About fucking time. Bob Diamond has pulled his finger out and hired some decent financial shamans. These guys are from ABN Amro - Jitesh Gadhia, Marc Holtzman, Simon Hargreaves, Jason Rynbeck, and Frank Hancock. Some newspaper is calling them 'rainmakers'. Whatever. To us they are just financial shamans.
Bob Diamond has already phoned me this morning. I've never known the man to be so happy. He said to me, 'Michael, can you believe this? I've got my own way, at last. Varley wasn't pleased about it, but so what? I run Barclays Capital. If I want shamans or rainmakers or whatever the fuck you want to call them, I will have them. ABN Amro must be gutted right now. Absolutely gutted. We couldn't buy the bank, so we just poach its best staff. Perfect! I must be some kind of fucking genius. I'm more or less the Mozart of investment banking! These new guys will really shake things up. Just like I said the other week, we're going to have crystals shining and tarot cards flying around and chakras vibrating and auras fucking changing colour - it's going to be unbelievable. It feels so good to be alive today. And what a beautiful morning! The sun is out, birds are singing in the trees …'
He went on like that for about ten minutes. I can't believe how much Bob has changed in recent months. If only every investment bank boss was the same. What a wonderful world it would be!
