What is it about the fat cats in the city continually getting rewarded for doing a rubbish job? We all know that it was the finance industry, ably assisted by the government, that got the UK into its current economic mess and yet, while the rest of us pick up the pieces, struggle to pay our mortgages and fail to find work, it is the banking sector that is again actively recruiting for new highly paid jobs.
One of those jobs has gone to Nigel Rose, who has become new chief financial officer of City Index. Now I know City Index isn’t a bank, but it is an institution based in the city, which offers spread betting services on financial markets. It is also an institution that required a £70m cash injection from Michael Spencer, whose company owns City Index, after it lost £43m when its shares collapsed last year.
Still, it was reassuring to hear the company’s CEO Martin Belsham welcoming Rose with open arms, like an old friend. Which, funnily enough, he is. Rose worked for ten years as finance director at Blue Square and then Rank, which is where Belsham was in charge until he was quietly shown the door in 2008.
While at Blue Square Belsham oversaw a period during which the firm’s previously buoyant sportsbook revenues took a nosedive and where he was most famous for moving the company’s headquarters from Finsbury Circus to Paddington to make it easier for him to commute from Didcot to indulge his favourite pastime of duck shooting.
It makes you wonder really how on earth Belsham got the top job at City Index, until you remember that he is good friends with Spencer – and held the position of Chief Executive of City Index between 1998 and 2002. So the three are once again reunited in perfect harmony in the City, where the notion of jobs for the boys is still alive and well and the circle is neatly squared. Read more.