My uncle Richard, the banker

The current economic crisis, and the scandalous behavior of many bankers, makes me think of my uncle Richard.  He was the head of a bank in Uppsala, Sweden, but his real vocation was singing.  He would have made a great tenor, but with three kids and bills to pay he picked the safer career of banking.  Still, he loved to dress up in period attire and to break out in song.  I remember him once, dressed in drag and with plenty of make-up, performing on Uppsala’s main city square.  And he sang for the Crown-Prince and Princess of Japan when they visited Sweden back in the early 1990s.  Afterwards the Crown-Princess turned to him and said: “Are you a banker?  You should be an opera singer!”

It wasn’t that my uncle didn’t care about money, but he was always convinced that material things were pretty unimportant.  He drove an ugly, beat-up, Peugeot until the day members of the Board of Directors complained that his car was bringing the bank into disrepute, and forced him to buy a BMW.  Once I asked him how he could be a banker with such an attitude.  “Easy,” he said, “I employ people who like money.  That way I don’t have to think about it.”

What really mattered to my uncle were instead relations with other people.  He always seemed to have five cases of wine, and two dozen clean wine glasses, ready for impromptu celebrations.  When he turned fifty, he invited 500 of his closest friends to a party in the Uppsala University auditorium.  At his funeral in 2003, the church was jam packed with mourners all very grateful to have known him.

In the early 1990s, all Swedish banks suddenly collapsed.  They had staked too much on high-risk gambles and in the end they had to be rescued by the government.  But my uncle’s bank was fine.  He had been busy making sure that his customers and employees were happy, and that the people of Uppsala, and visiting Japanese princesses, were properly entertained. He never had time for casino capitalism.

My uncle Richard is my hero, and if only the world’s bankers had been more like him we wouldn’t be in our current mess.  Btw, Amazon.com has a CD of his:

* Richard Ringmar, Carl-Olov Jacobson & Håkan Sund, “Wennerbergs Gluntarne.”

My uncle Richard, the banker

The current economic crisis, and the scandalous behavior of many bankers, makes me think of my uncle Richard.  He was the head of a bank in Uppsala, Sweden, but his real vocation was singing.  He would have made a great tenor, but with three kids and bills to pay he picked the safer career of banking.  Still, he loved to dress up in period attire and to break out in song.  I remember him once, dressed in drag and with plenty of make-up, performing on Uppsala’s main city square.  And he sang for the Crown-Prince and Princess of Japan when they visited Sweden back in the early 1990s.  Afterwards the Crown-Princess turned to him and said: “Are you a banker?  You should be an opera singer!”

It wasn’t that my uncle didn’t care about money, but he was always convinced that material things were pretty unimportant.  He drove an ugly, beat-up, Peugeot until the day members of the Board of Directors complained that his car was bringing the bank into disrepute, and forced him to buy a BMW.  Once I asked him how he could be a banker with such an attitude.  “Easy,” he said, “I employ people who like money.  That way I don’t have to think about it.”

What really mattered to my uncle were instead relations with other people.  He always seemed to have five cases of wine, and two dozen clean wine glasses, ready for impromptu celebrations.  When he turned fifty, he invited 500 of his closest friends to a party in the Uppsala University auditorium.  At his funeral in 2003, the church was jam packed with mourners all very grateful to have known him.

In the early 1990s, all Swedish banks suddenly collapsed.  They had staked too much on high-risk gambles and in the end they had to be rescued by the government.  But my uncle’s bank was fine.  He had been busy making sure that his customers and employees were happy, and that the people of Uppsala, and visiting Japanese princesses, were properly entertained. He never had time for casino capitalism.

My uncle Richard is my hero, and if only the world’s bankers had been more like him we wouldn’t be in our current mess.  Btw, Amazon.com has a CD of his:

* Richard Ringmar, Carl-Olov Jacobson & Håkan Sund, “Wennerbergs Gluntarne.”