A tale of two Ranieris

The world now has two famous managers called Ranieri. One is Lew Ranieri, the corpulent monster of Salomon Brothers’ 1980s New York trading floor. Thanks to Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker, that Ranieri is forever associated with ‘Food Frenzy Fridays’ — vast pig-outs of Mexican and Italian takeaway — and the observation by a fellow trader that ‘Lewie would piss on your desk’. He was eventually fired by Salomon and withdrew into sulky seclusion before returning to become even more notorious as the progenitor of the mortgage-backed securities market that nearly destroyed the global banking system. He was named by Time as one of ‘The 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis’.

The other Ranieri, four years younger, is Claudio, the heroically understated manager of Leicester City FC. We’re all now studying Claudio’s management techniques as closely as stock-pickers soak up the wisdom of Warren Buffett. I note so far that he relies on solid defensive strategies, rarely bothers with new tactics and changes of line-up, and has no truck with excessive pay for so-called stars.