When senior investment bankers quit to run ski chalets

Investment bankers leaving the industry don’t always end up starting a fintech firm, or investing the millions they stowed away from years of big bonuses. They start pubs, become chefs, or in the case of two former senior traders open up their own holiday homes for rich people looking for a winter escape.

Coincidentally, two traders have given up long careers in investment banks’ markets business for the good life - running ski chalets on different sides of the world.

Paul Spurin, the former head of European government bond trading at Royal Bank of Scotland who was latter a managing director at Nomura, has quit banking after 30 years and is now running Chalet Chardonnet in the French Alps.

If this seems like an opportunity to hit the slopes, bear in mind that this at the high end of skiing holidays. A week at the chalet in peak season comes in at £10,000 and is still £6k in January when the Alps are usually freezing and bereft of deep snow.

Another former banker to start his own B&B is Andrew Koczanowski, who was head of AUD debt syndicate at HSBC in Sydney. As of May, he’s the owner and proprietor at luxury B&B PURE Chalet Thredbo in the Australian ski resort. Again, it’s at the high end of the market, with deluxe rooms coming in at A$550 (£325) a night.

There’s a history of senior investment bankers quitting for mountain life. Rudolf Woetzel, who formers ran M&A at Lehman Brothers for the DACH region (who left two months before it collapsed), retired to run an alpine hut in the Swiss Alps. Maybe mountain life loses its appeal after a while - he now also provides entrepreneurs with advice on strategy.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Image: Getty Images