Ex-banker Ken gives food for thought

Date Published: 22-Nov-2012

It is hard to equate the friendly, smiling face behind the counter of Food For Thought with a shark from a City of London investment bank.

But the story of Ken Walsh is a story of two distinct lives.

The man sitting having a cuppa on the other side of the table is the epitome of contentment – somebody who loves his job, adores his wife and three kids and is a pin-up for the relaxed lifestyle that Galway promises.

He lives in Salthill, has two dogs, three cats and enjoys the banter with customers more than anything else. So much so that he once sold a second café that he had bought and gave up his plan to purchase two others in Galway because he did not want to be upstairs strategising about how to keep growing the business.

He decided his correct place in the world was to be dealing with the public and making them happy with wholesome food and maybe a little piece of pie.

It all seems like a universe away from his five years ensconced in Lehman Brothers, where he worked his way up to senior associate in treasury.

It was 1998 when he joined what was then the fourth largest investment bank in the world and he had a baptism of fire.

“It nearly went under back then. I joined Lehmans’ on a Monday and on Wednesday I genuinely believed I would have to find a new job. There was a Russian ruble crisis and rumours were being circulated about its liquidity,” he explains. “The first three months all I was doing was fire-fighting, everything was about trying to convince enough people we were sound and to lend us money. It was hugely exciting.”

Once that particular liquidity crisis was overcome, he worked on various projects raising finance for companies such as Vodafone, Ferrari and Santander Bank.

“They were very complicated deals. You’d have a number of different parties in every transaction, everyone was a little wheel in the cog and I was one of those wheels,” he recalls.

When you push him about the lifestyle, he squirms, afraid of sounding obnoxious. He reluctantly reveals that rounds among colleagues after work would entail £100 bottles of Cristal Champagne.

“I was reasonably well paid for what I was doing,” he grins shyly. “It was a very well paid industry. I could never understand why, really. The chief executive of Lehman was earning £14m a year. There was a big bonus pool that’s divided up by section, they give themselves a certain percentage of it, then it trickles down. A large percentage of the Lehman bonus was shares. Employees owned a lot of the company, it’s what ultimately led to their downfall.”

The company infamously went bankrupt in 2008 after posting big losses for two quarters in a row and the market lost confidence because of the size of its real estate book, pumped up by the notorious sub-prime mortgages.

But by 2003 at the age of 33 Ken had decided to pack it all in. For the previous year he had begun to look at his life and thought he did not want to be in the City of London at 40.

“It’s a very interesting life but it’s very intimidating. You start at 7am and could be working till 1am. There’s no clocking in and out, you did it because you want to succeed. All investment banks are very aggressive by nature and it’s also the nature of the employees.

“The money was a bonus. I didn’t go into it for the money, it’s just so exciting being involved in these mega deals but I wanted some sort of a life balance.”

A Galway boy through and through, his home town was calling. His mother was Julie Lydon from Prospect Hill and his father Johnny Walsh from Fr Griffin Place. He grew up working for Harry Lydon in the famous bakery, cafe and restaurant which had been synonymous with the tea-drinking set since 1885. It was sold in 1999.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.