Clause & Effect: Notes from Professional Life

Let’s Discuss Deal Tombstones
|Marditarl Co. | Clause & Effect™
Spend enough time on a trading floor, in a corporate finance team or around investment bankers and eventually you'll notice a curious collection of objects occupying desks, shelves and office cabinets.   Deal Tombstones.   Most people outside banking have no idea what they are. Most people inside banking barely question them.   They sit quietly among family photographs, awards, industry publications and the occasional stress ball. Small acrylic blocks, glass plaques and engraved pieces of metal commemorating transactions that may have taken months, and sometimes years, to complete.  ... Read more...
Why Corporate Professionals Avoid Graphic T-Shirts
|Marditarl Co. | Clause & Effect™
Spend enough time around lawyers, bankers, consultants and corporate professionals, and you begin to notice a pattern.   Very few of them wear graphic t-shirts. At least, not to work. This may seem surprising.   After all, many of these professions have relaxed their dress codes significantly over the past decade. Ties have disappeared. Trainers occasionally appear. Casual Fridays have become common. Yet the graphic t-shirt remains one of the last frontiers.   Why?   The answer has less to do with clothing and more to do with signalling. Professional... Read more...
Can I Wear a T-Shirt to Work?
|Marditarl Co. | Clause & Effect™
Few questions generate as many conflicting answers in professional life as this one.   Can I wear a t-shirt to work?   The answer, like most things in law, finance and corporate life, is: It depends.   More specifically, it depends on where you work, who is visiting, what meetings are in the diary, and whether anyone senior has suddenly decided to walk the floor.   In investment banking, trading floors and many law firms, the traditional answer remains a firm no. While dress codes have undoubtedly relaxed over the... Read more...