Senior bankers' vacations are not what you think
If you thought the chief executives of investment banks spend their vacations at exclusive hotels in the Caribbean or Indian Ocean, where they continue working, you might be mistaken.
The social media posts of various senior financial services professionals suggest it's not like this. Or if it is, people aren't admitting it. The zeitgeist is more for vacations in cold climates, bathing in classic literature and switching off.
Philipp Freise, the co-head of European private equity at KKR, writes that he's been on the "windy shores of Northern Germany," where he's been reading Hermann Hesse’s poems and short stories in Butterflies amidst the 'smell of the sea, the sound of the waves and the wind in the dunes.' Holidays are a time to restore a "sense of wonderment," says Freise.
Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters has been at undefined location, reading Hamlett, practicing pilates and "broadly chilling."
Deutsche Bank chief executive Christian Sewing has been at the place below with his dog, which also seems to be having a good time. "Taking time off and switching off are crucial!," he declares. Rafa Lopez-Espinosa, the Warsaw-based chief operating officer at hedge fund Point72, has been reading about stoicism and and fraudulent hedge fund managers past. And Ewan Kirk, the founder of hedge fund Cantab Capital Partners has embarked upon another solo bike ride, this time from Cambridge to Stockholm.
This small and unrepresentative sample suggest that European finance professionals are doing more than simply lying by the pool. Many Wall Street bankers are presumably in the Hamptons, unless you're David Solomon, in which case you're presumably somewhere like Barbuda island in the Caribbean.
Christian Sewing's contemplative dog:
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