"The world's most famous trader in the world's most famous trading room"

As Euromoney turns 50, we delve into our archive

At the end of what is probably the most famous trading room in the world sits the world's most famous trader: John Gutfreund, managing partner of Salomon Brothers, a portly, restless figure who, like a vigilant bear, stalks the corridors between the trading desks in the vast trading expanse that is known as the Room.

So began Padraic Fallon's interview with John Gutfreund for Euromoney back in 1979. If you don't know who Gutfreund was and why he mattered, now's your chance to find out.

As a portrait of Salomon Brothers as it stood on the threshold of the 1980s bond trading heyday - later immortalised in Michael Lewis's book Liar's Poker - it's also an important insight into the origins of what is now Citigroup.

Some things - in the market and at the firm - have changed almost beyond recognition. Others most definitely have not.

In the Euromoney interview Gutfreund talked trading of course, but also politics (he was among those invited to advise President Carter at Camp David), books, man-management, regulation and the nascent mysteries of derivatives.

Here he is on investment banks' place in the world:

"The role of an intermediary, an investment bank, is to be right at the moment. The really difficult job is for the borrower or the lender to make his decision. They have to live with their decision. We have to be right or wrong — for only a moment in time. The concern with us is the liquidity, because of leverage."

Some 29 years after Gutfreund spoke to Euromoney, Wall Street firms were to find out just how big that concern could be.

Read the full interview from 1979.