Christopher Walker: Life begins at 40 - just when the City kills your job

It was an electric moment as our eyes met. She shook a dusty raincoat from her slim shoulders to reveal the most feminine of evening dresses. Her eyes shone with excitement, as did her gold high heels, which clicked on the marble floor as she strode past me into a private room, perfuming the air. I pinched myself to remember she is 100 years old.

It was an electric moment as our eyes met. She shook a dusty raincoat from her slim shoulders to reveal the most feminine of evening dresses. Her eyes shone with excitement, as did her gold high heels, which clicked on the marble floor as she strode past me into a private room, perfuming the air. I pinched myself to remember she is 100 years old.

With more and more public icons defying the preconceptions of old age, it is surprising that ageism itself can be so rampant. Nowhere is this more so than in the financial community, where worship at the temple of youth seems to involve daily blood sacrifices.

The herd of chalk-striped City "old lags" has been culled annually until it must now constitute an endangered species. How many salesmen at our leading broking houses would feel safe past 40?

To some extent, this is caused by the gruelling nature of many City careers. It is difficult to avoid the physical damage created by all those seven o'clock starts and evenings spent entertaining clients. The increasing obsession with "pres- enteeism" can only add to this.

A recent survey suggested that the average City working day is now 11 hours. If you work for an American bank, I'm sure you are surprised that it is so low.

But it's not just the burn-out factor; it's attitudes more generally. It seems that today's stars must almost necessarily be young. Last week I met with a leading City analyst who has just fallen from grace. I remembered him as one of my trainees, whom I watched go from requiring an explanation of what a dividend was to the comfortable tenure of a million-dollar salary in his mid-20s. Sadly, he is now 31 and has been obliged to make way for a "fresh approach". His replacement is 22.

It may seem strange that in the financial analysis of complex businesses, inexperience seems so widely treasured. I remember myself, as an analyst at the age of 21, ruthlessly tearing into a company chief executive and summing up his entire strategy on a scrap of paper. Only the chutzpah of youth could carry this off. I was quoted as an authority the next morning on the front page of the Financial Times.

One view of a recently published Reuters survey of analysts has alluded to this "boy wonder factor". Of the 33 sectors covered, in only nine were the same analysts rated top by the company chiefs as by the fund managers.

Is the City being dazzled by youth? The firm of consultants doing the research noted that companies preferred the more seasoned analysts who had "been here before". It was felt that young hot-heads were too influenced by the bull market, and untested in a downswing.

Things have got so bad that one over-40 stockbroker has started a charity called "Back to Work" for City victims of ageism. We are also seeing more and more anti-ageism legislation for business as a whole.

The European Commission is taking a leading role - it's interesting how beneficial social change so often comes from that quarter. One company was recently taken to court for advertising for "young dynamic professionals". Sadly, it claimed in its defence that it had interviewed people in their 30s.

The issue has also attracted the attention of the election strategists. With the Tories making ever more direct attempts to woo pensioners, the Government has countered with plans to outlaw compul- sory retirement ages. This is coinciding with the launch of a big campaign by Age Concern to change attitudes to old age more generally.

All these initiatives may have a welcome effect in the community at large, but it will take more than legislation and advertising campaigns to change attitudes in the City. All is not bleak, though.

Anyone with regular exposure to the American financial community will have noted a growing difference between the US and the UK. There, gurus are going grey - experience is starting to be valued. Warren Buffett and other investment gurus are not youngsters: he's 69.

It is interesting to speculate whether this phenomenon is re-lated to the protracted economic cycle. As memories of a real bear market become ever more distant (1987 was really just a cold snap - it was 1974 that was our last real crisis), so longer perspectives become more valued.

At the height of the tech boom, I remember hearing the phrase "experience is in the price". Not much comfort for those who have since been trampled in the "tech-wreck".

Récherche du temps perdu