Very cheerful atmosphere but serious problems in London Wealth - unfit senior managers
Pros
Lots of happy smiley faces and from time to time charming but naive Canadians floating through the office.
Cons
Business is slow moving. Large number of dormant accounts. Heavy unexplained bias to doing business in the BRICS/PIGS (traditional Roman Catholic debt laden EU and Central American countries and facilitation of off-shore accounts and trusts) that suffered heavily after the financial crisis. Although the bank claims to be conservative and friendly and uses this as a mantra they do on-board questionable clients or hire bankers with questionable links in the past. It seems if you're someone who doesn't notice things you get to stay for a long time and are offered a lot of flexibility/help to progress. Favouritism in the London Wealth office is rife with little attention paid to aptitude more, personal links to senior MD's, whoever catches a managers eye (amongst the girls mostly) and anyone with a similar surname to a relative of a senior director or went to the same/similar type of school as one of their children. This is history in most of the city but not in this office. One MD tried to fight against the creation of a defined career path for Assistants to progress to professional career. An appalling Upstairs/Downstairs attitude and he was proud of it. Hoping to do business by people speaking with '3rd cousins' in the city professions. More than a sense of entitlement but an expectation that others working at the bank with be from upper middle class privately educated backgrounds. If you didn't fit this cultural picture you're days where numbered. This was in 2014. A lot of blind eyes turned to poor behaviour and conduct and in the junior ranks some inexplicable hires of banking assistants with little or no background in the industry who are given rapid progression and very generous benefits. For example able to take holidays with no notice and seemingly endless holiday allowances and study time off. All hidden with a charming smile. It's clear after a while that's there is a lot of wilful procrastination in this company and it doesn't function like many other private banks. A lot of very noisy efforts to promote women and ethnic minorities but the London office has a number of stories circulating about sexual harassment with the directors allegedly involved very quick to talk about how much they help women and backs turned on the girls concerned very quickly. Slightly seedy atmosphere and feels like quite 'shop window' of an operation.
