Now, I am not one for generalisations but Geraint Anderson, author of "Cityboy Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile" is quite a credible storyteller. He started writing the "Cityboy" column for a London newspaper, while working in banking and has years in the industry to use as material for what is a semi-biographical book.


"Cityboy" is the story of a young man, a real hippy with a German-inspired ponytail and an aspirational goatee, who is offered a job in the city as a stockbroker after a rather haphazard job interview that takes place in a noisy pub. He jumps on the chance to make some money but as the years roll by and he finds himself becoming more and more successful at work, he seems to lose himself more and more in a spiral of drugs, greed and gold diggers. 
Driven by a serious competitive streak, our hero fights his way through an incredibly large number of boozy lunches, dinners that turn into all-nighters and all-day drinking sessions that turn into cocain-fuelled mornings after. On this journey from innocent hippy to disillusioned professional, our hero meets some pretty stereotypical people who all represent a certain type of person that the author has met in his working life in city and they help illustrate the tale of craziness. From the self-made trader with a penchant for stripper and orange-tanned Essex golddiggers to the mathematical genius with no social skills, it is a parade of stereotypes but somehow it works. 


So what did I make of this book? It is somewhere in that strange grey zone between fact and fiction but most of all it is fun. Don't read it for the prose because in terms of writing, it's no beauty - at times it is even a bit annoying. Don't read it for the opinions on the world of finance, there are better books for that. Read it for the humour and the stereotypes. Read it to recognize people you meet on the tube in the morning and to appreciate your own colleagues more. 


Read it if: Your favourite book is "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis. Your or your partners works in banking. You are a part of the Occupy movement and want to hear the nasty tales from an insider. 

Willa Wants to Read... Books about bankers

I know, I know. Seems like a random subject doesn't it? Not only random but also weird and - at best - niche. However, it just so happens that my boyfriend is a banker so of course I am interested in the subject and the species of the banker. My favourite banker-book (I bet you didn't know that that is a genre, did you?) is "The Bonfire of Vanities" by Tom Wolfe which is spectacularly long but also really good if you ask me and "Liars Poker" by Michael Lewis is another chillingly great book from the world that brough you "Wall Street".
However, there are quite a few banker books that I still want to read and these are on the top of my list.

"Cityboy - Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile" by Geraint Anderson
From amazon.com: 'Who is Cityboy? He’s every brash, suited, FT-carrying idiot who ever pushed past you on the tube. He’s the egotistical buffoon who loudly brags about how much cash he’s made on the market at otherwise pleasant dinner parties. He’s the greedy, ruthless wanker whose actions are helping turn this world into the shit-hole it’s rapidly becoming. For one period in my life, he was me.'

In this no-holds-barred, warts-and-all account of life in London’s financial heartland, Cityboy breaks the Square Mile’s code of silence in his own inimitable style, revealing explosive secrets, tricks of the trade and the corrupt, murky underbelly at the heart of life in the City.

"The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis
From amazon.com: Michael Lewis has written from the perspective of a financial insider for more than 20 years. His first book, Liar's Poker, was a warts-and-all account of Wall Street culture in the 1980s, when Lewis worked at the investment bank Salomon Brothers. Everything Lewis has touched since has turned to gold, and The Big Short seems to be another of those books, combining an incendiary, timely topic with the author's solid, insightful, and witty investigative reporting.

"Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves" by Andrew Ross Sorkin
From amazon.com: Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

Do you have any banker or banking books you can recommend?