September is supposed to be all about arriving back at your desk, batteries recharges, full of fresh ideas of how to take your work forward. Two years ago, unfettered by school holidays as I was at that time, my first day back in the office after my two week summer holiday was Monday 15th September, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
Like most other people involved in the financial services industry, I spent much of the coming days, weeks and months watching with a mixture of concern, fear and morbid curiosity as the global financial system that had seemed so omnipotent for so long unravelled before my eyes.
It is fair to say that by lunchtime, any sense of relaxation I had managed to garner from two weeks in the Swiss Alps had gone for good.
Throughout the tumultuous events of late 2008 and 2009 triggered by Lehmans’ collapse it seemed as though the capitalist system might fall apart.
While things still seem grim today, it is easy to forget just how close to the edge of the abyss we may have been.
One weekend in October 2008 European finance chiefs had to hammer out an EU-wide deal on deposit guarantees for fear of a run on the banks. If they had not been able to come to an agreement by the end of Sunday, an emergency bank holiday was due to be called across the EU. So great was the fear of meltdown that one respected analysts told me he had bulk bought food for fear of panic buying at supermarkets.
But time heals all, and as with 9/11, even the most dreadful shocks start to take their place in history as the months and years tick away.
Corporate Adviser has taken this second anniversary of Lehmans’ collapse to reflect on how the employee benefits community has responded to the financial shock that it triggered.
Today’s austerity measures are of course directly related to the destruction of wealth caused by the credit crunch, and in that sense we are still living with the legacy of the financial meltdown of 2008. But it is positive to see the innovations that the pensions, investment, group risk and healthcare communities have instigated to help employers cope with the challenges that this new economic paradigm has brought along.
