Trust Me, I'm a Banker (Dave Hart 2)

by David Charters

  I put the menu down. ‘Great.’ I look around to see if anyone else has heard our conversation. ‘How hungry are you?’

  She lifts her glass and I watch while she downs it in one. ‘Not hungry at all. Shall we go?’

  THE PROBLEM with having sex with four different women in twenty-four hours, not getting any sleep, rushing around London in taxis to attend high impact recruitment meetings, seeing your soon-to-be-ex-wife, having to lie convincingly to her about the true state of your finances, and having to threaten your head of HR to get him to produce a bogus contract of employment that you can use to deceive said soon-to-be-ex-wife, is that the toll eventually catches up with you.

  Just as Two Livers and I collapse naked onto the bed in my apartment, our clothes scattered on the carpet where we have pulled them off, I pass out. I wish it were otherwise, but the cumulative effect of all that’s been going on finally hits me. When I eventually wake up, around six the next morning, she’s gone. I wonder if any of it really happened, until I wander into the bathroom, and see written on the mirror in red lipstick: ‘Yes. 3 x £4 + £1 sign-on + buyout. + sex.’ THINGS ARE going well. We’ve fired a lot of people, mostly second-rate, and we’ve hired a bunch of first-rate people, all very expensive, and hardly any of them available to start for several months, because their spiteful firms are enforcing the gardening leave provisions in their contracts. Grossbank’s London business has actually picked up slightly, as people make a real effort to avoid what they fear might be a campaign of ethnic cleansing once the new people start.

  So why have I been summoned to Frankfurt? I call Herman and he sounds almost apologetic. ‘It’s Doktor Biedermann. He’s one of the old guard. He doesn’t like what he hears about the London operation. He used to be responsible for the London office on the board. He personally knew most of the former business heads. In fact he was responsible for hiring them.’

  ‘So what does he want?’

  ‘He wants to trip you up. He wants you to come to Frankfurt far too soon, before any of your efforts have born fruit, and be humiliated. It’s the old way. It’s his way.’

  ‘And what do you suggest I do?’

  ‘Come here and face him. You of all people are not a man to run away from confrontation.’

  Damn. ‘You bet, Herman. Let me know just as soon as I can come over.’

  ‘Next Tuesday would be good. The regional managers from all over Germany will be here. You could address them first, and then talk to those board members who are… most concerned about our investment banking strategy.’

  ‘Next Tuesday? Really? Great. That’s… five days away. Wonderful – I’ll see you Tuesday morning.’

  Double damn. All investment bankers live in fear of being found out. This really could be it. This could be the moment when they say it was all a joke. Did I seriously think they’d put me in charge of anything, let alone running the entire London office? Being in charge is all about faking it. I like to think I can fake it with the best of them. But if you so much as blink you’re dead. I could already feel the onset of rigor mortis.

  ‘Maria!’

  ‘Yes, Mister Hart?’

  ‘Maria – get me the smartest associate in the firm. I need a presentation prepared on our global strategy – a complete business plan in fact. Budgets, revenue forecasts, the lot. And a speech. A killer speech for Frankfurt.’

  She hesitates. I look at her, irritated. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Where will he get the information? I don’t think we have any budgets or forecasts or plans.’

  ‘Really?’ She’s right, of course. So far, I’ve been winging it. ‘Well, tell him to write them. It’s a great opportunity.’ What do we pay these guys for anyway?

  The next few days are hell. A weasel-faced kid called Jan Hagelmann, a trainee on loan from Frankfurt, sits outside my office working on a laptop, poring over figures, producing draft after draft of numbers, graphs and charts.

  I can barely understand half of what he gives me, and several times fly into a rage, tearing up presentations and throwing them across the room at him.

  What really pisses me off is that he never really reacts. The kids at Bartons used to tremble if a MD let rip at them – they could be fired in a heartbeat, and often were. But Jan has a German employment contract and he’s bullet proof. The only thing I can do to him is make him work, and I go for it with a vengeance, making him stay late every night and work through the weekend, biking round revised drafts to me at home, which I return, unread, with comments like ‘Hopeless’ and ‘No – start again. More detail!’ or ‘Bin this and do it properly – be more concise!’ On Sunday night I call him in the office around ten o’clock.

  ‘Still there, Jan?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Hart.’

  ‘And you haven’t finished?’

  ‘No, Mister Hart.’

  ‘Really, Jan – you can’t be very good, can you?’

  By Monday night he’s exhausted. I stop by his desk, confirm that he’s e-mailed the latest version of the presentation to me and to Frankfurt, and tell him I think he’s useless, unimaginative, bone-idle, and has no future in investment banking.

  Christ, I love my job. Nowhere else in the civilised world could you treat another human being like this and get away with it.

  IT’S TUESDAY morning, and I’m flying to Frankfurt with Paul and Two Livers. He looks like a male model, tall, sleek, not a hair out of place. He’s wearing a conservative, pale blue suit from Brooks Brothers, a white shirt and a dark blue tie from Salvatore Ferragamo. Two Livers looks like Miss World with a brain – pale grey trouser suit from Armani, white collarless blouse that buttons up to the top, with a small gold crucifix around her neck and – get this – no earrings and very little makeup. She’s sipping a bloody Mary, and looks earnest, studious, the kind of woman you’d definitely take seriously, and yet at the same time you’d want to rip her panties off. At least I would. In fact the other night I did, but that’s another story.

  Technically they are both still on ‘gardening leave’ from their old firms, but everyone knows that certain rules are there to be broken, and they’ve already been out hiring people, dealing with head-hunters, ordering new systems and infrastructure, and generally planning the move to a much larger new building in Docklands – our European flagship headquarters, which we’ve labelled the Pleasure Palace, and which will recycle the kind of money that even Frankfurt will notice. They’re energised and excited.

  By comparison I’m dull, grey and depressed. I feel like a condemned man. It’s as if I’ve already been found out, and now I’m going to have to own up that I really shouldn’t be these guys’ boss, more like their bag carrier. They each have more talent and experience in their little finger than I have in my entire body. Gloom and depression start to set in, the black dogs are circling, and I can feel myself sliding into danger.

  In the nick of time, like a life preserver that inflates automatically on hitting the water, my investment banker’s self preservation instinct kicks in. I remind myself that it really doesn’t matter who runs an investment bank, as long as they vaguely look the part. You could pick more or less anyone at random from most trading floors, tell them they’re in charge, and for as long as they didn’t blink, everything would be fine. Achievement doesn’t so much come from effort by management, as the state of the markets, the amount of corporate activity, and whether your firm happens to be around at the right time. This is normal, so don’t panic. I start to feel better.

  We’re sitting in Club Class, which means nothing on these short-haul Euro- pean flights. Every seat is taken by businessmen, bankers, lawyers, accountants, management consultants, the faceless grey masses swarming all over the world’s business centres. The overhead lockers are full, so my briefcase is shoved under the seat in front of me, the hot breakfast smells nauseating, and I know I’m going to get off the flight at the other end looking and feeling sweaty, crumpled and tired. I make a mental note that next on my shopping list h
as to be a smoker – a private jet like Rory’s. If I survive.

  In Frankfurt we’re met at the airport, whisked into town in a Grossbank limo, and greeted at the bank by Herman and some of his team. They show us into a large auditorium, where after ten minutes or so a couple of hundred middle-aged Germans file in and sit down to stare at us as if we are some kind of exhibit. These are the regional managers, the men who manage the lifeblood of Grossbank, its access to all the hard-working, wealthy citizens who are paying my bonus. They look sceptical, unconvinced, as if they are here on sufferance.

  I take my place on the podium, flanked by Paul and Two Livers. Herman has disappeared – apparently he’s too senior in the German hierarchy to attend this sort of meeting, which makes me even more nervous. One of Herman’s flunkies stands up and starts talking in German, which I don’t understand, except for a reference to ‘Doktor Hart’.

  ‘Doktor Hart’? It’s well known that Germans are a highly educated people, spending far longer than the rest of us at university, and have great reverence for titles – they apparently call it Titelfreude, the joy of titles. It says something about our two nations that in England we have the joy of sex, in Germany the joy of titles. I have no idea if Herman’s flunky knows I don’t have a doctorate, but I make a note for future reference. Over here, this stuff counts.

  The flunky finishes, and indicates that I should step forward to the lectern. There’s a clear plastic idiot board in front of me for me to read my presentation from – or Jan’s presentation, since he wrote it – and a laptop to advance the Powerpoint slides. I went through it all last night: lots of numbers, charts, graphs, organograms, enough to bore the most heavyweight investment banking anorak rigid.

  ‘Gentlemen, good morning.’ A few heads incline in my direction, but otherwise no reaction. I click on the laptop, and the introductory slide appears: ‘Grossbank’s future in investment banking’. I look at the idiot board and read off it. ‘My name is Dave Hart.’ Thanks, Jan – I probably could have managed that one myself. ‘I’m an investment banker. I’m here today to tell you about Grossbank’s exciting plans to go forward into the twenty-first century.’ This is pretty banal, dumb stuff. I don’t recall it from the previous versions. If you don’t grab an audience like this in the first thirty seconds, you’re toast. Click to slide two – ‘One key message’. I read off the idiot board again. ‘I have one key message for you today. If you take away nothing else from this presentation, remember this.’ Click to slide three: ‘You’re on your own, pal.’ I read off the idiot board: ‘You’re on your own, pal.’

  Shit! I click on rapidly, but all the other pages are blank, and nothing’s coming up on the idiot board. I glance across to Paul, but he shrugs his shoulders helplessly. That dumb, fucking kid Jan Hagelmann just committed career suicide. Doesn’t he know I kill people? I’ll wring his fucking neck. I look out at the audience. They are frowning, trying to work out where I’m coming from, what this is leading up to.

  ‘We all are. Every one of us. We come into this world alone and we leave it alone. It’s what we do along the way that defines us.’ I pause and stare out into the middle distance, wondering what the hell to say next. ‘That’s why I’m not going to give you a formal presentation this morning.’ I can’t. I don’t have one. ‘I could tell you how we are going to unleash a tiger in the world’s markets, how this firm’s enormous financial resources are going to be put to work behind the best teams, the finest people in the industry, and how we are going to come from nowhere and sweep the board with our competition. I could bore you endlessly about the business streams we’ve already identified where this firm will be a top-three player within three years. I could show you projections for the obscene profits that will be thrown off by the great financial engine that we will create.’ I need to change tack fast, because some of them are whispering to each other, probably wondering what I am going to tell them. Maybe if they have any ideas, they could share them with me. ‘I could tell you all of that, and it’s all true.’ Yes, honestly. ‘But it won’t happen overnight. It will require patience and forbearance and enormous investment, and still it won’t be easy. But life isn’t meant to be easy. Life is about challenges, and you face those challenges best with friends and comrades alongside you.’ I could add that there is no comradeship quite like that created by millions of pounds of guaranteed bonuses, but these people get paid peanuts, so I don’t. ‘So I’m going to talk to you instead about people. Our people. The real people inside these suits.’ What the hell can I say next? That the ‘real’ us are driven by shallow, materialistic greed and alcohol and drugfuelled lust? That we’d sell our soul for a bigger package, say 4 x 4?

  I point to Two Livers. ‘You will come to know my colleague, Doktor MacKay, over the coming years as someone who is constantly pressing you for introductions to corporate clients in your regions for potential investment banking business. You’ll think her a dragon, a demon in woman’s clothing, who is constantly demanding more.’ Though not quite the way she was demanding more from me the other night. ‘But on Sunday mornings you would see a very different Doktor MacKay. On Sunday mornings you’d find her on her knees…’ Preferably kneeling at my feet, and you can guess what she’d be doing. ‘…Doktor MacKay is a lay preacher.’ She can certainly get preachy after she gets laid, especially on the subject of senior management incentives.

  I glance to my right. Bang on cue, Two Livers touches her crucifix, then looks down modestly at the desk in front of her and tilts her head to one side. She looks like an angel. I could kiss her… at least.

  ‘Paul…’ I gesture towards Paul, sitting behind me on the other side. ‘…Paul is gay.’ I pause meaningfully for this news to be absorbed around the room. The great thing about Germans is that they are on the whole very liberal-minded – they have this huge tolerance thing, which has come to be an article of faith among the educated classes. ‘Paul knows what it’s like to be alone. He knows what it’s like to suffer because you’re different. During the week, Paul will be a demon of the markets, but at weekends he spends his time counselling young men.’ Generally after he’s shagged them. ‘He doesn’t talk about what he does at weekends.’ You wouldn’t, would you? ‘But he’s as driven by what he does out of hours as what he does during the working day.’ A fucking sex maniac, from what I’ve heard.

  I can feel a change in the room. This isn’t what they expected. Weakness, vulnerability, concern for one’s fellow man, coming from investment bankers? Nah, get out of here. But I can sense that I’ve got them.

  ‘Some of you may have heard wildly exaggerated rumours, tittle-tattle really, about my alleged salary and bonus package. I’m not going to dignify those rumours with a comment.’ Mainly because they fall well short of the truth. ‘But let me assure you of one thing. Half of everything I actually do earn goes to good causes. Not ten per cent, as some religions require, certainly not the few per cent that many of you voluntarily pay in church taxes. Half goes to good causes.’ Fucking good causes. Like women’s causes in Eastern Europe and Latin America. In fact I’m spending so much of my after tax income on these good causes that even on my enormous package I’ll soon have to slow down.

  ‘Remember the words of that truly great philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, that he who dies rich, dies disgraced. It’s who we are that matters, and how we live our lives. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about today.’ I search for something really fatuous to wind up with. ‘Gentlemen, we’re not alone. We’re all in this together with our values and our beliefs – one dream, one team, one firm.’ I clench my fist and wave it in the air. ‘Grossbank rocks! Thank you.’

  Phew, now I can go and kill Hagelmann. I pause, waiting for some polite applause. But then the strangest thing happens. The guys in the audience start banging the tables in front of them. What is this, a riot? Are they going to start throwing things? I turn to Two Livers and Paul. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  We rush to the exit, trying to ignore the ever louder b
anging behind us, and Herman’s flunky hurries after us. When we get outside, I turn on him, furious. ‘Do you have their names?’

  ‘Y – yes, of course.’

  ‘Good. Fire everyone in the room.’

  ‘Wh – why? They liked you. They loved you. That’s why you got this response. I’ve never known it before.’

  ‘You mean…’ I do an impression of a fist banging a table.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I thought. So what I want you to do is fire everyone off a message from me, saying how much I enjoyed meeting them, but this is only the beginning. I want me and my team to spend much more time really getting to know all of them. Fire them all off something like that straight away.’

  As Paul and Two Livers fall in behind me to take the lift to the fifty-fourth floor, both of them goose me. I grin. The A-Team.

  DOKTOR BIEDERMANN looks like the villain Blofeld in the Bond movies. Bald, bespectacled rather than wearing a monocle, but with the same slow, deliberate movements. All he lacks is a cat sitting in his lap to stroke.

  I’m sitting in his office with Herman, around a coffee table well away from his huge power desk. Paul and Two Livers have had to wait outside – some sort of German hierarchy thing. The wall to one side is what the Americans call a ‘Me Wall’. I didn’t know the Germans went in for this, but since I’m meant to look at it, I do. There are photographs of Biedermann with the German Chancellor and President, and various dignitaries that I’m sure I should recognise, but don’t. There’s a set of shelves with various Lucite deal tombstones, family photos, and some interesting objets – highly appropriate fossils, which presumably he’s collected himself, and some spectacular quartz crystals. I check out the family photos and do a double take when I see a shot of a family group and spot a familiar face. I turn to Biedermann.