Polly's press & media appearances
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Rediscover your Passion - Go It Alone
Finansmiljøet i London - et Jobbhelvete
Fear and Loathing in the Heart of the city
My Glittering City Career Turned into Golden Handcuffs
Do Women Really Get a Raw Deal in the City?
My High Flying City Job was not worth a Life of Misery
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Banker novel shows it's not all success in the City 1st November 2006 LONDON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Within a year of landing a graduate trainee job at Merrill Lynch (MER.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Polly Courtney knew investment banking was not for her. So she quit the cut-throat world of high finance and wrote a novel based on some of her experiences on the bottom rung of the career ladder in the male-dominated, investment bank-inhabited square mile of London known as the City. "Golden Handcuffs" -- which is published on November 1 -- depicts the lives of two young graduate trainees as they attempt to get ahead in the City among the hard-drinking traders, lap-dance aficionados, druggies and corporate backstabbers. Courtney quit the bank to work as a freelance management consultant and return to playing violin in a string quartet, something she had no time for with a 24/7 City life. "I left after a year, but I knew really within months that is wasn't actually for me," she told Reuters. Like Courtney, the two characters in her novel are lured to a large U.S. investment bank in London with a "golden hello," a big salary and the promise of a first class jet-set career. The reality turns out to be far less glamorous. Abby Turner, the heroine, spends gruelling hours at her desk crunching numbers for unappreciative male bosses who routinely dole out more work as they leave the office with the demand that it be ready early next morning. She is patronised by mostly male colleagues, superiors and in one incident is mistaken for a secretary. Her male counterpart -- Mike Cunningham-Reid -- works just as hard, but is more easily accepted because he is a man with the gift of the gab who knows how to play the system. The topsy turvy code of the investment banking world where persuasion and flim flammery can mean the difference between fabulous success and ignominous failure reveals itself to Abby in a series of humiliating office encounters. In one instance she is ridiculed by her boss as "not having grasped the concept" of self-appraisal when she makes an honest attempt to describe herself on a form. Her boss than shows her Cunningham-Reid's glowing self-appraisal as a laudable example. "Exaggerate the positives, leave out the negatives ... Twist the truth a little," her boss tells her. By the end of the novel a disillusioned Abby has quit the bank to set up her own business with a college friend. Courtney says one of the reasons she left banking was that a lot of the work -- like presentations for clients who never appear or for deals that fall through -- seemed pointless. Courtney says she believes that despite the City's efforts to shed its workaholic, macho culture image, a subtle sexism still exists which excludes women. "You are not treated in the same way as men but you can't quite pinpoint the thing that defines why not."
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Polly's TV & Radio appearances
From Engineer to Investment Banker to Novelist
Berliner Zeitung Magazin, 2007
I Know the Pressure Matthew was Under
I Sold My Soul to the City - then Wanted it Back
Banker Novel Shows it's not all Success in the City
Taste of High Life in City can Seduce Interns
City Woman who quit City over Sexism admits Lapdancing
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