Why London's City bankers are cashing in their bonuses for botox

Forget drugs or Bollinger, botulinum toxin is the trading floor’s new vice. Katie Service reports
Katie Service12 October 2017

Marc works on the finance team at a law firm in the City and he has a secret. Once every couple of months, he waves goodbye to his secretary at the end of the day, saying he is heading out to the gym. But instead of Fitness First, he in fact makes his way to Bury Street. Buzzing himself in through an unmarked doorway, he checks in for his appointment with Sarah, his dermatologist.

Marc, who is 40 and single, has been having Botox injections for three years. He is one of the growing number of men in London’s financial district who are, post-bonus, succumbing to the drug that in her new book, Botox Nation, sociologist Dana Berkowitz PhD has said is as addictive as cocaine.

Needless to say, men are no strangers to Botox, now making up a solid 10 per cent of all users. But ‘bonus-tox’, the rise of injectables undertaken by financiers, specifically spiking around bonus season, is a whole new area of growth. ‘It’s common for people to wait for their bonuses and celebrate with a bit of facial rejuvenation,’ confirms Dr David Jack, one of Harley Street’s premier aesthetic doctors. ‘I quite often have City workers who wait to see what level of bonus they get before having a bigger tweak than usual.’

City men are increasingly under the same pressures that women have always felt to look youthful in the workplace. ‘I spend between £200 and £600 per treatment,’ confesses Marc, who started researching Botox after he visited a dermatologist for dermal fillers to straighten up a broken nose. After one session, he was hooked, going for top-up skin peels at Dr Sarah Shah’s clinic near The Gherkin in between Botox sessions. ‘We’re all getting older in the City and for me, it’s about staying fresh. You know what it’s like, you look in the mirror one day and you see things that weren’t there before.’

ES Magazine beauty editor Katie Service

Over on Harley Street at The Studio Clinic, cosmetic specialist Dr Tatiana Lapa has been watching a steady rise in the number of City suits filling her waiting room: now 20 per cent of her clientele. ‘It’s a sector where youth, vitality and vibrancy are important. My clients tell me they feel their jobs have a time limit. They’re no longer energetic go-getters and this is helping them stay in the game for longer.’ Lapa’s clinic consciously markets itself towards the financial sector with discounts and offers. ‘They jump at it. They like to work with us as they feel they can offer their staff exciting and new things to motivate them.’ Suddenly the phrase ‘banker’s perks’ takes on new meaning.

A quick scour of Google picks up a legion of Botox clinics in the financial district, from fully qualified medical dermatologists such as Cosmedics near Fenchurch Street to high street ‘clinics’ in Liverpool Street specialising in ‘lunch-break facelifts’. Hard-working, fast-living bankers want convenience after all. So what treatments are favoured by the FTSE 100 set?

‘The main thing is they don’t want their masculine characteristics to be altered, they just want to stop the ageing process,’ says plastic surgeon George Samouris from the Hospital Group on Weymouth Street. Samouris regularly performs ‘Baby Botox’ on city slicker clients, where considerably tinier amounts of the toxin are injected to ensure the lines of expression are kept but simply softened.

Anti-ageing skincare with DNA repair enzymes - in pictures

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Stealth placement is also key. The money shot is around the frown lines, which doesn’t restrict the movement in the brow and won’t give that frozen look — but works wonders releasing tension in the brow so that you don’t look so confused or angry in board meetings. Botox peppered around the eye area, which relaxes the crow’s feet, is also an efficient way to subtly refresh the face and make you look younger without people being able to pinpoint how.

‘These men are really jawline obsessed, too,’ explains Dr Frances Prenna Jones, a medical dermatologist based in Mayfair who was once told by a woman that she was the only person for whom her husband had ever skipped a board meeting. ‘I inject into the platysmal bands, which run down the neck. This adds lift and definition to the chin. In women it’s called the Nefertiti lift.’

Let’s face it, when it comes to playing the alpha male in the office, nobody in the City wants to be told they have a weak chin.

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