Quality time with the children takes on a new meaning if you’re a City banker, mired in the culture of long hours and charting every lurch of a febrile stock market. Bedtime story? Maybe next week . . .

However, lack of time to help little Warren with his homework has not stopped some of the masters and mistresses of the financial universe wanting the very best for him. So parents who work in the City are increasingly turning to experts for advice on how to turn their children into mini-alphas – just like them.

Can a child’s academic problems really be solved by parents attending hour-long lunchtime sessions with a former primary school teacher, though? Rachel Vecht believes she can make a difference. Today she’s in the towering marble and plate-glass citadel of Lehman Brothers in Canary Wharf, east London, where a group of the investment bank’s employees are learning how to help their own children with their homework.

There is no surreptitious BlackBerrying as the 10 women and 12 men – from senior executives to support staff – listen to Vecht outlining how to set realistic goals for children and encourage them to learn.

Then the questions start. A confident-looking American in a pink shirt, asks: “Given that we’re oriented towards achievement, how can we go about this? My tendency would be to want my son to be well ahead of where he should be.”

Take the lead from his teachers on what he’s capable of, Vecht advises gently.

The grey-suited mother of a nine-year-old wants to know how to “motivate” him. “He won’t give his all and live up to his potential,” she complains.

Vecht suggests setting small targets, recognising attainments with rewards, “one step at a time. Don’t just say: ‘I expect you to be perfect at everything’”.

Then she tells a story about her brother, obviously tailored for this audience. He was a waster, she says, until at 16 he discovered his focus and drive, buckled down – “and ended up running a hedge fund”.

“But what if it never hap-pens?” is the plaintive response from a quiet man at the back. He pours out the story of his 18-year-old daughter, who has dropped out of school and college, demonstrating a stubborn lack of desire to achieve that is totally baffling to her high-performing parent. “What on earth are we going to do,” he wails.

Vecht says she can talk to him later – everyone who comes to the courses can phone her afterwards for more help.

And she is not the only person offering one-on-one consultations. At Citi, another Canary Wharf-based financial institution, Julia Johnson – founder of the Pathways to Parenting con-sultancy – sees staff in half-hour slots, during which she counsels them on any problems relating to their children.

“They’re worried about bullying, communication breakdown, the effect of having two working parents, the effect of divorce – and 50% are men,” she says.

Back in the room with Vecht, there are nods of recognition as, one after another, the assembled City high-flyers reveal their worries about helping with primary-school maths homework. They are at a loss, they say, because the way they work with numbers is so different from the school’s way of teaching. Others don’t think their children’s teachers demand a high enough standard of handwriting.

Vecht’s company, Educating Matters – which also gives courses on reading, numeracy, exams and selecting schools – has been brought in through the bank’s Leaf (Lehman Brothers Employees and Families) network. It provides other experts to advise on children’s sleep and eating problems, and there is even a class for first-time fathers.

Lehman is not alone in this trend to “help employees manage the demands of their careers and personal lives” – in the words of Raj Ray, the company’s European head of diversity, who sees the network as a means of getting everyone to “operate at optimal level”. And unlike much of the City’s corporate culture, he points out, this is not an American import. “The New York office doesn’t have a Leaf network.”

The idea is big in Britain, though. Vecht’s clients include Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley – “all the big investment banks”.

Meanwhile Kerri Summers says the demand for courses from the Parent Company, the business she set up when she left her consulting career to start a family, has taken off. “In the past few years there has been a sea change in companies wanting to make it easier for parents. The banks led the way, then accountants; now it’s law firms. BT even has a course on working through pregnancy and beyond.”

Vecht, Johnson and Summers see no irony in the fact that people who have dedicated themselves to getting to the top of the corporate world should find themselves in need of basic life coaching.

“I don’t think it’s just the high-achievers who feel out of touch,” says Summers. “The way we live has changed: they might not have extended families or have spent time with children before having their own.”

Kevin Dixon, 36, a commercial analyst at Lehman, attends Vecht’s homework session, though his daughter Aminah is only four. “I want to get the fundamentals right early on,” he says, adding that he has taken away some ideas to share with his wife Luna, who does not work.

One of his colleagues tells me Lehman is more family friendly than his last employer – “a Japanese car manufacturer, which had no family focus except a children’s Christmas party. That’s one of the reasons I left”.

And, of course, one of the reasons firms are bringing in the family coaches. “For these firms to recruit new staff costs a fortune,” says Vecht. “It’s an inexpensive way to keep them happy, given the hours they work – even if they take my information and pass it on to the nanny at home.”

Ray confirms that the parenting consultants have “very high impact for relatively low cost –a few hundred pounds per event – and do reduce staff turnover”.

However, the wheels may soon come off the family-friendly corporate bandwagon as the financial titans face up to the possibility of plummeting profits and job losses.

A human resources consultant who works with big City firms, and prefers not to give his name, says: “Now that the market has moved from ‘greed to fear’ – as American satirist PJ O’Rourke calls it – the dynamic that will drive employee relations will be a surplus of skills available on the back of downsizing. This is beginning to happen. Training and development are always the first to go in a downturn.”

“I don’t think the issue of doing all you can to retain talented employees ever goes away, however many staff you have to get rid of,” counters Summers. “Companies always invest in good people. What we’re doing might be reduced, not completely cut.

“Corporate culture might be more of an issue. I gave a course last week and fewer parents than usual turned up – not because people had been sacked but because there was a feeling that they should be seen to be at their desks.”

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