It’s become a proper carer path: spend five to ten years in banking, leave, write a book. Greg Smith did it at Goldman Sachs. John Lefevre did it at Citigroup. Now, Sam Polk is doing it for BofA, Credit Suisse, and King Street Capital Management, a New York hedge fund.
For those of you who’ve forgotten the name, Polk is the man who wrote a long article in the New York Times last year on how he became addicted to money during his career as a CDS trader.
“In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough,” wrote Polk. “I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.”
Today Polk has taken some of his money and left Wall Street. He now runs, ‘Groceryships’, a business which helps families that are struggling to afford food. His book, which is out in February 2016, is billed as, ‘a memoir about a Wall Street trader’s journey towards wholeness. It explores the roots of ambition and addiction, and how they are the same, and portrays Wall Street as a culture of damaged people desperate to feel powerful.”
We asked Polk to tell us more. He declined.