Thursday 8 July 2010

Charles Wilson is leaving Lazard to join Investec

Oh, why do they do it? Why do they keep moving around, searching for that elusive happiness?

Charles Wilson, managing director at Lazard Asset Management and head of third party distribution, is leaving - after thirteen years of glory - to join Investec. Well, thirteen years is a long time, I suppose. But the universe is billions of years old. So thirteen years is really nothing, nothing at all. He could stay a while longer. Oh, why doesn't he stay a while longer? Just another five years, that's all. Then maybe he will see that there is no point in moving anywhere.

You have to take yourself with you. Your new colleagues will soon seem as boring and dull as the colleagues you left behind. The excitement will fade. One morning, you will look in the mirror, and a desert will stare back at you, the desert of your ancient face. Emptiness. Despair. Your mind will turn to suicide. You will long for a burning, but money doesn't always burn. Sometimes it just hovers out of reach, yes, it hovers, and it is cold, and you cannot touch it.

Grey morning in summer. The darkness of the night has gone. Thank God for that! Thank God the satanic ones are resting! But they will be back tonight. Maybe they will look for Charles Wilson. That will give him something to think about. Men like Charles Wilson need to be challenged. They need to be stretched. Oh, he will be challenged. He will be stretched. If the voices catch him, out of darkness and into his soul.

Charles Wilson is a lucky man. I've just got a feeling. No harm will come to him. He's probably very happy. He wants a change. Nothing wrong with that. But I have dark thoughts. It's ridiculous! What is there to worry about? I have never even met Mr Charles Wilson. Why am I so concerned about him?

Every banker, every hedge fund manager, every analyst, is a potential mystical child. Isn't that was I was taught? Wasn't it drummed into me by the ghosts of the dead financiers? Yes, they taught me well. All financial workers are lost until I can find them and carry them into the burning love. That is true happiness. Not shifting around. Not searching with sadness. But staying in one place, paralysed with ecstasy, rooted to the spot. The spot wherever you happen to be in the cosmos. Where you are is the only place. For eternity.

A new day. Like yesterday. Like tomorrow. On and on and on! But one day, love will last forever. Then no more days, no more nights. No passing weeks, and months, and years. Only a silent and beautiful burning outside time and space. That's the best we can hope for. It is our ultimate goal.