STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 20 September 2012

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51. 'London traders try to bully you; traders in Paris use charm'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/blog/2012/sep/20/german-banking-way-make-living


Our source tells of many reasons to be grateful for working in Frankfurt rather than London. Photograph: Frank Rumpenhorst/AFP/Getty

What's it like to be a trader in Frankfurt, when all the big trading floors are in London? Is it like playing football for Eintracht Frankfurt, soldiering on in the shadow of Chelsea and Arsenal? The banking blog was delighted to meet George – not his real name as this would instantly make him an ex-trader. He is in his late 20s and has been working in Frankfurt for a number of years. We are meeting at Fleming's, a favourite hangout of his with marvellous views of the city as well as the mountains in the distance.

In spite of the stereotypes about "the" trader, there are lots of different kinds requiring very different skills and attracting rather different personalities; some trade with their bank's money, others execute clients' orders. George says his daily routine is very close to that of this interdealer broker. But he doesn't want the article to say whether he is in shares (insiders say "equity&quot , derivatives, bonds, or currencies. In London he could have been more specific because over there he estimates around 80 people do what he does. In Frankfurt it's only 10, making it very hard to give him "plausible deniability" when his firm's legal department might start asking questions.

So that's one difference with London – bloody scale. "I call a trading floor at a major bank there and I speak to Tom. Next time I call, someone else answers, the next time, someone else again. These places are just huge."

Add to this, he says, the enormous turnover. "In Frankfurt you've got people who have been trading particular Pfandbriefe for 25 years. That's what they do. In London, from one day to the next, you see someone fails to log-on on his Bloomberg terminal. He stops answering his phone … Three months later, he suddenly pops up at another bank. This is normal in London; people are fired very easily, and hired very easily. Frankfurt doesn't have the recruitment and headhunting culture, it's far more stable.