Title: Blue Blood, Cazenove in the Age of Global Banking
Author: Robert Pickering
Publisher: Robert Pickering in partnership with whitefox publishing
Pages: 369
Price: £24.99
Format: Paperback
Published: February 23 2023
ISBN: 9781915036902; ebook 9781915036919
What do Blue Blood and Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year have in common? One, they both prominently cite Tokenhouse Yard as a location, in Blue Blood's case in the very first sentence of the very first chapter. And two, they cover events with an emphasis on London that seem to be buried in the past but resonate strongly with at least some current readers.
When reading the Defoe tome, thoughts of the hysterical global reaction to Covid-19 are constantly to the forefront of the reader's mind. When reading Pickering's, recollections immediately present themselves of a bygone age before the City of London's so-called Big Bang in October 1986.
Polished mahogany doors, liveried porters in carpeted entrance halls, double-breasted waistcoats and Grenadier Guards cufflinks. Those, at least for some, were the days.
The starting salary of £7,500 that he was offered in a letter received two days after Christmas 1984 was just over half of what I started on at the piggery that was Bracken House. He turned it down in favour of staying at law firm Allen & Overy but eventually served as Cazenove's first chief executive from 2001 until 2008.
I very much enjoyed reading the distinction drawn between partners at law firms (highly educated, all graduates and mostly Oxbridge) and partners at broking firms. While some of the latter were upper crust and titled, others had worked their way up through the back office. They were less intellectual, had more native guile, and even if they had been to Eton and Harrow, were less likely to have been to university,” writes Pickering. That sounds ever so vaguely familiar.
I also enjoyed the brief history of Cazenove and am sure that people who knew the firm in the early 80s will enjoy the stroll around the offices at 12 Tokenhouse Yard, with their marble fireplaces, mahogany desks and vertiginous staircases. I also enjoyed the snippet about the wearing of slip-on Gucci loafers.
“That morning, I had to go and see David Barnett, one of the senior partners supervising the dealing room. Nothing was said, but throughout our conversation, he kept his eyes fixed on my shoes. I never wore them again.” I experienced something familiar at Midland Bank International when I experimented with wearing white sports socks.
The distribution of cash for the weekend by the partnership secretary on a Friday sounds familiar to, but much more refined than, some of the raids on the expenses petty cash box at Bracken House in those halcyon days, before receipts became insisted upon.
Amongst the many vignettes, one story stands out. It is told much later in the book about Cazenove's joint venture with JP Morgan, in particular relating to concerns about possible competition between a Cazenove business and a JP Morgan business. The situation did arise on more than occasion, the author recounts, causing him numerous headaches.
“Our South African business competed directly with JP Morgan so we agreed to sell it to them as soon as the joint venture completed. In January 2005, our office in Johannesburg was completely destroyed in a fire. No one was hurt and the cause was never established.
David Kynaston, author of the The City of London and of the centenary history of the Financial Times, describes the book as sharply observed and fluently written, saying that it not only tells a compelling story but also gives a unique insight into how the City changed during the age of globalisation. It is impossible to disagree.
