It is Monday evening, and I have been a week in my new job now. Well, four working days as I was`away in Holland from last Wednesday evening visiting my brother Paul and his family.
My initial feeling that my colleagues work hard has been confirmed, and I still think that this probably has more to do with the times than with the company. Most of my colleagues have lunch at their desks while continuing to work. That makes a nine hour day. The lunch break seems to consist of a quick visit to one of the myriad of sandwich and lunch bars on or near Goswell Street, the local thoroughfare. Our offices are about sixty yards off it, on Sycamore Street.
I am managing so far to bring my lunch with me and have it at the circular table in the kitchen cum common room where people make their tea or coffee (Being England, there is a good deal of tea- and coffee-making). I like the room as it has lots of natural light, unlike the rest of the office. A couple of people have remarked, not at all disapprovingly, that it is unusual to eat one's lunch in there. I fear that, within a couple of weeks, I won't have time. For the moment, it is a good place to meet people as they come in and out. Today I met Nicola and Natalie, both nice. Nicola works in conferences, Natalie in ... I can't remember.
Investoraccess is, as mentioned in my last post, a financial publisher for the private equity industry. Private equity, a way of financially structuring the ownership of businesses, was a long established but relatively small part of the financial world when I last worked in London, as a financial journalist. In the last five or six years, it has grown to enormous proportions. It has become a different animal, and there is little sign of the acceleration of its growth stopping. Hedge funds have also grown enormously, in their case from zero, over the same time period, and for, I think, essentially the same reasons. But I have been drinking some wine tonight, am tiring and will have to aim to continue this tomorrow evening. Sorry!
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