Brits

  • 19 Aug 2011 at 1:17 PM

Layoffs Watch ’11: RBS

Apparently the Queen has had to let some people go. Read more »

Rebecca Rickwood is a 15 year-old girl living in the UK whose name should make you quake in fear. What about a 15 year-old girl could you possibly have to be afraid of? How about the fact that she could whip up a spreadsheet in the time it takes you to fill out your first cell, and could have your job and the jobs of 50 of your colleagues if she wanted? Read more »

Apparently they didn’t quite finish the other day. Read more »

Once upon a time, there were two Brits named Gabriel Radzikowski and Sara Lilly living in flats in Bath. Lilly was a ‘local director’ at Barclays and Radzikowski…dabbled in various areas. At one point, Radzikowski could no longer afford to pay the rent and knowing his neighbor worked at a bank, figured he’d easily be able to secure a loan, no questions asked. Unfortunately and much to Gabe’s surprise, Lilly did not vouch for him and “use her position” to get him the money. Lacking the necessary funds the landlord required each month, Radzikowski was forced to move out of his flat and was “taken in by a local Polish couple.” And it’s while he was staying with Robert and Maria Jurczak that Gabe realized he had a choice to make. He could either a) take the bank’s rejection of his application for the loan, which probably had less to do with Ms. Lilly than it did his lack of a job in the traditional sense, in stride and move on or b) he could do what anyone else in such a position would do and say “Fuck this shit; you refuse my loan? I kidnap your dog and put him on ice, bitch.”

Radzikowski choose the latter and got to work with a plan that went something like this:

Step 1: Steal dog (a Yorkshire Terrier named Bilbo Baggins) in the middle of the night. Read more »

A profit is nearly within reach. Read more »

Until recently, Stephanie Bon, pictured, was working as an HR assistant for Lloyds, making £7/hour. The Chief Executive officer of the bank, António Horta-Osório, makes £4,000/hour (or £13.5million annually). Is this pay disparity fair? Stephanie didn’t think so! Read more »

He yelled at them to “get a job” as a colleague apparently laughed at the not particularly funny joke made slightly more amusing by the fact that Chuckles’ buddy may be out his own. Read more »

Remember Fred Goodwin? He was the CEO of RBS for a number of years (about 8) and for many of them, probably right liked being called a ‘banker.’ Like in 2000, when he was name Chief executive and in 2006, when he was voted the most powerful businessman in Scotland. Years from now he’ll look back on his tenure fondly but at this moment, he’s having some difficulty recalling all the good times, in light of how badly things ended, and the fact that people won’t stop making him feel guilty for putting the pieces in place the caused RBS to lose a spectacular amount of money and wind up with 82% of its ass owned by the government.

Goodwin’s been trying his hardest to move on and maybe even embark on a new career as a party planner but what’s making it so hard is that every time he opens a newspaper, he sees his name next to the word ‘banker.’ Refraining from reading papers doesn’t help either because of course you’ve got the internet and you can’t expect him to not have a Google alert set up for himself, now can you? Anyway, Goodwin tried to reason with the press and just get them to drop the ‘banker’ business altogether or at least swap it out for a better description like ‘genius’ or ‘piece of ass’ but they wouldn’t listen, so what Goodwin had to do was play hardball. Read more »

You guys want to hang onto your clients? Get video production on the horn and find an empty parking garage ASAP (turn your volume down, this one’s on auto-play). Read more »

The London Evening Standard reports that 7 British traders (among them, BGC Partners’ head of FX options in London and a Citibank EM options guy) found themselves locked in a lift this week, following an evening of “eating sushi and drinking” with clients. Despite “shouting for help” and “pressing the emergency button,” the group was stuck for over three hours. In that time, they took a nap (captured by one of their cameras in the photo at left) and maybe did some other stuff not suitable for visuals? Read more »

“Even if a guy is really lazy and has done s*** all year, he’ll still get a £600,000 bonus.” Read more »