【英语社会】女银行家越多越好

More women, better banks? This is the theory currently being advanced. Of course, there are plenty of women in banking, especially retail banking. I suspect half the workforce of Britain's retail banks are female. A career as a bank teller is one that sits supportively with family life. But women in charge of a bank? There are very few.Gail Kelly is one of them, and she is the chief executive of Westpac. She was previously the CEO of St George, a far smaller bank in Australia. When she arrived at Westpac she promptly bid for St George, a deal that shareholders will vote on this month. That's decisive action for you. One of Kelly's strengths is that a long time ago, in her native South Africa, she taught Latin. Remember my colleague Gillian Tett mentioning that the word credit was derived from the Latin for "I trust"? Latin teaching is a great background for a banker.

In Iceland, I am delighted that they have put women in charge of cleaning up the mess. Elin Sigfusdottir and Birna Einarsdottir have been appointed the chief executives of New Landsbanki and New Glitnir respectively, the nationalised banks created by the Icelandic government in the wake of the financial crisis. Where did they get them from? Iceland, a country with a population roughly the size of Doncaster, surely doesn't have cupboards full of female bankers waiting around for things to go wrong. The two women were both promoted from inside the banks that failed. Sigfusdottir has been head of corporate banking at Landsbanki since 2003 and Einarsdottir became head of domestic commercial banking at Glitnir last summer. (Thank goodness for modern word processors or I would never have got those names right.) The FT reported that the two women were "expected to curb the bonus-driven risk-taking culture that has taken hold in Iceland over the past five years".

Now, let's get one thing straight here. I don't believe that bonuses are a flawed compensation model. Surely any model that minimises fixed costs is a good one in troubled times. No, the problem with bonuses is that people have come to regard them as a given. Bonus is derived from the Latin for "good" - in other words a bonus is a treat. It should not be taken for granted.

Back in Iceland, as I have mentioned, women are in charge of two of the three failed banks. But what about Kaupthing? There's a woman in charge of that, too, at least in the UK. Ernst & Young have been appointed receivers to Kaupthing and the letter that I have just received telling me that our company - as a wholesale depositor - is an unsecured creditor, is signed by three people, one of whom is a woman.

Why are we unsecured creditors of Kaupthing? It's a very unfortunate story, and it doesn't involve me being the gullible treasurer of a UK local authority. My management buyout was financed by Singer & Friedlander, who were subsequently bought by Kaupthing. As I have written before, we closed our account with Kaupthing in April and retreated to Arbuthnot, a very boring UK bank run by a Swiss proprietor who doesn't finance his bank from the wholesale money market. But some clients do not read their invoices correctly, and lo! We suddenly found that a client had paid a substantial sum into our old bank.

Am I worried? No. Why? Because a woman is in charge. Maggie Mills is a corporate restructuring partner who has been coping with this kind of chaos since 1979, so she must be a bit older than me. Maggie is the (wait for this, we clearly have title inflation) "Global Coordinating Partner" for Ernst & Young's restructuring practices. She impressed everyone when she worked on Baring, some 13 years ago, so I have every faith in her dealing with Kaupthing. Women running banks? Bring it on.

女性越多，银行越好？这是一个正在倡导的理论。当然，银行业中有许多女性，尤其是零售银行业。我猜测，英国零售银行的一半职员都是女性。银行柜员的职业很适合家庭生活。但掌管银行的女性？少之又少。

盖尔•凯利(Gail Kelly)是其中之一。她是西太平洋银行(Westpac)的首席执行官，原来是规模小得多的澳大利亚圣乔治银行(St George)的首席执行官。到西太平洋银行就职后，她立即对圣乔治发起了收购——股东们将在本月就此交易进行投票。这是一项果断的行动。凯利的一个优势在于，很早以前，她曾在自己的祖国南非教授拉丁语。记得我的同事吉莲•邰蒂(Gillian Tett)曾经提过，信贷(credit)这个词是从拉丁语衍生出来的，意思是“我信任”？对银行家来说，教拉丁语是一个很棒的背景。



我很高兴，冰岛让女性来负责收拾烂摊子。埃琳•西格富斯多蒂尔(Elin Sigfusdottir)和伯尔纳•埃纳斯多蒂尔(Birna Einarsdottir)已经分别被任命为New Landsbanki和New Glitnir的首席执行官。这是两家冰岛政府在金融危机后创设的国有化银行。冰岛政府是从哪里找到她们的？冰岛的人口规模大致与英国唐开斯特镇相仿，肯定不会有满屋子的女性银行家在等着出事。这两位女士都是从破产银行内部提拔的。西格富斯多蒂尔从2003年就负责Landsbanki的企业银行业务，埃纳斯多蒂尔去年夏天被提升为Glitnir国内商业银行业务主管。（多亏了现代文字处理器，否则我永远也不可能把这些名字写对。）英国《金融时报》报道称，预计这两位女士“将会遏制奖金驱动的冒险文化——这种文化过去5年已经在冰岛生根发芽。”







现在，让我们搞清楚一件事。我不认为奖金是一种有缺陷的报酬模式。确实，在困难时期，任何能尽量降低固定成本的模式都是好模式。不，奖金的问题在于，人们把它们当作是必然之物。“奖金”(bonus)衍生自拉丁文，意思是“好”——换句话说，奖金是一种款待。不应该把它认为是理所当然的。



回到冰岛。我已经提到，3家破产银行中的两家现在都由女性掌管。那么Kaupthing呢？也有一位女性在负责，至少是在英国。安永(Ernst & Young)一直在向Kaupthing派送委托管理人，而我刚刚收到了一封3人联名签署的信函，其中一个就是女性。这封信告诉我，我们的公司——一家批发银行——是一个无担保的债权人。



为何我们成了Kaupthing的无担保债权人？这是一个非常不幸的故事，但跟我是一家英国地方政府机构易受骗的司库没关系。我的管理层收购是由Singer & Friedlander提供融资的，后来它被Kaupthing收购了。正如我以前所写的那样，我们在4月份关闭了在Kaupthing的账户，退回到极其沉闷的英国银行Arbuthnot，它的经营者是一位不从批发货币市场为自己的银行融资的瑞士人。但有些客户没有好好读自己的发票，哎呀！我们突然发现，有一位客户将一大笔钱付给了我们原来的银行。



我担心吗？不，为什么？因为有一位女性在负责。玛吉•米尔斯(Maggie Mills)是一名企业重组合伙人，自1979年以来就一直在处理这类混乱，所以她岁数肯定比我大一点。米尔斯现在是安永重组业务的“全球协调合伙人”（我们显然存在头衔通胀，等着吧，以后肯定还会有其他人拥有这个头衔）。大约13年前，在处理霸菱银行(Barings Bank)倒闭时，她给所有人留下了深刻印象，因此，我对她处理Kaupthing百分之百地信任。女性经营银行？大力提倡吧。

译者/董琴