West Palm Beach, Florida - 2025
There was a time in Wall Street, and indeed the City of London, when the moral and ethical compass was not just temporarily misplaced, it was firmly lost. It was an era expertly captured in both Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. These two masterful storytellers happily fed on an implausibly good menu of vice, debauchery and excess. The astonishing reality is that these were not stories of fiction - they were - in large parts, factual.
I started work on an equity dealing floor in London in 1988, so I speak with a little authority when suggesting that not everything that went on at Stratton Oakmont was peculiar to that unhinged assembly of misfits. The 1980s were the Wild West and dealing rooms were the playgrounds of hard partying adrenalin junkies who believed that life was very much for living. It was a corporate Babylon.
Of course, serious business was going on, but so also was a great deal of monkey business. Those looking for a profession that rewarded frat house behaviour were attracted to the big investment banking dealing rooms. It was one big ride in the late 1980s and early 1990s and both men and women were complicit. Management unashamedly employed attractive and outgoing girls on their sales teams; it was seen as smart business practice.
In the new millennium, the subprime crisis and enlightened thought stopped the party and now we are left with mere memories of a time when greed was good, when “rookie numbers” were rookie numbers and expense accounts and compliance were seriously out of control. But I am not sure how much everyone remembers - it’s all a bit of a haze.
I would like to thank Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street) for collaborating with me on this project.