Never worked in banking or finance. That job was at a company that made ultrasound machines.

Funny story I like to tell: one April Fools day I started a rumor that the company was getting bought by Toshiba. I created a fake Wall St. Journal article written in their bland style and left a couple printed copies on random manager’s desks with illegible initials scrawled on them. Within 2 hours our dept (IT) had an emergency meeting to reassure us that it wasn’t true. They said upper management was VERY upset and wanted the perp to come forward (no recriminations - yeah right!) and explain the reason for it. I’ll never forget my manager, who was British and generally looked like actor Bob Hoskins, dressed as a pirate because it was April Fools Day. The jam-packed conference room was utter chaos and he was standing on a chair in his pirate costume waving his arms trying to get everybody to shut up.

I kept my mouth shut. A friend of mine who worked around a lot of managers said the tone of their conversation that week was like… why now? why Toshiba? As if there might be a grain of truth to it. Months later it turned out our company had a very secret project going with Hitachi to develop a miniaturized combat ultrasound machine for the army, because they were encountering landmines etc that threw out plastic shrapnel, which was really hard to see with x-rays. So apparently the big shots thought somebody might be teasing them about the Hitachi deal, and they were worried about the army getting wind of it and doubting their ability to keep the whole thing secret. Bonus: the device was codenamed the Tricorder, and physically modeled after the shoulder-strap tricorder on Star Trek TOS.