I don't know a banker's wife, exclaims the Countess du Ruel. Where do these creatures live?  Do they breathe the same air as we mere mortals?

I read a cautionary tale the other day, laughs the Countess.  It seems it’s not all wine and roses for the well-coiffed world of billionaire banker’s wives. 

At the now defunct Lehman Brothers there was a code of behaviour which was strict and ruthless, like a financial world’s Taleban.  Dick Fuld, the CEO who was known as the Gorilla of Lehman Bros., ruled with a rod of iron. 

Like a scene out of the Stepford Wives film, if you were snubbed by his wife, Kathy, it meant your husband was on his way to demotion, or worse.  Wives were trained to conform to the company line, and like robots, they performed their duties.  Sometimes their duties were cruel, small minded and condescending.

Lehman’s motto of “One Firm” extended into the personal lives of the execs’s wives.  The firm was a “cult,” and wives were “owned.” The president’s wife had a staff of thirty.  Executive retreats were planned with military precision, down to dress codes:  starched khaki pants and golf or button down shirts for men and pretty dresses, jewellery and Monolos for women.  God forbid, if you dared to turn up in something else!

The culture dictated that if a wife did anything which is considered bad for the firm, you were finished.  The knives came out and you got it in the back.  It’s a bit like the public stonings in Afghanistan... well, not really, only in a metaphorical way.

After Lehman folded, the wives were ready to spill the beans. One wife described how she came down to breakfast at a ranch out West, where top traders had been invited to “relax” for a week. To her horror, she found that the other wives had conspired to breakfast early and had departed sightseeing without her.  The handwriting was on the wall.  Her husband was getting the boot.

I experienced a taste of these years ago in Hobe Sound, Florida.  We were staying with a group of old Ivy League friends, some of whom were powerful Wall Street types.  My husband had the audacity to bring me a cup of coffee in bed.  The other wives were outraged. The outcry was such that my husband was warned that he was setting a bad example.  Luckily, he was European and a novelist, so he paid no attention to these complaints.  I guess if he had worked for “The Firm,” his job would have been on the line.

This type of corporate tyranny is one of the prices you pay for riches and pampering. When I saw Stepford Wives, I thought it was a humorous exaggeration.  But Lehman’s corporate cult seems fairly close to the bone.  

I guess there’s no such thing as a free “lady who lunches.”