Loan Ranger

By the time friends read this Loan Ranger, Tonto and Silver will be more concerned with tinsel and fairy lights as another action-packed year in the loan market comes to an end.

Isn’t capitalism wonderful? Of course, privatisation, free enterprise and big corporations naturally go hand in hand with political freedom and civil rights, don’t they?

Loan Ranger is feeling very pleased with himself.

Tonto used to have the impression that bank meetings were the glitziest of affairs, and always well attended.

Loan Ranger got very cold feet the other day at the Société Générale winter press party. Not usually one to shy away from the limelight at an event, Loan Ranger nevertheless decided he’d best stick to the table furthest to the back of the bar and avoid mingling with the hearts and souls of the party. Not that he didn’t want to share a raspberry vodka or two with SG’s finest, but when Silver did try and be sociable, and went for a little twirl around the outdoor swimming pool, he nearly froze his hooves off.

As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, it can only mean one thing for the ranch: winter, and the season of party-going and endless nights of festivities, is upon us.

Always striving to bring the news to you first, Silver had a moment of excitement earlier this week when he found out that Simon Meldrum, he of ex-Dresdner fame, had started at Merrill Lynch.

Loan Ranger is a teenager at heart, and one of the best things about his job is that he gets to indulge his love of star gazing by scouring celebrity haunts for glimpses of the rich and famous.

Here’s a little puzzle for you. Part of Loan Ranger’s duties includes deciphering tortuous press releases, and he rather prides himself at usually being adept at this.

It was with a great sense of anticipation and excitement that Silver and Tonto rolled up to the British Museum for Barclays Capital’s loan market cocktails (which they decided to hold, God bless them, on a Tuesday night).

Tonto’s head is spinning. And not just from all the globe-trotting he has been up to recently.

Loans bankers are often mocked for their shoddy appearance. For years the tag of being slovenly dressers who wore brown shoes in the City has hung around the neck of the loan market as a millstone far worse than anything the pesky US subprime mortgage market can muster.