INVESTMENT BANK WANNABE LAYS HIS SOUL BARE AT GOLDMAN ALTAR
DEPLETED bonus pool or not, it appears university graduates are still tripping over themselves to land a coveted internship position at Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs.
In swoops an email doing the rounds in the City, alerting The Capitalist to a copy of a Goldman internship application form recently sent by an aspiring master of the universe in America. And boy, was he keen to blow his own trumpet to Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein.
“As of this moment you probably have never heard of me before and I accept that, but in five years you will look back unable to imagine life without me,” he gushes, fit to burst with breathless enthusiasm. “My desire to succeed in the investment industry is beyond comparison and I will not stop working towards this goal until the day my heart stops beating…Even as I write this letter, I’m getting phone calls from people asking what stocks I put my money in today and where they should put theirs tomorrow.
“Allow me this opportunity and I will be the best investor you have ever seen. I will work non stop to make sure Goldman Sachs stays on top for as long as I breathe…”
No word on whether or not his rapturous plea fell on receptive ears chez Goldman, but one thing’s for sure: The Capitalist is positively exhausted just from reading it. Perhaps our anonymous scribe could learn a little from the old adage of “less is more”?
THREE’S A CROWD
As interview pitches go, this has got to be up there with the best of them. A missive arrives singing the praises of one Jurga Zilinskiene, founder of Today Translations – a company based just next to the Bank of England, specialising in interpreting over 160 languages and dialects, including – bizarrely enough – Glaswegian English and the hidden meanings behind baby names.
Apparently, Zilinskiene is one hell of a formidable businesswoman – the blurb describes her as “a Lithuanian-born cross between Richard Branson and Margaret Thatcher… combined perhaps with shades of Warren Buffett, whose frugality and dislike of shopping and ostentation she shares”. Now there’s a combination The Capitalist would be nervous about coming across in a dark alleyway…
LOVE IN THE AIR
We’ve seen an exciting array of secondary career moves from former City high fliers in the past year, from becoming a rock guitarist to setting up an online sex toy boutique, and ex-HSBC investment banker Grace Yusuf is no exception.
Yusuf says her experience working 18 hour days in the fast-paced world of banking gave her the idea to set up a dating site with a difference for her time-poor ex-City colleagues – kyubid.com, on which members actually create a profile for their own ideal date partner, which the site then does its best to match up with a number of “bidders”.
“I wanted to create a dating site for busy professionals who no longer have the time or patience for the typical e-mail intensive and long-winded online dating scene,” she explains. “You can think of it as a sort of Ebay for dates.”
Whoever said romance was dead?
SPACED OUT
Just when you thought customer service at telecoms firms couldn’t get any worse, in zooms a cautionary tale. Having called BT to report a fault, a City chum received a text which read: “We are aware of your fault and aim to address it by 15/07/2009.”
“Presumably they’re intending to arrive by Tardis,” he grumbles…