It was a sight to make most people green with envy: five young City slickers, the son of Lord Archer among them, striding from a stretch limousine to whoop it up at their exclusive Christmas bash.
These were the so-called 'Flaming Ferraris', the world's most successful share traders - named after their favourite rum-and-Grand Marnier cocktail. The five would, it was said, bet up to £3 billion a time on a deal, and now expected to share a £5 million bonus.
However, as three of the Flaming Ferraris, Archer among them, this weekend survey the possible end of their careers with Credit Suisse First Boston, The Observer can reveal how the five based their reputation on a simple publicity stunt, which also involved lashings of greed, a colourful public relations consultant and the city editor of the Sunday Telegraph . The plan was to create a legend around the five, enabling them to claim bigger bonuses and perhaps be headhunted by a high-rolling rival.
You can buy a Flaming Ferrari at the Nam Long Vietnamese restaurant in plush Knightsbridge, where the dealers drank on Fridays. For them though, the name was more concoction than cocktail: it was never used before journalist-turned-PR man Tim Blackstone orchestrated the story on the Sunday before Christmas.
But the stunt backfired. Their bosses at usually tight-lipped investment bank CSFB saw red. 'The big cheeses were very pissed off,' one intimate of the Ferraris said. 'The CSFB lot are mostly Americans, who can't stand loud-mouthed prima donnas.'
Last week, lead drivers David Crasanti and Adrian Ezra, and junior mechanic James Archer, had more to worry about than justifying their own PR. The bank has suspended all three over around £1m of unauthorised share deals carried out by Eton-educated Archer between Christmas and New Year on the Swedish stock exchange. Archer, aged just 24, had started his City career at the bank last August. Sources say Archer dealt heavily in the shares of Enso Stora, the world's biggest paper company, on December 29, trying to make a killing out of resulting movements on the Swedish exchange.
City watchdog the Financial Services Authority has started an investigation into breaches of UK rules. Their Swedish counterparts have also nearly finished an inquiry into suspected market manipulation, which is a criminal offence in Sweden.
The much-vaunted team spirit, meanwhile, disappeared, leaving the three Ferraris fighting among themselves. Crasanti, a former wrestler from Princeton university in the US, and Harvard-educated Ezra, who was six times Indian squash champion, were last week blaming Archer for their predicament. Both have been suspended for failing to supervise Archer.
'What Archer did was stupid,' one friend of the Ferrari chiefs said. 'When you start messing around with a small country like that, it sticks out like a sore thumb.'
Archer, who lives with his father at a grand Thames-side penthouse in London, was keeping a low profile. 'He has no comment on the matter,' said Archer senior's secretary.
The five Ferraris in London, and 15 more traders round the world, made far less profit last year than the £100 million they had claimed, sources said.
The £3 billion they bragged of betting on each deal was more like the total committed on thousands of trades each year. What they were doing - taking advantage of anomalies in stock markets worldwide - was the least risky form of trading, sources added: most of the opportunities were spotted by computers.
The bank found out only after the suspensions that the publicity before Christmas was down to a PR stunt. But that itself breaks the bank's strict rules governing contact with the media and makes it even more likely the suspended trio will lose their jobs.
Top executives had been assured that the Ferraris were ambushed by the media as they stepped out of their 10-seater stretch limousine outside Nobu, an expensive Japanese restaurant on Park Lane.
After a turbulent year in 1998, the bank is only now informing staff of their bonus levels - be they of five-, six- or seven-figures. But the Ferraris should not hold their breath. 'They were very silly boys,' one source said.'The publicity hasn't helped them at all. It was a very expensive bit of fun. It's very doubtful that bonuses will be paid. You also don't get bonuses when you're suspended.'
First among equals - the father and so the son
Given Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare's run-ins with City watchdogs, you might think giving Archer junior the run of a share-dealing floor was like letting a fox loose in a chicken coop.
Allegations of insider dealing in Anglia TV shares five years ago have dogged Archer senior's attempts to become Mayor of London. He always protested his innocence, but was never formally cleared: after a lengthy investigation, the Department of Trade and Industry simply decided not to take any further action. The inspectors' report was never published.
There is no suggestion that young James Archer was trying to do anything but make money for his bank (and thereby increase his bonus). But a suspension an international investigation after just six months in the City could have come straight out of his father's stranger-than-fiction life story. Like the best-selling author-to-be, James went to Oxford, where he studied chemistry. Unlike his father, however, he went to Eton first, and there was never any controversy over what qualifications he claimed to gain entry.
At Oxford, James joined the notorious Assassins drinking club. Mimicking young Jeffrey Archer's irrepressible talent for money-making schemes, James also set up No Added Additives, a firm selling designer T-shirts to raise money for a drugs charity. He denied wanting to go into politics, however despite going to California's Stanford University in 1996 to study political science.