“Perhaps it was the bottle of 1947 Château Pétrus for £12,300 (US$17,500). Or maybe it was the 1945 vintage from the same vineyard for £11,600 (US$16,500). During dinner at a fashionable restaurant here, six investment bankers lapped up £44,000 (US$62,700) in fine wines, and now they are suffering from a huge hangover,” writes Suzanne Kapner in today’ New York Times.

“Their employer, Barclays Capital, has fired all but one of the bankers since the dinner last July at Pétrus, a restaurant in London named for the vineyards that produced the wine. “

“Initially the bankers, who paid the bill with their own money, received only a slap on the wrist for having spent so lavishly — and having been documented doing so in newspapers at the time — while Barclays, like other banks here, was trying to project a new sobriety as an antidote to the excesses of the 1990’s.”

“But when some of the bankers secretly tried to pass off their part of the bill as client expenses, Barclays began firing them one by one. The firings were reported on Sunday in newspapers here.”

“Even by the standards of the last decade, such a bar bill would have been considered shocking, bankers in London said. But given the stark backdrop of shrinking fees and mounting layoffs, running up such a bill was brazen, they said.”

” ‘Even by New York standards, it’s extravagant,’ said a banker, who has worked in London and New York but declined to be named for fear of joining his peers in unemployment.”

“The extravagance occurred as banks were instituting what some complain are draconian measures, requiring employees to fly economy class on business trips and limiting the amount spent on entertaining clients — sometimes to as little as £100 a person, or $140 — as business suffers one of its worst slumps in two decades.”