Straight to Hell

by John LeFevre

  Suffice to say, we never got to lead the first-ever Chinese corporate high-yield bond. But then again, neither did Morgan Stanley.

  Bluetooth

  The frosted glass doors separating the trading floor from capital markets glide open. It’s Earpiece, the head of . You wouldn’t know it from his swagger, but he’s responsible for one of the least sexy products in the entire bank, excluding whatever the fuck the brown suits do in repo, commercial paper, or cash management.

  There is no clever backstory behind his nickname; he simply wears a Bluetooth earpiece in his ear at all times. It doesn’t matter where he is or what he’s doing; he keeps it in his ear.

  Nobody knows if he’s talking to them or someone on the phone. “That’ll work,” he said to me one day while we were standing side by side at the urinal. I’m pretty sure he was talking to someone on the phone. But he was staring at my cock, so I’m not entirely sure.

  I have to admit it, Earpiece is a master of internal politics. It’s hard to accuse someone of not working hard when he’s got that earpiece as a constant reminder of how busy he might be. He also constantly shadows his bosses. If they’re downstairs at Starbucks, he’s there. If they’re outside smoking, he’s there smoking. In fact, he started smoking just so he can spend more time with his boss, . All the while, he keeps his earpiece in. Instead of being looked at as a sycophantic moron, he gets labeled as a dealmaker.

  He can also name the best karaoke joint or massage parlor in every city in Asia, which comes in handy with his superiors, visiting colleagues from out of town, and clients.

  One day, Earpiece doesn’t show up. He doesn’t respond to emails or texts; he’s gone. Many hope he’s dead. Rumors have it that he’s resigned to go to Goldman Sachs and run the loan syndicate team over there (a team that is later supposed to report to me). Thank fucking Christ; they can have him. We’re celebrating.

  There are two problems. First, our degenerate head of , Wisal Lari, misses having someone so dedicated to kissing his ass. Second, Goldman Sachs is famous for rigidly refusing to hire someone and promote them at the same time. For example, if there’s a well-regarded associate or VP at a real bank, a second-tier house can easily come in and steal them away with the promise of a guarantee and an immediate promotion in rank. Morgan Stanley poached our main high-yield guru like this by making him a managing director. Goldman would never dream of doing that.

  Since Earpiece was a director at Citi, there is zero chance that Goldman is going to bring him in as a managing director. This leaves the door open for Citi to bid him back by matching Goldman’s guarantee and then promoting him. We call that a battlefield promotion. A lot of people try to do this—they leave with the expectation of being bid back with a matching guarantee and a promotion.

  Earpiece pulls it off. Now, all of a sudden, he’s back and bigger than ever. Of course, we all hate him even more and resent what he’s done, effectively carving out a piece of our bonus pool and locking it in for himself. No one would give a shit if he were some big hitter who added a lot of value, but he’s a fucking coordinator—with Citigroup’s behemoth balance sheet. His few successful deals only happen because of the franchise, not because of him.

  Now, he’s a managing director. Worse, as a concession, senior management has allowed him to expand his empire to include the private placement business. It’s one of the most lucrative pieces of the Asian franchise outside of distressed and structured credit. These fluid deals reside in a gray area that we all want a piece of. What might start out as a straight bond deal can easily evolve into a loan, straight equity, or any kind of combination or hybrid structure. So now, Earpiece is eating my lunch.

  He’s gone from lifeguarding the most plain-vanilla business to lording over one of the sexiest, fastest-growing, and highest-profile products. More important, it’s the most fun. I suffer through dogshit breakeven deals for Korean bureaucrats and Indian scumbags so I can enjoy a boondoggle due diligence trip to Ho Chi Minh City with some hedge fund and sales guys, looking at a secured real estate deal that will pay us three points in fees.

  He instantly becomes an even bigger prick. The only thing that doesn’t change is his earpiece.

  One day, I see him hanging out three rows over, holding court over a few people in our credit sales team. I show up, and he immediately clams up. He doesn’t want to let me in on anything he’s working on in the event that it infringes on my mandate. Everything goes awkwardly silent. But I’m not going anywhere. I pull up a seat. “What’s up, kid?” He’s more senior than me, so of fucking course, he hates being talked to like that.

  He stands. “I gotta go.” He continues speaking to the sales team, purposefully ignoring me. “Thanks for the feedback, I’ll have my guys send you a couple of teasers for these deals, and then we can get some NDAs in place and show them out.” And then he’s gone. The frosted glass doors slide shut behind him as he disappears back to the private side.

  Lester, one of the senior sales guys, starts going off. “Jesus fucking Christ, I hate that fucking piece of shit. He wants us to wall cross [where investors agree to receive nonpublic information, keep it confidential, and not trade on it] every fucking hedge fund on every fucking theoretical deal, get them to sign NDAs, and then he just wants to start throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. This is not how you run a fucking business.”

  Having worked in New York before coming to Asia, Lester has an impeccable reputation and is generally regarded as one of the most important salespeople on the trading floor. “There is no way in fuck I’m showing any of these deals to my clients; they’ll laugh me out of the room. This fucking ass clown has no fucking clue what he’s doing. There is zero value added here.”

  We are listening to one of the most epic trading-floor rants I have ever heard. Lester has the attention of the entire row, not just the credit sales desk, but also the entire Asian sales team. One row over, the credit trading and credit derivatives guys are standing up and staring at him. These outbursts happen in New York relatively frequently, but no one in Asia has ever seen anything like this.

  I interrupt. “Holy fuck.”

  Lester stops ranting, somewhat confused, but waiting for me to continue. I get the sense that he thinks I want to take the baton and continue his rant for him.

  “Holy fuck.” I say it again, legitimately in shock. “Holy fuck.” This time I am able to focus my excitement and point to a stack of papers on his desk that say private and confidential. I don’t even notice the papers (a huge compliance breach on his part); I’m looking at what’s on top of them. It’s Earpiece’s earpiece.

  In all of our days, weeks, and years working together in Asia, no one has ever seen Earpiece without his earpiece. And here it is, sitting on top of Lester’s desk. He must have been so flustered by my presence that he left it behind when he scurried away.

  Lester doesn’t even hesitate. Who knows how long it’ll be before Earpiece comes racing back, not just for his earpiece, but also for the nonpublic term sheets and pipeline information that he’s recklessly left sitting out on the sales desk. Lester grabs the Bluetooth earpiece, immediately jams it down his pants, and then begins a play-by-play commentary, while dancing, bouncing, and jostling around.

  “Ohh yeaaah. The earpiece is on my cock . . . Now, it’s touching my balls. Back to my cock. Tongue’n my pee hole. Back to my balls . . . Oooh, yeah. Juggle those nuts. Now, it’s flirting with my asshole. You naughty earpiece. It’s near the anus. Oooh yeaah.” We’re frozen, as he continues. “Hey, earpiece, at least buy me a drink first. It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s gonna . . . it’s gonna penetrate . . . penetrate . . . my anu—oooh yeah.”

  Lester doesn’t stop there. He starts jumping up and down. “Now, it’s inside my asshole. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Is it bad that I like this? Don’t judge me; this feels soooo good.”

  “Now it’s racing back and forth between my asshole and m
y ball sack. Oooh, the friction. I feel like a Boy Scout building a fire in my pants. Ooh, my fiery loins.” The entire row is in hysterics. Finally, seemingly exhausted, Lester sits back down. I assume he is done.

  Did I mention that Lester is a managing director who turned down a job offer from Goldman Sachs?

  But he’s not finished yet. Leaning back in his Herman Miller chair, Lester hoists his feet high into the air, pulling his knees up until they are almost touching his ears. With his hand still buried deep into his pants, nothing is left to the imagination as he pretends to finger himself with Earpiece’s earpiece.

  “Stop it. I can’t take it. Please,” I cry. Finally, we all settle down. Lester finds and removes the earpiece and sets it back on the table where he found it.

  No more than three seconds later, the frosted glass doors open again. It’s Earpiece. He hurriedly paces back over to us. “Oh shit, I forgot my stuff.”

  He grabs his papers and walks away, slotting the earpiece firmly into his ear before disappearing back through the sliding doors. As the doors close, the entire credit sales and trading rows erupt.

  From that day forth, we never saw him remove that earpiece from his ear again.

  The Stakeout

  When I first move to Hong Kong in 2004, I’m seated in the middle of the trading floor, across from the credit traders and flanked by salespeople. This proximity is insane; everything I work on all day is the very definition of non-public, market-sensitive information. Everyone around me can see my screens and hear me on the phone; they can even listen in on my calls if they want.

  Generally, I’m encouraged to take nonpublic conversations off the desk—either into a conference room or to the other side of the Chinese Wall, which in this case is an actual glass wall separating banking from sales and trading. But that’s simply not practical all the time.

  No one seems to really care that it’s illegal, so I don’t worry about it. Besides, salespeople and traders are more fun to be around than investment bankers. Being in the middle of the action allows me to stay in tune with markets in real time, helping me provide more thoughtful and relevant advice to our clients. Traditionally, that’s always been part of the argument for keeping syndicate desks on the trading floor.

  Typical scenario, I’m allocating a deal and I sense Jimmy (a sales guy) looking over my shoulder. “Whoa, whoa. You can’t give Roo’s client more bonds than mine.” Or, I hear a sales guy talking to a client: “Hey, I’m hearing that there’s a big Hutch deal coming next week.” He’s obviously heard this from listening to me on the phone, and it is the kind of sensitive information that a client could use to trade on. That’s when I know that I need to change seats.

  I move to the very corner of the trading floor, sitting among the IT guys and the business unit managers. The BUMs are the people who are responsible for managing the expenses of the trading floor—from Herman Miller chairs and extra screens to stationery and color ink cartridges, it all runs through them. Most important, they sign off on our T&E, or travel and entertainment.

  My new seat gives me an expansive view of the entire trading floor. Across from me is the credit research and strategy row, and then trading and credit derivatives, then credit sales, and then interest rate products and structured credit. There are another ten rows of people beyond that, but I only really care about my direct universe.

  Sitting among the BUMs and IT guys feels like being at the lunch table with all the kids I made fun of in high school. I have more interesting conversations with my dentist. However, it does come with a few perks.

  I no longer have to worry about expensing my numerous dodgy receipts. My new buddy, the BUM, will handle that. In fact, one of my colleagues, Peter, is so tight with the BUM (they both have and love a certain brand of German automobile) that he’s able to expense his dirty karaoke trips, no questions asked.

  Peter’s a hero to the Latin American borrowers and New York coverage bankers who come through on their fake roadshows, under the guise of flogging subordinated perpetual non-call ten-year hybrid Tier 1 notes to Asian retail investors (mom and pop). These coupon-hungry “investors” know about as much about these structures as they do the Lehman minibonds they’ve dumped their retirement savings into.

  Many of these issuers don’t really need to do a roadshow, but there’s an entire team of bankers in New York calling them, saying, “Hey, how would you like to go on a one-week tour of Asia? I’ll go with you.”

  By day, they meet with private banking sales teams who care more about their own commissions than the underlying credits they’re selling. Invariably, the issuers and bankers carve out ample time for suit fittings and watch shopping. At night, they want Peter to take them for a nice Chinese seafood dinner followed by a visit to an exclusive karaoke bar, where they charge hot-dog-at-Yankee-Stadium prices for hookers.

  At the end of the night, Peter receives a bill that says something nonsensical like Kyoto Toro Fuji Sushi Restaurant, which of course is what makes it possible to expense. Being best friends with the office BUM also helps.

  Another great benefit of sitting among the guys in short-sleeved dress shirts and square-toed shoes is that we get a heads-up on the fire drills—the actual fire drills, not the circle-jerk bake-off pitches that junior investment bankers refer to as fire drills. This sounds trivial, except for the fact that for many of our fire drills, they shut down the elevators—and we’re up on the forty-eighth fucking floor.

  I’ll get a five-minute heads-up, which is just enough time to discreetly and selectively spread the word to my friends. We’ll be on our third beer at the bar in Hong Kong Park by the time everyone else, exhausted and sweating, is spilling out of the ground-floor stairwell.

  One day, Ken, the IT guy, spins his chair around. “Oi, geezah. I saw yer mate last night at Fenwick’s. Bloomin’ three o’clock in the morning. He was there. Clear as mud, I saw him. He was by ’imself. Fookin’ big cigar, he ’ad. Talkin’ to some bird. Didn’t leave by ’imself though, did he. Fookin’ Dirty Sanchez.”

  It’s taken me almost a year to learn how to understand how Ken speaks. “Ken, are you trying to tell me that you saw Dirty Sanchez at Fenwick’s, by himself, smoking a cigar, and that he left with a hooker?”

  “Is wot I said, innit?”

  I have to repeat myself. “Ken, are you saying that you saw Dirty Sanchez do a late-night solo Fennie’s smash-’n’-grab at three a.m. on a Tuesday?”

  “Are you retarded? Yeah, I saw it wif me own eyes.”

  I still don’t really believe him. I believe that he believes it, but I don’t believe it. Fenwick’s is a dark and dingy basement firetrap of a bar in Wan Chai, and is probably the most famous and least discreet stop on every depraved tourist’s Hong Kong whore tour. There is no way that this guy, who has hundreds of subordinates and is known to every major buy-side client in the region, can be so blatantly injudicious, if for no other reason than that his own wife works in the industry—­banking, not whoring.

  Dirty Sanchez is our regional head of . He lives in Singapore but makes very frequent trips to Hong Kong, always opting for the “management flight.” The management flight is when you intentionally pick flight times in the middle of the day, so that you can have a leisurely morning, then lounge, drink, eat, and sleep your way through the meat of the day, finally arriving at your destination just in time for late-afternoon team drinks.

  The genesis of his nickname, Dirty Sanchez, or Filthy for short, has nothing to do with any deviant proclivity; it’s simply a reference to the pet ferret he keeps above his upper lip. This nickname, which he is not aware of, was actually given to him by a prominent hedge fund manager.

  What makes the Tom Selleck homage even more ridiculous is his pairing of this voluminous womb broom with the worst comb-over any of us have ever seen. It’s so bad that if you ever have to walk with him to a meeting on a windy day, he forces you to keep changing di
rections as he attempts to prevent his homemade hair hat from flapping up and saying hello.

  Of course, no one is really surprised by the idea of infidelity or carnal indiscretion. It’s a fairly standard industry practice and certainly not an aberration exclusive to Asia. One of my bosses in London lived in a palatial home on Holland Park but also owned a flat in Mayfair that his wife didn’t know about. He was well known for arranging an FBT (Fake Business Trip) and staying in Mayfair with one of his side chicks. The issue with Filthy is that he is so sanctimonious that having a solo Fenwick’s game would be off the charts.

  A few weeks later, I’m at my desk when Ken strolls in midmorning, looking rough and smelling like stale beer and two-week-old sheets.

  “Fookin’ ruff night, it was. Killed two birds wif one stone, if u get me drift. Was leavin’ wif one and ’ere comes walkin’ anovah wif massive tits. ’Ello, luv, right, ur comin’ ’ome wif me. Shagged ’em bof in tha bum. Mate, when I woke up, me bed looked like a butchah’s block. Was afraid I might’ave committ’d a murdah.”

  If I spun around every time I heard him say something like that, I’d never get any work done; so I just ignore him. Ken keeps going. “Oi, u ’earin’ me? Saw ur mate again. two o’clock in tha mornin’ this time. I was cunt’d, maybe fif’een lagers in me. But it was definitely ’im olrite. I’d bet me mum’s life on it. And I like me mum very mutch.”

  We can settle this right now. It just so happens that Filthy is in the office, standing three rows across from me, talking to a few of his salespeople. “Ken, stand up. Come over here.” I pull him closer to me and point across the floor. “Ken, first of all, he’s not my mate. But I just want to be clear. You saw him, that guy right there, by himself at Fenwick’s again last night?”