THE INSIDER: Bankers both shaken and stirred
Which is worse: gullible or booze-hound bankers?
Being in charge of a bank is an awfully grown-up job, which is why the people given the task of looking after other people’s money are over 18 and thus able to partake of the occasional tipple. Last week, Bank of England governor Mark Carney poked fun at the drinking habits of the bank’s internal oversight official, Anthony Habgood, who e-mailed that the depiction of novelist Jane Austen on a new British banknote made it look as if the writer had just drunk a "bracing martini". Staying in the spirit of things, Carney replied, "I will drink the martini and order another two." Except he wasn’t talking to a colleague but to a hoaxer — the same hoaxer who claims to be behind a similar exchange with the CEO of Barclays who believed he was swapping messages with the bank’s chairman when he told him he owed him "a large scotch". The Insider is not sure which is worse: that two such august industry figures are so easily taken in by a merry prankster, or that they are such enthusiasts when i...
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