Of course, times like these breed conspiracies, and that may well not be the whole story: another version of events doing the rounds within Merrill is that the bank had put a shortlist together of people to be made Asian investment banking head post-merger and that Chunilal left of his own volition after becoming aware he would not get the job. There are others in Merrill who are relieved that Forbes is at least a Merrill man and not a Bank of America one. The rumour mill is a vibrant and bitter thing at the best of times but particularly when jobs are on the line.

More than anything, though, bankers talk with a sense of disbelief about their own personal circumstances. A year ago they seemed bullet-proof: providing their families with an opulence in their standard of living that they themselves could never have hoped for as children; invested in multiple assets and markets, all doing well; their futures provided for. Now the stocks have halved, the properties have plunged and become hopelessly illiquid, the options are useless, the banks are calling for extra cash as loan to value ratios have shifted, and with every round of job cuts they’re having to think about things they’d never contemplated before: pulling the kids of out the expensive schools, relocating back home, looking for jobs when there aren’t any. The rest of the world enjoys a certain schadenfraude at the fall from grace of the banker, but from the inside, it’s no fun at all.

“People are stunned more than anything else,” says a headhunter. “And they are fearful.”

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