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Few tears have been shed for bankers in their City and Canary Wharf towers, the authors of their own downfall - and maybe ours too. And threats that without their bonuses, British bankers would brain-drain to Shanghai or Dubai now ring hollow. "The catastrophe in financial services has been so complete," says Linda Jackson, director of outplacement provider Fairplace.
Yet while many workers in other sectors enjoy emotional ties to their places of work, the City marches to a different beat. Those hired, fired, used and abused by the banks and investment houses seem to passively accept their treatment as just part of the deal. Nothing personal. Just another transaction.
We talked to three former bankers who have discovered a happier life beyond the City; two graduates who are hoping banking wasn't a career mistake; and a cleaner wondering if his next shift will be his last.
The banker
Christine Yuen, 29, had worked for HSBC since the age of 17 - working her way up from a cashier in Canada to corporate banking account management in Canary Wharf. But in May this year she was made redundant.
"I wasn't passionate about banking; it was a safe job with a pay cheque, a good environment and benefits," she says. "But I knew nothing outside banking so felt my world had fallen apart."
Yuen had an idea for a lifestyle management business, Zentime Living, but admits she would never have had the courage to quit her job to pursue it. "But when the door shut on me, I thought, this is it. Out of my savings I've invested £1,000 on legal and accountancy advice and my website. I'm my own boss now and have two contractors."
Now her target clients are City lawyers or corporate and investment bankers. "I'm targeting me in my old job!" she says. "I felt so swamped with tasks as a corporate banker I had no time for any domestic tasks; you worked 12- to 14-hour days and barely had time even for lunch."
Zentime, says Yuen, runs errands, organises plumbers and arranges holidays - "we're like personal assistants or concierges" - as well as providing admin support for small companies such as boutique hedge funds.
"There are a lot of busy people in the City who are dedicated to their careers and who lack time for their personal agenda. And now they will be even more focused on their jobs, under greater pressure to be productive in this credit crisis."
The cleaner
On Monday September 14, Antonio Diaz-Mengivar picked up the papers, books and personal effects that Lehman Brothers' sacked workers didn't take away in cardboard boxes.
Diaz-Mengivar, 49, has worked at the Lehman Brothers building on Canary Wharf for five years but only begins his day's work in the evening. From Monday to Friday, 9pm to 6am, Diaz-Mengivar and a colleague empty bins and pick up litter on 12 of the building's 31 floors. "It's a lot of back bending," concedes Diaz-Mengivar. "And we are worried, because we do not know what is happening with our jobs. I have spoken with the security guards and they do not know what is happening either."
The collapse of Lehman's on Wall Street and at this gunmetal-grey building on Bank Street was the trigger for an "extraordinary, almost unimaginable, sequence of events", the governor of the Bank of England said this week.
As Diaz-Mengivar leaves work for his second job - a 6.30am to 11.30am shift cleaning a Leicester Square theatre - he is still met by a crush of commuters. But he says he now sees worry in those faces, each wondering if their job will be next. The fundraiser dressed as a chicken at the tube station is finding it tougher to fill his bucket for orphans. Winter has come early to Canary Wharf.
Nomura, the Japanese bank that has taken on some of the 1m sq ft rented here by Lehman Brothers, will employ 2,500 of the American bank's 4,500 employees. But Diaz-Mengivar and his 30 colleagues have yet to learn of their fate. They are employed by Lancaster Cleaning Company, which is owned by business services giant Rentokil Initial and provides daily cleaning and maintenance services to Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston and Swiss Re, among others. "I like my job," says Diaz-Mengivar. "And I am too old to start a new job."
It's said that, typically, the Lehman Brothers' basic salary was about £60,000 before bonuses. Diaz-Mengivar earns £7.20 an hour. How did he feel watching, on TV at home, the bank's sacked employees leave for the last time? He shrugs his shoulders. "I felt very sad for them. We all need to work."
He says he does not know when he will receive his 25p an hour bonus. Lancaster is a "living wage employer", but has yet to start paying workers the new £7.45 living wage set by London mayor Boris Johnson. "I make only enough money to pay rent and buy food," says Diaz-Mengivar. "I need the second job so I can send money to my mother in Madrid."
Canary Wharf cleaners were among the first to benefit from the living wage campaign. Next week campaigners will target Whitehall. "If the government can find £50bn to bail out bankers, they can find £5m to pay their own cleaners and security guards a living wage," says Neil Jameson of London Citizens.
The private banker
Adam Honey, 42, was a private banker at Merrill Lynch looking after client relationships with wealthy individuals and their investment portfolios. Just as the dotcom bubble was bursting and stock markets were tumbling, Honey met the firm's New York senior management to be told he was the future of the company.
"I flew back on the Sunday night and on the Monday morning walked into our London office to hear that I'd been made redundant," he recalls. "By 10.10am I was literally out on the street. It's a numbers game, nothing personal."
Honey says that he was offered a couple of banking jobs "in the 50 to 100 grand bracket" and was in a fifth interview for a job in Geneva when the bank chairman interviewing him took a phone call. "He said, 'I'm sorry but we can't now offer you a position.' When I asked him why, he told me to go back to my hotel and switch on the television." The date was September 11, 2001.
Deciding that "I wanted my fate to be in my own hands", Honey set up Mountain Leap Events to look after businesses entertaining clients on ski weekends. "I've always been mad about mountain sports, so I was following my passion as well as my contacts." He sold his London flat and started out with a second-hand computer in a rented apartment in Chamonix.
"Now we're launching a short residential Alpine retreat for people facing exceptional changes of circumstances - redundancy, health issues, family, whatever. I was fortunate that Merrill Lynch was just a job for me. I live much more modestly than I did nine years ago, but much more happily."
The vice-president
For eight years Jonathan Hesford, now 43, designed, installed and supported real-time IT trading systems for Merrill Lynch in New York, rising through the ranks to become a vice-president on a nice salary that bought his family a comfortable lifestyle. "We lived just 500 metres from the World Trade Centre and on September 11 I saw both planes hit and had to run from our apartment with our one-year-old," he recalls. "Merrill Lynch lost so much money in the disaster I was made redundant; my visa was tied to my job so we returned to England, and decided that what had happened was a good catalyst for making a change."
Confessing to being a "bit of a wine ponce", Hesford and his wife dreamed of owning their own vineyard and winery. Hesford studied winemaking in New Zealand, taking a postgraduate diploma in viticulture and oenology, then worked as an assistant winemaker at Neudorf.
"We bought undervalued vineyard land in Roussillon in France, where you can buy old vines, small properties and character vineries - the skeleton of something up-and-running you can renovate. The work is varied with physical activity, outdoors working, the science and the art of it, and running your own business, creating labels and talking to customers. From banking I understand financing; and having been a project manager, I understand planning. Starting with pruning the vines and ending with selling the wine, it's a project cycle."
At Domaine Treloar, Hesford grows Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Muscat grape varieties and produces 40,000 bottles a year which are sold locally, in the UK and in Germany. "We're making a small profit, and that's all I'm looking for. We're building something permanent that can't be taken away - unlike the people in the City right now who are losing their jobs, bonuses, options and lifestyle all in one go.
"Though I miss the cut and thrust of banking, what I do now pays off twice as much as a lifestyle."
The graduates
Golden hellos worth thousands, fat bonuses every year, overseas travel, rapid promotion, all expenses paid ... plenty of reasons to consider a career in the City. Well, at least there used to be.
With Lehman Brothers gone and job cuts at Citigroup, HSBC and Goldman Sachs, many recent graduates working in the financial services sector are beginning to wonder if they have made the right career choice. Graduate trainees were among those to lose their jobs when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September. "Some of them had only been there a couple of months before they were laid off," says Shuvo Loha, managing director of City headhunting firm Janikin Rooke.
"The atmosphere at work is not positive," admits one recent graduate who asked that he and his employer remain anonymous, because "I don't want to imply that the company is screwed".
Although he still has a job in capital markets at one of the banks in Canary Wharf, he has seen many of his colleagues laid off and is worried about his own future. "My department has taken a battering, and it's hard to see your colleagues disappear - you spend 14-hours a day with these guys and then they lose their jobs. And it could happen to me. The current crisis has shown me that anyone is dispensable. You stay loyal to your team, but when the **** hits the fan it counts for nothing - if they need to cut back, they'll get rid of you."
University of Liverpool graduate Faheem (who does not want his surname to be revealed) was made redundant in the summer from an accounting role at a City bank, but he is trying to remain sanguine about the experience. "It was difficult, but I'm seeing it as a chance to refocus on what I want to do. The job agencies told me that opportunities were drying up, so I thought I'd cut my losses, rent out my London flat and go back to live with my parents while studying for my next set of accountancy exams," he says. "I'm confident that the market will pick up. At the end of the day, it's just a boom-and-bust cycle. That's just how the industry works."
Many students who were considering a job in banking and finance will be having second thoughts about their plans, yet universities are still promoting City careers on campuses. "Yes, we are still encouraging students to apply for the banking and finance sector," says Gill Frigerio, acting director of careers at the University of Warwick, "but also to consider a wide range of other options such as consultancy or investment management."
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