Finance Bros Profiled In *That* Viral Article Face Axing Over ‘Unauthorised’ & Heavily Memed Interview
Two finance bros who recently featured in a viral magazine article might just be fired from their swanky jobs at Goldman Sachs for giving the unauthorised (and heavily memed) interview.
The fiasco kicked off last week, when Interview Magazine published a profile of three junior Wall Street bankers aged between 23 to 25. It was (rage-baitingly) titled The Finest Boys in Finance and was accompanied by a glossy photoshoot spread of them decked out in designer outfits.
But beyond the sheer flashiness of their Rolex watches, Hermès ties and CELINE suits, it was the bankers’ answers that caught the most heat, veering so close to the finance bro stereotype that many thought the article was straight satire.
Junior Barclays employee Tommy Doherty, for example, said his favourite drink is a “dirty martini with extra olives”, and boasted about dropping tens of thousands on a new desk despite “never work[ing] from home”.
Doherty said he works out five times a week, including saunas and cold plunges, and delivered some sage and totally relatable financial advice for 20-somethings about having a “well-diversified portfolio”. Do the houses I build in The Sims count as having an investment portfolio?
Only adding to this image seemingly ripped from American Psycho was Ivy League graduates Mason Clarke and Clay Nelson, both junior employees at one of the world’s largest investment banks, Goldman Sachs. The pair’s responses were a little less egregious.
Clarke, whose favourite drink is Chianti, once splashed hundreds on “an Uber from LaGuardia Airport”, said he “unfortunately” owns only one vest (blasphemy!), and admitted that his idea of hell is his “Excel sheet freezing at 3am”. What a quaint picture of hell!
Nelson, meanwhile, said he “only” owns four vests, spent thousands on a Moncler jacket he “definitely didn’t need”, and hasn’t dabbled in crypto because it’s “too volatile for my liking”. That’s my reason too, not because I originally thought a non-fungible token was some kind of foot infection.
Needless to say, but the article made waves in both Wall Street and on social media. In the finance world, flashiness — particularly among junior bankers — is an unspoken no-no. In the real world, particularly one where we take out mortgages for a bottle of olive oil, it’s just plain cringe.
On the latter front, netizens were quick to mock the bankers, labelling them everything from “unsauced spiritual virgins” to “seven-year-olds wearing daddy’s suit” and “cosplayers”. In a sentiment widely expressed after the profile, one X user wrote: “There is just no possible way this article is real.”
The hullabaloo was loud enough to reach the desk of Goldman Sachs, which confirmed in a press statement that the bank’s “media relations did not approve these interviews”. That terse reaction left Wall Street insiders questioning Clarke and Nelson’s future employment.
One anonymous source told The New York Post that the duo’s interview had caused “embarrassment” within Goldman Sachs, and that sanctions could range from “a slap on the wrist all the way up to termination”.
“If [they] didn’t get approval, then that’s a violation of the firm’s policy,” the source added “The policies are clear: It’s about checking with people who might have better judgment”.
It’s not yet known whether Goldman Sachs has internally responded to the unauthorised interviews, but another profiled banker — 23-year-old analyst Demarre Johnson — had this to say when responding to his newfound meme status: “My initial reaction was, ‘Oh, they’re going to clown us because we think we’re pretty.’ That’s exactly what happened.”
You might race to judge Johnson for that response, but he revealed he owns “approximately six vests”, so he’s actually one of the good ones — because vest ownership to a finance bro is like Letterboxd to a film bro.
Lead images: Interview Magazine and X
