Why bankers need management

Imagine a world where financial institutions are characterised by pay proposals that break the cycle of pay inflation; by traders enjoying long careers within one organisation and by senior management adopting a pragmatic attitude to risk. My guess is that you can’t. But it’s difficult to reflect on the stereotype of the banker as anything other than reckless and self-motivated when this character has been affirmed in popular culture over the past 30 years. Two of the most successful films about the financial industry, Wall Street (1987) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), depict traders performing shady and often illegal deals that are motivated by a ‘greed is good’ philosophy, conducted within a workplace that isn’t really like a workplace at all, where HR policies only exist to perpetuate individual wealth and materialistic need.