What about the difference between a bond’s coupon and yield-to-maturity? They’re the same if the paper’s trading at par (obviously), but what happens when that fateful line on your Bloomberg terminal starts to nosedive? Answer quickly, because the MD needed to know five minutes ago, and it won’t be long before he starts shouting. Again.
Television’s least wholesome drama returned to BBC One early this month, offering more backstabbing, boozing, sex, snorting and frankly incomprehensible financial jargon.
Series 3 of Industry sees Pierpoint, in stark contrast to the behaviour of its employees, repositioning itself as an ethical investment bank when it takes on a new client, the green energy start-up Lumi. This is run by an aristo turned tech-bro, the aptly named Sir Henry Muck, and played with brio by Kit Harington, best known as Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow.
Set in the pressure cooker environment of international bank Pierpoint & Co’s London office, the series follows a group of sex and drug fuelled young bankers as they forge their identities on the trading floor.
Written by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the eight-part series finds the Pierpoint employees back to work as the market rips, and the grads are no longer allowed to hide behind their graduate status and are more charged up and paranoid than ever.
The series, which aired on BBC Two in the UK and HBO in America, follows a group of young graduates vying for a permanent position at the cut-throat investment bank, Pierpoint & Co.
Industry’s first series centres around Harper (Myha’la Herrold, an American fish-out-of-water struggling to find her feet in London’s fast-paced financial district. She is forced to go above and beyond to prove her mettle among a cohort of hyper-competitive graduates.
Such was the case for Konrad Kay, the co-creator of the new HBO and BBC drama Industry. After three years at a top American investment bank, Kay was ultimately sacked for being ‘the worst salesman the bank had ever seen’.
“I think my boss actually said that to me almost word for word,” he laughs, “but I didn’t leave under a cloud, we were really good mates. I thought it was totally fair”.
