Uncle RB's Guide to Banking Mumbo Jumbo

Drawn from various news aggregators over the past few months:

"We have the lowest cost-income ratio in the market"
- We pay peanuts. The Tong Garden kind, not the NKF kind.

"Do everything in the best interest of your clients"
- Make sure that your clients do well enough to pay you.

"We will outperform market expectations"
- We will lose less money than you think.

"We believe strongly in work-life balance."
Work-life is balanced, i.e. work-life = 0, or work = life. Simple Algebra, QED.

"X% of our portfolio is good quality"
- (1-x%) of our portfolio is utter crap.

"We want to enter profitable businesses"
- see point 2 above.

"We have no direct subprime exposure"
- All our subprime exposure is off balance sheet in a cleverly hidden SIV. We had to change the name from SPV as the SPV name was getting a very bad rep from association with a company the name rhyme with Penron one. Damn leceh right.

"We believe our shares are undervalued"
- The share price is below the strike value of my executive stock options.

"I am firmly committed to the company"
- Most of my pay is in now worthless options. See previous point on 'Undervalued'.

"We have X amount in CDO holdings"
- We may eventually write off more than X as companies default and correlations go to 1.

"It is company policy not to comment on such matters"
- My boss will kill me if I tell you the truth.