From my experience, a pint at lunchtime is considered normal in all EU, and it's not harmful when done in moderation (read: not every day).

This implies something way harder.

BTW: I've always thought that Margin Call is a very very movie showing internals of the financial institutions.

Is that second “very” supposed to be “realistic” or “fake”? Think I’ve heard people say “realistic” before

It's an editing error. It should read:

BTW: I've always thought that Margin Call is a very good movie showing internals of the financial institutions.

It was late, I was tired, mistakes were made. :)

Sure, but I think the parent was referring to much heavier drinking than that. Most people can drink a pint of beer at lunch without much or any negative affect on their afternoon work performance. But I expect here we're talking about two (or more) cocktails, glasses of wine, or even hard liquor at lunch.

Yup, I was talking about extended lunches with many beers. In my opinion, heavy drinking is still bad outside work hours. I've seen supervisors making financial decisions while hangover from their last night party. Was I supposed to believe that their judgment was not biased and faculties ready for any situation? Would you better have an inexperienced sober junior or an experienced senior under effect of alcohol as an employee?

Depends on the person. Some people can do better work hungover than others can sober purely because their base level of skill/output is higher so the -20% or -40% hit (or however you wanna mathematically represent it) doesn’t outpace their increased productivity relative to the next guy

[Citation Needed]

There’s no citation needed, it follows directly from the fact that output varies between individuals. Unless you want to argue that fact...

Ballmer peak for finance?

1 pint of beer will have 2-3 units of alcohol. That’s equivalent of 2-3 shots of hard alcohol, which is what you would get in “two cocktails”.

A single standard cocktail (gin martini, manhattan, etc.) will have around 2-2.5 oz hard liquor (40% ABV) and 0.5-1 oz fortified wine (15%-20% ABV). Most other standard cocktails will have a similar amount of alcohol. There are lighter cocktails and I’m not including the watered down cocktails you might get at a cheap resort.

Unless you’re drinking a pint of a 14% Belgian tripel, they won’t be equivalent.

UK has lots of great beers that an imperial pint of leaves you in good shape for returning to work.

It's a Friday team lunch thing, quite civilised really.