During the pandemic “seemingly every luxury acquisition has become a so-called alternative asset class”, says The New York Times. Instead of splurging on fancy restaurants and Park Avenue penthouses, the bored super-rich are “one-upping” each other in online auctions for jewellery, watches, furniture, sports cards, vintage cars, limited-edition trainers and crypto art.
“All I do is go through watch porn,” says John Demsey, an executive group president at Estée Lauder. “It’s crazy… I’m at home all day at a computer. Time is staring me right in the face.”
Some retailers, conscious of growing wealth inequality, are reluctant to speak on the record, but tales abound of goods changing hands at fantastic prices, says the NYT: earrings that fetched $90,000, Patek Philippe Nautilus 5980 rose gold chronograph sports watches selling for almost $200,000 (against the retail price of $85,000). A Michael Jordan rookie trading card, bought for about $30,000, was recently snapped up for more than $700,000 and a pair of autographed 1985 Air Jordan sneakers went for $275,000 last year. The rich can’t spend their money on travel, a watch expert explains. They have to find other ways, “so everything collectible is skyrocketing in value”.
One beneficiary is Clement Kwan, known as “the Hermès of marijuana” because he’s a founder of Beboe, an upmarket cannabis vaping brand. “Since the pandemic started, my financial portfolio has gone up 50%,” he says. “My collectibles went up by 200%.”
New mutual funds are fuelling demand from those who don’t want to shell out big sums. Apps such as Rally, which sells fractional shares in everything from Rolex GMTs to dinosaur remains, allow investors to buy, sell or trade their shares as if they were stocks. The age of the average Rally investor is 28 and most are male.
Carney’s latest reincarnation
George Clooney lookalike, former Bank of England governor, “sustainable” asset manager – is Mark Carney now setting himself up for a political career? The Times’s Philip Aldrick suspects as much on the strength of the Canadian’s new book, Value(s): Building a Better World for All, which presents the author as a “liberal statesman and earnest polymath”, and reads like “a personal political manifesto, complete with CV and proof of education”.
Aldrick describes Carney approvingly as a “driving force” in the pricing of environmental risk, but is sceptical about the book’s “Davos man” manifesto, which reflects “the benevolent belief that, with a few tweaks, the ‘citizens of nowhere’ can reorganise capitalism for the collective good”. Carney poses us a question, says The Economist: today’s powerful figures are those that thrived within the current system. “If society needs new moral leadership, it may need to look somewhere else.”
The Daily Telegraph’s Ryan Bourne is more scathing about Carney’s “dense, often muddled” arguments. “Ultimately, when he suggests that we place too much faith in the wisdom of markets and their prices, what he is really saying is that individuals have too much decision‑making power and that greater power should be transferred to worthies to decide what is best for us.” Carney’s policy preferences – rapid decarbonisation, stakeholder capitalism, more diversity, more government investment, other progressive goals – are not “objective, universally held values”.
Is the 100-hour week on the way out?
The protest by a group of young Goldman Sachs analysts claiming they are “overworked” and “disrespected” underscores three things, says Brooke Masters in the FT. One, investment banking remains “a high-paid sweat shop”, notwithstanding reforms after a Bank of America intern died of an epileptic seizure in 2013. Two, millennial and Gen Z workers are more willing to challenge bosses than their predecessors. And three, Covid-19 has made the ensuing conflict much worse.
Old City hands were unimpressed. “Snowflakes!” scoffed one, as he recalled his own 95-hour weeks in the middle of a deal frenzy. Another dismissed the idea that young traders can’t live on four hours’ sleep.
Citigroup chief executive Jane Fraser is more sympathetic. She told staff this week that most will only have to show up at the office three days a week in future, and banned internal Zoom meetings on Fridays. The Wall Street Journal says Citi is “the first major bank to declare that a physical presence in its offices won’t be required in the post-pandemic world”.
And full marks to Jefferies, a mid-size investment bank, says the FT. Last year it responded to wellness and overwork issues by recruiting more analysts to reduce the workload and offering all its analysts and associates the choice of a Peloton, Mirror or Apple Watch fitness package – at a total cost to the company of $3m.