Hiring a helicopter to swoop down on the Alps to track down a wanted financial high-flier or delivering champagne with the doorstep milk to woo a star analyst are some of the more Bond-like devices used to lure top performers from rival City firms.
There╒s the bank which switched its entire fleet of six month old BMWs to Lamborghinis because that was the fancy of the incoming team of analysts just bought out at astronomical football transfer fee prices.
Dual contracts offering payment both in the US and the UK, provided by foreign firms with London branches, have been commonplace in the City to avoid British tax. But now head-hunters are talking about triple or even quadruple contracts as a more sophisticated tax avoidance. Many banks and brokers offer the prospective recruit a tax consultant who is invited to sit down with the potential ╥remuneration package╙ and put it together with all the latest loopholes man can devise.
Stories of incentives to persuade and devices to delight abound in the Square Mile which has never seen such a merry-go-round of poaching activity. In a matter of years the average salaries of City folk have at least doubled to catch up their peer levels in Tokyo and New York. London is still way behind Wall Street╒s millionaire numbers but there must now be a couple of dozen top international bankers who are pulling in the ú1 million package for the pleasure of leading firms into the post-Big Bang era.
So far the recruitment shows no signs of abating. Much of this has been fuelled by what the French would politely call the ╥panier des crabes╙ syndrome: bankers, brokers and dealers scrambling over each other in the mad dash to double salaries overnight by offering themselves ╤ or teams ╤ to rival firms. In the process they helped each other talk up salaries and perks over lunch tables (perhaps it╒s breakfast now).
First, came a dizzy rush by UK and US firms to buy out the couple of dozen top Stock Exchange broking firms to tuck under their wings and build into new securities conglomerates. It was this phase which brought us the memorable ╥golden handcuff╙ which was just a method of ensuring that newly acquired partners stayed with the new firm for at least a year or so after he had stashed his pot of gold into farms in Gloucester or little hideaways in the sun.
Then came the turn of the ╥marzipan╙ layer ╤ the men and women ╤ just below partner level who probably made up the real skills of the firms. They had to be enticed to stay on ╤ many with superb salary increases overnight and hefty bonuses.
Analysts, perhaps the real soothsayers of the latter end of the 20th century, continue to be some of the most sought after individuals.
