Tuesday 1 April 2008

Gordon Pell: brain synergies

Gordon Pell, chairman of regional markets for RBS in its takeover of ABN Amro, has been talking about brain synergies. He is about to oversee a new division covering wealth management and retail banking operations in the UK and overseas, and he's very keen on brain synergies. Unfortunately, I don't understand anything about this.

Even more unfortunately, my dear friend and Acton's leading brain specialist, Maurice Marble III, claims to be an expert in this field and insists on telling my readers all about it. He says, 'Oh yeah, brain synergies are simple. Nothing to worry about. But I wouldn't advise Mr Pell to muck about with people's brains unless he has an expert such as myself on board. I presume Gordon is concerned that ABN Amro's old staff haven't had their brains tuned into the RBS way of thinking. I could deal with that, for a small fee. Say £20,000. I would just drain the brains of a few RBS people and then mix them up and inject a sample of the brain juice into the brains of a few ABN people. Then hopefully it will all spread around like some sort of virus. And voila! Brain synergies! Yeah, £30,000 should cover it. I'm not greedy.'

For fuck's sake. At least no one can say I'm not loyal to my friends.