’Tis the season to be jolly… hungover – Any tips for how to behave at the office Christmas party?

Getting rip-roaringly rat-arsed and holding down a high-paid City job is a bit like clay pigeon shooting on ketamine – it’s good fun but caution is required.

In my day, the major banks’ Christmas parties were so extravagant that Puff Daddy (as he was known then) would send spies in to nick ideas for his next bash. I remember with great fondness one bank’s annual Caligulan extravaganzas involving fairground rides, endless champagne and mountains of genuinely edible food.

Unfortunately, these days you’ll be lucky to get a warm glass of chardonnay and a limp tuna sarnie. Still, I hear that brokers are now organising half-decent parties themselves in the private rooms of restaurants across the Square Mile.

But whether you’re with ten clients at No 1 Lombard or surrounded by 500 dad-dancing colleagues, the same basic rule applies – LAY OFF THE SAUCE! I’m not saying no booze at all, just take it real easy because the days of being able to try it on with the boss’s secretary, doing a shirtless version of ‘the robot’ and jet puking behind the speakers (all of which I managed at the HAC back in 1997) are well and truly over.

How much cash do you need to retire?

Several colleagues and I sat down early in our career (1996) to try and calculate a figure that would allow us to live a reasonable life without financial worries until we’d shuffled off this mortal coil. After much discussion we came up with the figure: £2.5m net asset value. We figured you could buy an OK house outright in London for £700k and a small gaff in the country for £300k (admittedly, these figures now have to be reviewed). We then assumed that you could make a post-tax return of 5% on the remaining £1.5m making £75k per annum. Combine this with £25k of annual income from bits and bobs you made on the side and you have a yearly ‘salary’ of £100k without even dipping into your capital. Of course, you couldn’t buy Ferraris, send your kids to Eton or develop a serious charlie habit with that income but you could travel the world endlessly, drink fine wines and regularly eat at half-decent restaurants.

The days of doing a shirtless version of 'the robot' before jet puking are well and truly over

In February 2008, at the age of 35, my net assets reached this mythical figure and I walked. Interestingly, not one of those other characters from the aforementioned discussion has yet left the City – and, as I see them earning ever bigger bucks, I still can’t quite work out who the bigger mug is.

Is sex with a client a major no-no?

I hate to sound like the banking equivalent of Mary Whitehouse once again but, as a general rule, shitting on your doorstep really is a piss-poor idea.

I have worked with two (female) brokers who used to indulge in these shenanigans and, as far as I know, it never ended well. For one of them, it was not a commission-garnering strategy – merely the product of a healthy relationship with Johnnie Walker. Word soon got around and it had a less than positive impact on her ‘professional reputation.’ Of course, it gives me the shivers just thinking about the potential lawsuits that a male broker engaging in similar activities could engender.

The other practitioner was far more tactical and did achieve some success but, as is always the case in these situations, the problems began when her ‘broker with benefits’ relationships broke down and her revenue-generating clients became embittered ex-shags with a sinister agenda. I know that hard-working City workers have to get their kicks when they can nowadays but, personally, I wouldn’t shag a client even if she was Gisele’s fitter sister who’d learnt her bedroom tricks in a Manila brothel… as I was telling my wife (and avid reader of Square Mile) just the other day.

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