Urban Legends
The Chanel bracelet belongs to the Banker Girl I brought home, Allison. She is to this day the only attractive Banker Girl I have ever seen and the only one I’ve ever allowed to hook up with me. In training, she was a captivating, seemingly mythical creature—a Wall Street siren, of sorts. She had “Kappa Alpha THETA!” qualities—sexy but still so pure that every guy felt the need to stop cursing around her. Eyes popped out of heads when Allison made an interest rate joke during a break, and guys nearly fainted when the word synergy fell seductively off her lips. Everyone begged to have that girl on his desk. It wouldn’t even matter if she was intelligent; anyone would have promptly done her work for her.
Allison came back to the apartment with me after our last training event. She wasn’t a particularly challenging conquest, and it was a decent experience by any standards. She maintained a certain aloofness about her in the morning, which I appreciated. I didn’t see her again, but my roommates caught a glimpse of her prancing out of the apartment and have since been trying to locate other girls like her on Wall Street. We think there might be a few in Sales, but it’s hotly debated whether that actually counts (HR doesn’t).
Of the three* finance girls we hooked up with back then, none came back immediately for her stuff. Allison called, but I didn’t pick up, and after ringing through to voice mail, she knowingly didn’t leave a message. We think the Joy Luck Investment Club girl was happy to shed a relic of her nerdy, pre-Banker life. And since we figured the Big Ugly would definitely call up at some point demanding the rest of her cheeseburger, we just put it in a Ziploc bag and stuffed all three of their things away in a drawer, the function of which later became more defined; it was an appropriate christening.
As we’ve spent more time in Banking, we’ve realized that all girls on Wall Street, regardless of type, have certain things in common. For example:
They are all at various stages of the pear—skinny top and bulbous bottom. Thankfully, we had caught the girls at the very beginning of the ballooning. The pear is similar to the Freshman Fifteen—the weight girls gain when they go to college—except it’s more like the Banker Thirty, and it all aggressively goes to the ass. All Banker Girls fight ferociously in their few gym hours to combat the pear, but it is futile—remaining seated five sixths of the day could flatten J.Lo’s booty into a mushy blob.
All the emotion, clinginess, and drama that make most females so tremendously inefficient to live with become completely expunged from Banker Girls. What remains feels more like the shell of a girl rather than a girl itself—perhaps a worthwhile friend.
The female obsession with fashion is exponentially augmented. Every Banker Chick I’ve ever met fills any lull in conversation with a discussion of how she is just working in finance as a stepping stone to a job in couture. Some are even on the “business side” of a puny little jewelry company they had started with an equally unartistic friend.*
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INSIDER INFO WITH BANKERGRRRRL
Finance? Yeah, I mean it’s whatever. I like it. I’m good at math, and I’m learning a lot of great business stuff I’ll be able to use in the rest of my life. And I figure, how else would I get to go out and have $500 dinners with my friends and buy $3,000 shoes (and tip my shoe repair guy as well as I do)? There are boys, of course. I was dating this guy Excel, but we’re on a break. I’m with PowerPoint now.
Wait. Is it Wednesday? My Us Weekly comes on Wednesday!! I haven’t eaten in days, and I can’t wait to hit Equinox with it! Grr…I really hope that fat bitch doesn’t take my favorite elliptical again.
Psst. Wanna know a secret? There’re a lot of spikes and lulls with the way the deals work on my desk, so when I’m not busy during the day, I sneak out and go shopping. Just gotta leave your bags with the doorman and get ’em on your way out, girl!!
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To their credit, however, if a group of Banker Chicks were to go head-to-head with the editors of Glamour in some sort of fashion knowledge contest, I’m certain the Banker ladies would win hands-down. Why? Because no one (no one) does due diligence like Bankers, even if it’s on ballerina flats and Gucci clutches.
Also, Bankers don’t really lose at anything, especially not to some wannabe Vogue bitches.
As it turns out, Kate, the Big Ugly, did eventually come back, just last week. As we predicted, she hadn’t forgotten about that cheeseburger and was just busy adjusting to life in The City. She came over one night after work, and, surprisingly, I noticed that she had managed to remain at the same level of thickness. Big Ugly stocks do indeed have relatively slow growth. Upon seeing her food, she reacted as one does after finding a lost family heirloom. Impassioned, she fell upon the cheeseburger, and, like a savage, she ate the shit out of that two-year-old gnarliness.
Chicks of Bankers
Banker Chicks are a tragic breed, but the girls that Bankers eventually end up with are a stark contrast. They’re beautiful, sophisticated women—ones Banker Chicks futilely ape. Through various dinners, work events, and older friends, I’ve met several women married to older Bankers. They all seem to share the need for a strong, attractive man who can indulge their every material caprice. Granted, this might be all women, but at least the ones who end up with Bankers succeed in achieving their goal.
These women are selected because their beauty is paired with good stock—ensuring proper lineage is a high priority for Bankers. I mean, how would it look if a guy from Blackstone married a waitress? And just imagine how confused their poor children would be. The little rugrats might even feel empathy for the servers at the country club, and the entire system would deteriorate.
Sitting at a restaurant with a group of MDs or PMs at a Hedge Fund and their wives, I can imagine the women as little girls, opening their soda cans methodically, counting the turns as letters, and aggressively ripping off the tabs when they reached B. I bet they hoarded those tabs and put them on a string. “This is my ‘I’m gonna marry a Banker’ necklace!” they must have said giddily when showing their craft to their mothers.
Chicks of Bankers don’t really get assessed based on their employment, but they do tend to group together based on their “passions.”
Hot-for-Profit
The Hot-for-Profit girl has a passion for “change.” In an existence dedicated to negative net income, she has done one profitable thing in her life: getting herself a Banker man. This girl generally focuses her energy on some negligible NGO, either recycling the old Dolce & Gabbana dresses of Connecticut women or helping provide support to thousands of hurricane victims. The only reason this organization is still afloat, however, is because her husband and often his Bank use it as a tax write-off. Her hobby is cute and endearing in its ineffectiveness, and it’s fun to humor, as a novelty.
The Takeover Artist
The Takeover Artist is passionate about her “art.” She photographs or paints or sculpts “modern,” vomit-inducing oddities; she may even fancy herself and her little roman à clef to be literary. But at some point, this girl realizes that she needs someone besides her daddy to keep her from starving, and she turns to a Banker for art supplies.
When I meet a Takeover Artist, I can’t help but respect her hypocrisy: she will never sell out her art to be more mainstream; rather, she sells out her tits and ass to get a $15,000 SLR camera with a duffel bag full of lenses she will never figure out how to use.
The CDO (Chief Domesticated Officer)
Some Bankers do end up with women in the corporate world. These women can range from Human Resources or PR girls to middle managers or older female Bankers themselves. This woman’s passion was her career; she even chopped her hair at age thirty to look more commanding. She tried to piggyback her way to the top by marrying a more successful man but just got overshadowed. The only bright part of her life now is the two-carat rock on her finger she either proudly displays or hides, depending on her work environment.
The Deal Trophy
My MD is married to a D
eal Trophy. Like a Lucite deal toy made of acrylic glass that sits on his desk to commemorate the completion of a deal, she sits in his house or stands on his arm and looks pretty.
When I end up around my MD’s wife, I find it impossible not to flirt with her. It’s dangerous, but she’s beautiful and charming in a confident, older woman way. This appeal is not only what allowed her to snag a Banker but what makes her perfect to use when schmoozing with clients.
Talking to her, I find that her life is complete and ideal. She is content and has realized all her true passions: staying at home, doing yogalates, bossing around the maid, and figuring out innovative methods to blow her Banker hubby’s money on shoes, clothes, and antique accent tables.
Banker Chicks and Chicks of Bankers might not be at the same level of attractiveness, talk, or dress, but they do share one thing: a bond forged by their relationships with Banker men. They’re united by an undeniable, mutual truth: their lives revolve around us.
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COMMENTS FROM leveragedsellout.com
As part of that rare subset of “Private Equity” chicks—I can say all of the above applies, especially the struggle between dieting and the really expensive dinners.
And another tip, if you’re trying to get your game on, always guess above where you think she actually works…if you think she’s a Second-Tier Banker Chick, ask her if she works at a Bulge Bracket…if you think she’s a First-Tier Banker Chick, ask her if she works in private equity…hey, we’ve got to get our kicks from somewhere.
POSTED BY ANONYMOUS, MAY 10, 11:30 A.M.
All comments are real and unedited.
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FACT #8
Diversity is one of our core values.
Race
WALL STREET IS extremely diverse. In other industries, individuals are still slotted into categories based on their race, and they are granted or denied employment opportunities based on the color of their skin. This does not occur in finance. No—we take no part in that kind of backwardness. You see, in Banking, you are judged on important things: what school you went to, how much money you bring into the firm, and what brand your tie is. But once you’ve passed these tests, you become part of the more important super-race of Bankers—a group no one can be prejudiced against.
Yes, there are a few people who still dream of the days of yore, when all Bankers were blue-blooded and the closest any foreigner got to Wall Street before being hit in the face with a rock was the Statue of Liberty. I imagine that I might have been a bit more “comfortable” in that dynamic, not having to open my mind to understand and accept the heritages of my various colorful colleagues. But, like any good Banker, I prefer a challenge and appreciate the wealth of insight and diverse experiences and culture that all the upper-class American-born minorities bring to our little world.
During my finance tenure, I’ve worked side by side with Bankers of all cultures. We went through training together, collectively pulled all-nighters, and partied (occasionally) as a single unit. There were, of course, numerous ethnic minorities at my prep school and at Princeton (twelve in total, to be exact), but Banking was the first time the walls were broken down, and I was able to really get to know these guys.
My experiences with nonwhite Bankers are numerous, but a few in particular stand out in my mind. These interactions have helped shape my outlook and life and, ultimately, have contributed to my personal growth and overall awareness.
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Name:
Sameer
Career Goal:
MD
Ethnic Role Models:
Lakshmi Mittal, Kal Penn, Gandhi
Greatest Fear:
Having to eat meat at a work event.
Pet Peeves:
Coming into the office on Saturday, unlevering betas, being called “Bangalore”
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My Favorite Memory
Sameer sat next to me, so we became quite close. He was a bright, hardworking guy from Pittsburgh, one of a crew of Indian trailblazers who decided to enter the financial industry instead of medicine.
One thing I noticed early on was that he was always receiving a great deal of pressure from his parents, not only to succeed, but also to “find a good, Indian girl” and “get married.” It really seemed to stress him out, almost to the point that he couldn’t concentrate on work. To offer some balance, I decided that I would help Sameer “find a hot, white girl” and “get laid.” Sameer had just introduced me to the wonders of saag paneer, and, frankly, I felt I owed it to him. I made a few calls and let a couple girls know that I had a dapper Banker friend named “Sam” who was on the market, and the deal sealed faster than a tech IPO in 1998. I’ve recently moved on to chicken tikka masala, but Sam is still with the same girl I introduced him to way back when. He’s not too stressed out, and from what I hear, his parents have stopped pestering him altogether.
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Name:
Michael
Career Goal:
Partner at Private Equity Firm
Ethnic Role Models:
TBD
Greatest Fear:
Asian glowing at a work event
Pet Peeves:
Never being able to find an off-the-rack shirt that fits, being called “Chang”
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My Favorite Memory
Chang was as diligent as a barefooted rickshaw driver on a hot summer’s day; he could always be counted on. This dependability quickly became apparent, and others took advantage of him, leaving him with much more work than the rest of us. But he never once complained. Chang was quiet and reserved—meditative, even. But he always had this kind of subtle underlying playfulness to him. If he was knee-deep in some analysis, for example, and the staffing manager assigned him something else, he would look over at me. I would have my shoes off and my feet kicked up, and he would snarl, doing this dead-on impersonation of someone really pissed off. Priceless.
One time, I was in the Hamptons, and I got a call from our MD asking me to finish up a few things. I just hate getting sand in my laptop, so I called up the ol’ Changster and asked him if he wouldn’t mind helping me out quickly. “You’re a machine, man! Shouldn’t take more than a couple, ten hours,” I encouraged him.
I could hear him getting into the huffing part of his impersonation over the phone, and I was curious how that lighthearted snarl might convey itself cellularly. But then he added a new element to his routine, screaming, “FINE. JUST FUCKING STOP CALLING ME CHANG! I’M KOREAN. MY LAST NAME IS LEE,” and slamming down the phone.
What a joker! Love that guy.
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Name:
Ari
Career Goal:
Hedge Fund Manager
Ethnic Role Models:
Stephen Schwarzman, Saul Steinberg, Leon Levy
Greatest Fear:
Falling for a shiksa secretary
Pet Peeves:
Numerous
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My Favorite Memory
Apart from me, Ari was the most naturally skilled Banker on our desk. He was smart, with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for business information and married this tenacity with an almost palpable level of greed. It soaked his shirt like his back sweat and was just as noticeable. Awesome. My lust runs deeper for prestige than money, so I didn’t entirely grasp Ari’s hunger for cash, but I imagined it was the kind that comes about from growing up without boatloads of it. This seemed to correlate well with “Brooklyn”—the town where he was from.
Ari also has very defined goals. From the moment we began working together, he incessantly talked about his dream of running a Hedge Fund. On the way to grabbing lunch, he would relate, at length, how he would one day buy Daniel Loeb’s (Third Point LLC) house, torch it, and use it to firebomb Steven A. Cohen’s (SAC Capital) residence, leaving him alone as the most badass Jewish Hedge Fund Manager out there. He delivered these statements not as hyperbole, but as inevitabilities he was giving me a preview
of.
I respected these musings and realized there could be a mutually beneficial relationship between us. So I sat Ari down one day and told him that in the interim until he became a Hedge Fund Manager, I wanted him to be my personal Trust Fund Manager. He beamed like a son who’s just been brought into his father’s diamond business. I let him invest only what was in my checking account, but we still had a special moment, and he made me a cool $500k.
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Name:
Natalie
Career Goal:
Secretary of State
Ethnic Role Models:
Colin Powell, Stan O’Neal, Condoleezza Rice
Greatest Fear:
Having to watch coworkers dance
Pet Peeves:
Being asked, “So, what is it like as a minority woman in finance?”
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My Favorite Memory
Natalie is the only Banker Chick I can stand being around on a regular basis. She possesses two traits I’ve never witnessed together in another female Banker: she does good work and she is gorgeous. Through her unique combination of these qualities, she has always managed to get rewarded with compliments and high-profile projects. I back that.
Damn, It Feels Good To Be a Banker Page 6