Antony Jenkins’ efforts to change the culture of Barclays by cutting bankers’ pay? explain are on hold. At its investment bank, it is paying bonuses that are 13 per cent higher to “compete in the global market for talent”. The bank’s chief executive wants to reform the pay of US and Asian investment bankers but it is beyond his control.
安东尼•詹金斯(Antony Jenkins)试图用降薪来改变巴克莱(Barclays)文化的努力被暂时搁置了。为了“在全球市场争夺人才”，巴克莱的投行部门将员工奖金提高了13%。该行的首席执行官想要改革美国和亚洲投资银行家的薪酬，但那是他无法控制的。
His problem – shared with the rest of an industry struggling to alter itsits behaviour – is that there is no such thing as a banker. There are equity brokers, foreign exchange traders, mortgage salespeople, corporate financiers and all kinds of specialists under one roof. butThere is no single set of employees unified by a professional culture and a willingness to pull together.
和其余试图改变该行业行为的人一样，詹金斯的问题在于他没有意识到：不存在一种叫银行家的人。我们有股票经纪人、外汇交易员、抵押贷款销售人员、公司财务专员，以及各种处于同一屋檐下的专业人士。但没有哪种职业文化和凝聚力可以将这么多不同职业的雇员拧成一股绳。
That spells trouble for banks such as Barclays or Deutsche Bank as they try to introduce “The Barclays Way” or Deutsche’s six new corporate values (“integrity”, “innovation”, “discipline” etc). Banks that werebanged together in a 20-year spree of mergers and leveraged risk-taking, while old skills were replaced by computers, have little culture left from which to rebuild.
这将给巴克莱和德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)带来麻烦，因为它们正试图分别引入“巴克莱道路”和德银6点新的企业价值观（正直、创新、纪律等）。20年来，银行通过不断的合并和高杠杆的冒险活动，被生拼硬凑到一块，期间又发生了计算机取代传统技能的变革，因此，这些银行并没有留下多少可供重建的文化。
Richard Lambert, head of the UK’s Banking Standards Review (and a former editor of the Financial Times) is trying to fill this vacuum with a new body that would champion good behaviour and encourage bankers to become qualified professionals in the same way as doctors. Restraint must come from individuals, not just banks, he believes.
英国银行业标准评估项目(Banking Standards Review)主管、英国《金融时报》前总编辑理查德•兰伯特(Richard Lambert)正试图通过一个新机构来填补这一真空，这个机构将倡导良好的职业行为，鼓励银行家成为和医生一样获得资格认定的专业人士。他认为，必须对个人加以约束，而不仅仅对银行。
I sympathise with Sir Richard, not least because he appointed me as the FT’s banking correspondent two decades ago, when Royal Bank of Scotland and others were starting their trek towards self-destruction, but he does not have much to work with. The classic “banker”, an experienced, judicious loan expert, is a mythical figure.
我很理解理查德爵士，其中一个相当重要的原因是他曾在20年前任命我为英国《金融时报》银行业记者，当时苏格兰皇家银行(Royal Bank of Scotland)和其他银行正开始自我毁灭的缓慢进程。然而，他并没有多少工作可做。典型的“银行家”——一名富有经验、具有明智判断力的贷款专家——是个不存在的角色。
The best chance, maybe the only one, lies in organisations that are coherent enough for “culture” to have a meaning beyond bland statements of aspiration. That was true of the old Barclays – a patrician family-run bank – and is still true of a few banks, notably Goldman Sachs. Whether or not the culture is salutary, it exists.
最好的机会（也许是唯一的机会）存在于那些凝聚力足够强的银行，强到“文化”对它们而言具有实际意义，而不是苍白的口号。曾经的巴克莱银行的确是这样（这是一家由贵族家庭经营的银行），现在只有少数几家银行能做到，其中比较突出的是高盛(Goldman Sachs)。不论高盛的文化是否是好的文化，它如今至少还在。
Goldman has grown rapidly but without merging with a commercial bank or losing its identity (its biggest deal was taking over J Aron, the commodity broker that employed Lloyd Blankfein, its chief executive, and several other senior partners). Its 450 partners remain a cohesive group in spite of the strains provoked by a shift towards trading.
高盛的成长速度很快，但它从未与一家商业银行合并，也没有丧失对自己身份的认识（其最大一笔并购是收购商品经纪公司J Aron，它的雇员有后来成为高盛首席执行官的劳尔德•贝兰克梵(Lloyd Blankfein)和其他几名高级合伙人）。尽管业务向交易倾斜引发了一些紧张关系，但高盛的450名合伙人一直是个团结紧密的整体。
It was tarnished by how it behaved in the subprime mortgage crisis, and the jury is out on its ambition to be less avaricious and nicer to its customers, but Goldman is at least in control of itself. It cut bonuses after a fall in revenues for 2013, limiting them to 37 per cent of incomeso not just in line?. When Mr Jenkins tried to pull the pay lever, aiming for a similar result, it stuck.
高盛在次贷危机中的表现给它的名誉带来了损失；它是否打算不再这么贪婪，并对顾客好一点，目前还不得而知，但它至少在控制自己。在2013年收入下滑之后，高盛削减了奖金，其占公司收入的比重被限制在37%。而当詹金斯试图对薪酬动刀，以期取得类似效果时，却受阻了。
This is hardly surprising, given how Barclays pulverised its old culture over two decades, as it grew in investment banking. “There was no sense of common purpose in a group that had grown and diversified . . . there were no clearly articulated and understood shared values,” according to the Salz review of the bank’s business practices.
考虑一下巴克莱在发展投行业务的20多年里是如何将其旧有文化彻底毁灭的，就不会对此感到意外。萨尔斯(Salz)就巴克莱的商业行为所做的报告指出：“在一个业已成熟和多元化的团队里，找不到共同的使命感…没有被明确表述和理解的共同价值观。”
Barclays is an amalgam of everything from a UK high street bank; to de Zoete & Bevan and Wedd Durlacher, the pre-Big Bang stock broker and jobber; to most of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street investment bank. It would be amazing if a branch banker in Liverpool had fellow feeling for a debt trader in Singapore.
巴克莱进行了一大堆收购——从收购英国高街的一家银行，到在英国放松金融管制前收购股票经纪商de Zoete & Bevan和Wedd Durlacher，再到收购华尔街投行雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的多数业务。要是利物浦某家支行的员工能与一名新加坡的债券交易员产生同事之情，那才怪呢。
This does not make Barclays unusual; in fact, it is a run-of-the-mill creation of the long boom, like RBS (National Westminster, ABN Amro), Deutsche (Morgan Grenfell, Bankers Trust) or JPMorgan Chase (Bank One, Chemical Bank [WE SEEM TO SAY CHEMICAL BANK MORE OFTEN?], Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Cazenove & Co etc). All kinds of professions and cultures were thrown together.
但巴克莱并不因此而显得不寻常。事实上，它是经济长期繁荣所带来的再普通不过的产物，就像苏格兰皇家银行（收购了国民西敏寺银行(National Westminster)及荷兰银行(ABN Amro)）、德意志银行（收购了摩根建富(Morgan Grenfell)、信孚银行(Bankers Trust)），或是摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)（并购了美国第一银行(Bank One)、化学银行(Chemical Bank)、贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)、华盛顿互惠银行(Washington Mutual)和证券公司Cazenove & Co等）。对于它们来说，所有的职业划分和文化都被一股脑抛弃了。
Meanwhile, technology undermined the retail banking profession by allowing banks to replace individual judgment with credit scoring. The branch banker was turned into an overeager salesperson of mortgages and insurance policies, many of which were mis-sold. UK banks have paid £20bn in redress for mis-selling of payment protection insurance and other abuses since 2011).
同时，技术逐渐破坏了零售银行这种职业，个人判断被评级打分所替代。支行员工变成了心急如焚地推销抵押贷款和保单的人，而这些产品有很多都被不当销售给客户。2011年以来，英国各家银行因为不当销售支付保护保险及其他不当行为，已赔付了200亿英镑。
One way to solve this behavioural disaster – an option favoured by Sir Richard and others – is to encourage bankers to take professional exams and rebuild their sense of pride and identity. Bad bankers might be struck off by professional bodies, like bad doctors or lawyers lose licences. It was once common for British bankers to be qualified but only a small fraction is now.
解决这场行为灾难的办法之一（这也是理查德爵士和其他人赞成的一个选择）是鼓励银行家参加专业考试，恢复自豪感及身份认同。滥竽充数的银行家可以被专业机构除名，就像差劲的医生和律师被剥夺行业执照。资质认定曾在英国银行家中很普遍，但如今已是凤毛麟角。
Greater professional pride would not hurt but I doubt it is the answer. Financial analysts already study for qualifications, and that did not prevent problems in the past. Nor is the deskilling of retail banks likely to be reversed, creating a fresh need for traditional bankers – if anything, more work is likely to be done by machines.
更强的职业自豪感不会有坏处，但我对这种办法表示怀疑。金融分析师们已经在为获取资格认证进行学习，但这并没有阻止过去的问题发生。零售银行去技能化的趋势也不太可能被逆转，因此也不太可能出现对传统银行家的新的需求。要说可能的情况，那就是更多的工作将被机器完成。
Ultimately, banks will have to tighten their discipline or create the cultures they lack. The former is a lot simpler than the latter. A bank with a coherent identity and strong leadership can tell its managers to alter course. “We had sessions where we told everyone, ‘Things that were OK then are not OK now’,” says one banking executive.
银行最终还是要加强纪律，或创造出它们所缺少的文化。前者比后者要简单得多。具有一贯认同感和强有力领导的银行可以告诉其管理者调整路线。一家银行的高管说：“我们曾开会告诉每个人，‘过去OK的事，现在已经不OK’了。”
If the bank is in effect starting from scratch, having mislaid its original culture and instead amassed a mish-mash of financial specialists with conflicting skills and attitudes, it is another matter. Mr Jenkins is trying very hard to pull off what may be an impossible task.
如果银行已经遗失了原有文化，聚集了各种乱七八糟的金融专家，而他们的经验和态度彼此冲突，因此银行实际上是从零开始建设文化，那便是另一回事了。詹金斯试图费力完成的或许是一项不可能的任务。