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

by David Charters

  Again he nods.

  ‘These employee options are about to expire in six weeks’ time – worthless, unless the stock goes through ninety bucks.’

  ‘You don’t need to rub my nose in it.’

  I take over. ‘We’re not. We’re going to make you a happy man, Mister Turner. Tomorrow morning, Grossbank is going to announce that it’s going into the market to acquire a strategic stake in the company, and that we don’t rule out eventually making a bid for the entire firm.’

  ‘Are you crazy? Tomorrow? The whole firm?’

  Funny how even the biggest swinging dicks are only human.

  Two Livers takes over again. ‘We’re not really planning to go through with it. BIG really would be too much, even for Grossbank to swallow.’ Funny how we both look at her when she says the word ‘swallow’. She could add that our board in Frankfurt don’t actually know about this yet, but that’s detail, and I like to think I’m a big picture man. ‘Tomorrow morning we’ll acquire a small stake in your company, which we are sure will be a good long-term bet for our shareholders. We won’t actually commit ourselves firmly to bidding for the entire company, but we’ll say enough to make sure your stock goes through the roof. If it doesn’t hit a hundred dollars by the New York close, I’ll give up drinking.’ She reaches down to her handbag and takes out a small bottle of Evian water. At least it says on the bottle that it’s Evian water. She unscrews the top and takes a long drink while we both watch. Then she looks down at her notes and adds, as if as an afterthought, ‘Oh, and your ten million ninety-dollar options, currently worthless, will look quite attractive again. If you exercised them at ninety dollars with the share price at a hundred, you could make ten dollars a share times ten million… that’s a hundred million dollars.’ She turns to me. ‘Not bad for a day’s work.’

  I nod. ‘Not bad.’

  He jabs his finger at us. ‘Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?’

  Two Livers smiles. ‘We’re in the happiness business. We want to make you happy.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  I take over again. ‘Let me put it this way, Mister Turner. We’re not going to lose money on this transaction. It’s good business. And Grossbank doesn’t have many friends in the City of London.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So we want to be your friend.’

  AFTER ANOTHER night of relentless drugs, booze and hookers, even my stamina’s being tested. Today is a 3G day – I feel I’m labouring under three times the force of gravity. Worse yet, I’m actually starting to get bored. Really!

  Did I say drugs? Okay, I am getting into drugs in a minor way, and probably have been for a little while now, but only coke, and not every night. It’s far more common than you might think, and it’s pretty harmless really. It gives me a buzz, keeps me flying. The girls bring it with them – it’s a way for them to earn a little extra pocket money on top of what I give them.

  The shadows round my eyes are getting darker now, and my face seems more lined – more distinguished – and there are more grey hairs. I suppose I’m growing into my role, looking the part more, getting more miles on the clock.

  Speaking of which, I perk up as I remember that today I get to pick up my new toy, a silver grey Bentley Azure convertible. An awesome, throbbing power machine, rather like her owner. I take a cab to the garage, have a half-hour briefing on how she performs – shame they don’t offer this with women – then cruise round to Two Livers’ flat in Mayfair, to collect her and take her down to Sussex, to a disused airfield that serves as the UK headquarters of MOSS.

  Mike Moss looks like a wiry prop forward. He has wavy dark hair, broad shoulders and exceptionally large hands. He speaks in an almost unnaturally soft voice, and is quiet and deferential in the way that you can only ever hope to be if you enjoy complete confidence in your ability to kill any human being on the planet.

  His office is spartan, as I half expected, with posters of weapons on the walls and photographs of convoys crossing deserts. The coffee is instant, from a jar by a kettle in the corner, and he makes it himself. It’s a remarkably low overhead operation, even though it’s picked up contracts worth eighty-million dollars in the last twelve months alone.

  He’s googled me, and starts by congratulating me on what I did to the ‘bad guys’ in Jamaica. We have the sort of conversation that you can only have between men who have faced the ultimate challenge and won.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Tough.’

  ‘Did you think about it much afterwards?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You always do the first time. I shouldn’t say this, but it gets easier.’

  Lots of things left unsaid, and probably best so in my case.

  He’s also checked out Grossbank, and in the nicest possible way, doesn’t know what we can do for him. Under normal circumstances, he’d be right, but he doesn’t know how desperate we are. I let Two Livers do the talking.

  ‘Mike, this company needs additional financial resources to expand.’

  ‘No, we don’t. We’re a cash machine. Completely flexible. Bring people in as we need them. Keep the overheads low. Look at this place. Costs nothing.’

  ‘But you could certainly use additional funds.’

  ‘No. We’d waste it. Right now, we’re really well organised, tightly run and efficient. We don’t hire officers. We let the lads get on with it. And it works.’

  ‘But you personally could use some extra cash. It’s not as if you haven’t earned it.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I’ve already put aside more than enough to look after the family. And besides, the beauty of this place is that if the contracts come to an end, I can lock the door and go off and do something else.’

  ‘But you’ve created considerable value in the company. A stock market listing would allow you to unlock that value. It would reflect the full extent of your achievement.’

  ‘Who cares? Like I said, I don’t need to.’

  Exasperated, Two Livers takes a swig of Evian and throws in the towel. ‘Mike, has anyone ever told you about greed?’

  He smiles and rubs his chin. We’re obviously not from quite the same planet after all. My turn.

  ‘Mike, have you ever wanted to make a real difference?’

  He shrugs. ‘Sure. We all do.’

  ‘Have you ever seen something that really makes your blood boil?’ Like a Hardman Stoney MD with a bigger apartment than you?

  ‘Sure. When we’re in country, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s a huge amount of poverty, deprivation, local people whose lives are going nowhere. We support local projects where we can, with funds or supplies.’

  Gotcha! ‘Exactly, Mike – and that’s what this is all about. You support local projects where you can. Mike, you could list this company on the Stock Exchange, sell shares for tens of millions of pounds, and put the funds into a charitable foundation that could really make a difference on a grand scale. Tens of millions, Mike. Think about the effect that would have at the sharp end.’ He says nothing, but I can see I’ve got him. ‘Come on, Mike. How can you just shrug your shoulders and walk away from that?’

  On the way back we put the top down. I light a large Cohiba, which I feel is in keeping with the image of the car. It’s a surprisingly warm late February day, with the first hint of an early spring. Better yet, as we drive through Horsham a loser in a BMW Z3 pulls alongside me at the traffic lights, looking across at me and revving his engine. I wait for the amber light to appear, then put my foot down and smile as the silver grey beast hurls itself forward, leaving him behind. He catches up at the next lights, and the same thing happens again. At the third set of lights he winds his window down and leans across.

  ‘I think you’re a sad git.’

  I look at him and smile, take a puff on my cigar and nod. ‘You’re probably right.’ Then I put my foot down again and leave him in the dust. Fucking hairdresser!

  We get back to the office at two o’clock London time,
half-an-hour before the New York opening. Paul has briefed our dealers, and all eyes are on the screens. We’re going on an elephant shoot today – Grossbank will be acquiring a stake in the Boston International Group.

  There’s a lot of tension in the dealing room. Grossbank has never done anything like this before. Neither have I, but everyone has to start somewhere. As soon as the stock opens, our announcement goes across the wire and we’re in there buying. This being the New York Stock Exchange, the reaction is instantaneous, and BIG shares go haywire. We pick up some in the high eighties, but within minutes they are in the mid nineties, before racing through a hundred dollars a share and settling at a hundred and five. We’ve managed to spend about four hundred million dollars acquiring a stake at the lower levels, before backing off and keeping our remaining powder dry.

  It takes a little while for Frankfurt to realise something is going on, but when they do, Maria comes rushing over.

  ‘Mister Hart – I’ve got Doktor Schwartz and several members of the board on the line insisting they speak to you urgently.’

  I wander back to my office, flop down on my chair and put my feet on the desk. ‘What line are they on?’

  ‘Line three.’

  ‘Okay, tell them to start talking. I’ll pick up in a minute.’

  She stops and gives me a strange look.

  I grin at her and wink. I flick the phone to speaker.

  ‘Dave Hart here. Good afternoon, gentlemen.’

  For once, they ignore the formalities.

  ‘What is happening? What are you doing? Are you mad?’

  I try to be patient, talking in a mild, matter of fact tone. ‘If you’re talking about BIG, which I assume you are, it’s a normal investment banking transaction, well within our remit. Gentlemen, I’m surprised that you’re surprised. If I bothered you with every little thing, we’d never get anything done.’

  ‘Every little thing? You have just announced that we are buying an eleven billion dollar company.’

  ‘Actually, it’s worth a lot more than that, since we started buying their shares. But let’s not split hairs. We are not buying the company.’

  ‘So why did you release this press statement?’

  ‘Gentlemen, if you read the press statement carefully, you’ll see it says simply that we are acquiring a strategic stake, and may decide to move to a full acquisition in the future. Well guess what? We just decided not to. If the stock stabilises around these levels we’ll unload our position in a few weeks’ time. BIG was trading at a discount to other comparable quoted fund management groups, because of a perceived overhang in the market caused by a large block of employee share options priced at ninety dollars. The upside was capped. Well, we just blew that cap away. Now the stock’s free to trade at a higher level, and we’ll cash in our chips as soon as we can. We’ll tell the market we couldn’t get a big enough stake and so we’re selling.’

  A long pause at the other end, then: ‘We still don’t like it. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘We sent a full presentation by e-mail last night, for the attention of all management board members, the head of Frankfurt PR, and the supervisory board.’ It’s true. I told Paul to prepare it, and make sure it ran to at least a hundred pages, including appendices. ‘You were told everything.’ Silence. These guys probably can’t even open e-mail. They rely on their secretaries to do it for them, and anything that runs to more than a couple of pages can’t be important.

  ‘Gentlemen – imagine it’s 1939, and the tanks are rolling. They’re five kilometres into Poland and you decide you don’t like it. What are you going to do? Call them back?’

  The line goes dead.

  I AM FAST becoming a legend.

  Tripod Turner thinks I’m a genius and wants to buy me dinner. Herman the German is looking at a hundred and fifty million dollar profit on our BIG stake – now trading around a hundred and twenty dollars a share, actually ahead of other comparable companies, and Biedermann is so desperate to pick a hole in what I’m doing, he’s coming to London with Herman and the fossils to have our next review meeting.

  Maria is starting to like me, despite herself, and has thrown herself into the creation of my ‘Me Wall’, getting my various doctorates and diplomas from American universities framed along with the doctored photos from the presentations team. Whereas once I joked about her leaving her broomstick outside the office on hover, now I find I’m warming to her.

  Best of all, I’m going to have a meeting with my – sorry, our – possible new PR advisers, Ball Taittinger. Bill Foreman, our London office PR director, has got them in to pitch their services to me – sorry, us.

  They say that perception is king in the Square Mile. Get the smoke and mirrors right, and the substance will fall into line. So today we’re going to talk about… me!

  The team from Ball Taittinger are everything you would expect from a top PR firm – a grey-haired, craggyfaced, seen it all, knows everyone, goes to all the best places senior partner, who is slick, seasoned, ultrasmooth, and could be a senior investment banker, except for the pale pink tie; a much younger, mid-ranking adviser, who looks like he spends his out of hours time partying even harder than I do, and actually it’s quite a privilege that he’s struggled in to attend this meeting; and not one but two lots of eye candy – blonde and brunette – who surprisingly seem to have brains, probably did most of the background work for today’s meeting, and get major speaking parts in the presentation, possibly because the number two on the team is too shagged out to talk.

  The presentation is called ‘The Hart Enigma’. The moment the slide goes up, they’ve got the business. They really don’t need to say anything else. But the girls go on to say how Grossbank needs to be associated in the public mind with me, my courageous action in Jamaica, my tough-guy, firm management style, and my vision for the future. Out with the old Grossbank, in with Dave Hart, modern day hero.

  I try to appear detached. ‘Isn’t there a danger in creating a cult of personality around one man?’

  The senior partner – in my mind, I’ve nicknamed him the Silver Fox – takes this one. ‘An investment bank is no different from any other business. It has to deploy its assets efficiently and dispassionately, to best effect, regardless of the individuals involved. This is not about you. It’s about the bank, and what’s in the bank’s best interest. In the case of Grossbank, the principal asset here in London is you. I know it’s difficult to discuss people in this hard-nosed way, but you’re effectively a device to be deployed with the media. People look at you and they see someone who is young, handsome, hugely successful, decisive, highly intelligent and yet willing to risk it all to save a little boy. All of that will play brilliantly with the media. It already has. We can use it to build a huge campaign around you – and completely re-invent Grossbank’s image in the process.’

  This is better than sex. Well, almost. ‘Go on.’

  ‘People see you as someone who has it all, yet still takes huge risks – a physically courageous individual in an age of selfishness. You’re a maverick, charismatic, a natural leader, someone the best and brightest in the City of London will look to for leadership. Someone they’ll follow into the unknown, with an exciting new venture that will revolutionise world markets.’

  This is awesome. I could sit here all day. ‘I see. What else?’

  He pauses for a second, takes a breath, and goes on, speaking more quickly now. ‘You’ll go where others fear to tread. You left the security of a well-established firm – Bartons, a top UK name – and went into the unknown, into virgin territory, to shape your own destiny. You’re a pioneer, and you’re not afraid. You don’t have to be. You’ve faced real danger and won. A man like you isn’t afraid of anything that can happen in the stock market, or in some boardroom. You’re Dave Hart!’ He’s standing now, clenching his fist with passion.

  ‘Excellent. I’m convinced. Let Bill know what your fees are and we’ll get started straight away. Maybe some profile pieces
in the weekend papers? Anyway, I’ll leave the detail to you.’

  OUR NEWLY FORMED equity capital markets team are working on Grossbank’s first UK flotation, of the security company Military Overseas Security Solutions. The press coverage has been mixed. There are suggestions in the left-wing press that the MOSS Foundation is a cynical ploy to legitimise a dirty business. In the financial press there are questions about Grossbank’s ability to get the deal done. Will we be able to put together a syndicate of banks for a potentially controversial deal? If we don’t, will institutional investors buy shares in a company that may not be followed by other firms’ research analysts, or traded by other firms’ market-makers? Grossbank may be spending money to hire heavy-hitters, but one firm can’t do it all.

  I decide to make some calls. First I call Mike Moss. I explain that we’re making good progress, the deal is shaping up well, and we’re at the stage where we need to bring in a syndicate of other banks.

  ‘Mike, this is a controversial deal. People don’t know if it’ll work, and so they’re keeping their heads down. It’s the first deal of this type led by Grossbank, and the oppo aren’t exactly queuing up to help a new competitor get established. If we have to do it alone, we will. You know that. But I want to try another route first. I need your help.’

  ‘Anything I can do, Dave.’

  ‘Do you know the US military attaché at their Embassy in London?’

  ‘Of course. Bill Fraser. Former Green Beret. Some of the boys from the Regiment worked with him in Gulf War One.’

  ‘Is he well-connected in Washington?’