I try to speak, but he cuts me off.
‘Well thanks for the information. I was up half the bloody night working this out. Consideration or what?’
He stands suddenly, his chair slides back, crashing into the wall. Then he stalks to the window and looks out.
‘I couldn’t tell you, Hugh. I would’ve, but I couldn’t.’
‘You didn’t.’ He faces me again. ‘Look, if you were running your own investigation at the bank, why not just say?’
His misapprehension, and the depth of it, catches me out; and I hesitate. Already suspicious, he sees.
‘You are running an investigation?’ he asks, looking straight at me. If I lie now, and he catches me in the lie, he’ll dump me. And with just three and a half days before Penfield’s team moves in, I cannot afford that.
‘Odin isn’t a problem.’
‘Oh yes it is,’ he says. ‘Because if you don’t tell me what this is about, I’m all finished. You wanted to find a deal that smells, I’ve found one. I did what you asked, and you’ve changed the goal posts. I haven’t got any shortage of work here, Raef. I'm in the world’s biggest fucking growth industry. Now you tell me what this Odin’s about, or that's it. You’re on your own.’
‘I can’t.’
He shrugs. ‘Fine.’ Then he goes back to his desk. ‘Your choice.’ He starts shuffling papers around, and wiping away invisible dust. ‘Do you want your discs back?’
I am being dismissed. But without revealing the truth, what more is there for me to say? I tell him to keep the discs, that I’ll pick them up later. He makes no comment. Perhaps he sees what’s in my mind: later I might have to return cap in hand to him. Later, once I’ve had time to think, I might decide that I have no choice but to answer Hugh Morgan’s incisive questions.
As I open the door, he says, ‘Raef?’ and I turn. ‘That Odin file,’ he says, ‘you wouldn’t know who scrubbed it?’
Our eyes meet, he looks at me long and hard.
‘No.’
He nods to himself, unsatisfied. ‘You know where I am,’ he says, and when he bows his head over the paperwork, I back out the door.
4
* * *
The Dealing Room is chaos: dealers yelling, people tapping at keyboards, the squawkboxes rattling out endless strings of numbers. Henry is nowhere in sight. As I walk across the Room it occurs to me that Hugh Morgan would have made a good dealer, he is someone who would never let himself pay too high. At the Spot Dollar/Mark desk, I pause. Owen Baxter’s running the show here, he’s come across from the proprietary desk to fill in. There’s a female dealer on one side of him, and on his other side that young trainee, Jamie. Owen hits a button and barks, ‘Dollar/Mark?’
A broker’s voice bursts from the squawkbox. ‘25- 30.’ Then a pause. ‘30 paid.’
Owen makes the broker an offer. Jamie asks if he should put the offer on the dealing screen.
Owen looks aggrieved. ‘Did I say that?’ He nods toward the urn. ‘Don’t be a cunt all your life. Go make some coffees.’
Jamie, an Oxbridge graduate with a first in Medieval French History, goes to fetch the cups. Not for the first time lately, I wonder just what kind of contribution Carltons is actually making to the civilization of the world.
‘30—22, your offer,’ the broker says.
Owen shouts this time. ‘Don’t tell me, you little prick, tell the market.’
"Ten mine!’ the broker shouts back.
Owen hits the button. "Ten done. What’s the name?’ He starts punching the deal into the system while the woman writes the deal-slip: 10 million US dollars sold at 1.32 against the Deutschmark.
Then the broker’s voice comes from the box again. ‘SocGen. And for that Sandersons deal at 19, five dollars, your name’s Barclays.’
I lean forward. ‘What’s up with Sandersons?’
Limit problems, Owen says. Apparently they’ve turned us down twice.
Barclays is switching the deal for us, writing retrospective back-to-back deals with Carltons and Sandersons to get us over the problem. This kind of thing is tit-for-tat, every bank gets caught out sometime, and switching deals for friends is like oiling the wheels of trade. The deal remains done, but now Carltons and Sandersons both have Barclays as the counterparty rather than each other. But people talk. And if Sandersons keep turning us down, the brokers will start to wonder why. Worse, so will the other dealers in the market.
‘Anyone else turned us down?’ I ask. ‘Or just Sandersons?’
Just Sandersons, Owen tells me.
Jamie returns with the coffees, and I drift over to the Forwards desks where William, Billy Bullshit, is giving an impromptu lecture on Eliot Wave Theory. The senior dealer is yawning. Drawing him aside, I ask about Sandersons: I wonder if they have they been turning us down here.
‘Matter of fact they have. No drama?’
Just checking, I say.
For the next ten minutes I amble around the other desks making the same casual enquiry, and everywhere, to my consternation, the answer’s the same. Since early this morning Sandersons have turned us down across the board, we haven’t completed one single deal with them. By the time I reach the Equities desks, Henry has reappeared.
‘Give me a second, Raef,’ he says.
While I was up seeing Hugh, Vance took the expected slap on the wrists from the Takeover Panel. The news is out, they have accepted that it was a genuine mistake on our part; the Panel has given its approval for us to continue with the bid. Looking over Henry’s shoulder, I see the announcement on the Reuters. Henry, over the squawkbox, is talking to the broker, I can see that he’ll be a minute yet.
So propping myself on an unused desk, I survey the Room. Out here, the memories of Daniel are strong. He was a part of all this in a way that I will never be, completely devoted to the daily cry of the markets. Devoted. It’s been quite a while since I had a thought about Daniel that wasn't tainted with rancour and pain, and I let this one linger a moment.
In my mind’s eye, I see him passing through the maze of desks as I have just done; but smiling, stopping to share a joke, laughing even. They liked him, the dealers; I think it made them feel secure to know he was looking after their interests through me. And his disagreements with Vance did Daniel no harm out here. They were loyal to him too. I never realized quite how loyal until Celia rang me at the office late one night, asking after him. When I said that I hadn’t seen Daniel she expressed surprise: one of the dealers, she told me, was sure he was in my office. After I’d hung up I went out to the nightdesk. Had someone taken a call from Daniel's wife? The senior dealer admitted that he had. And had he told her that Daniel was with me? He shrugged it off, he said he’d thought he’d seen us together. It didn’t seem important, so I let it drop. But looking back later I saw it was the first hint to reach me of Daniel's infidelity. He’d been married to Celia three years, they already had one son, and they seemed happy enough. But something had gone wrong, and the first to know of it were the dealers. My own enlightenment came by accident, a glimpse of Daniel, an arm around one of our Settlements girls, that I caught through the window of a City pub. I didn’t confront him at first. But there were other women: his affairs became an open secret at the bank. And it also became clear that Celia knew, and that the knowledge was crushing her. I chose a quiet moment in his office one evening, staff all gone, just Daniel and me, ties loosened, sharing a drink; a rare relaxed moment, and I finally built up the courage to ask him what, in God’s name, he thought he was playing at.
He stared into his glass. He didn’t answer.
Look at Celia, I said, she’s falling apart.
Did she put you up to this? he asked.
When I told him no, he finished his drink in one shot.
Stay out of it, he said.
Maybe I can help.
Yeah, you can, he said. You can help by staying out of it.
That stopped me. He was like that even when we were boys: cheerful and relaxed until some
one crossed into his private territory, and then he’d haul up the drawbridge. I knew that, but I felt I owed it to Celia to try again. So, a few months later, I gave it another shot. This time there was no exchange. Daniel simply got up and walked out of my office, pausing to offer me three words of advice: Fuck right off.
It was the last mention I made of it. Their business, I thought, not mine. Rather ironic, considering.
‘How’s that?’ Henry steps back from the Equity desk and hands me a note. The Dealing Room is still in full cry. The note summarizes the mornings trading in Parnells: our broker has secured another two per cent. When I ask him who's selling, he recounts the names: smaller institutions, plus the market-makers and some arbitrageurs who’ve decided that it’s time to cash in. The game is panning out just as Vance predicted. Though we aren’t there yet, the increased bid has swung the whole momentum of the deal our way.
I guide Henry away from the desks, and we stop beneath a row of wall-clocks. In Tokyo, Bahrain and New York, time passes.
‘What’s this with Sandersons refusing our name?’
‘They’re a bit tight with us,’ he says. ‘No big deal.’
‘You know their Chief Dealer?’
Henry nods.
‘Get hold of him. Find out if there’s a genuine limit problem or if they’re just messing us around.’
He notices something over my shoulder. ‘I think you’re wanted.’
Turning, I find that Sir John, agitated, is signalling to me from the door.
‘What does that guy actually do?’ Henry mutters, and I pretend not to have heard. Reminding him about Sandersons, I move off to find out what has happened now.
5
* * *
‘We have visitors,’ Sir John tells me. He has been waiting for me just beyond the Dealing Room’s plate-glass door. He seems sober. ‘Two gentlemen from the DTI.’ When he pushes away from the wall I place a hand on his arm.
‘Who?’ I ask him.
‘Some fellow, Skinner,’ he says. ‘I didn’t catch the other one.’
The name means nothing to me, and that isn’t what I meant anyway. As he walks down the corridor I stay at his shoulder. He explains that the two men arrived unannounced, and that he knows as little about it as me. The Department of Trade and Industry isn’t known for sending its functionaries on social calls; the last time they came unannounced like this was the beginning of the Arnold Petrie case. In my head I run through a checklist of our clients: Who is it this time?
We enter Sir John’s office and go through the introductions. Skinner is the taller of the two men, clearly the more senior, and when Sir John invites them both to sit it’s Skinner who declines.
‘We won’t keep you,’ he says. Skinner addresses his next remark to me. ‘We’ve been instructed to make enquiries into a certain trade in Parnells.’
He consults a file and reads the details aloud.
The Johnstone deal. But the speed of this response from the DTI is unprecedented. In the normal course of things, the Stock Exchange would take weeks to decide if the transaction warranted a referral to the DTI, and months of preliminary enquiries before the DTI followed it up. But to have sent two of their people in person immediately? Someone, somewhere, has pulled a string.
‘We informed the Takeover Panel ourselves,’ I say. ‘We understood they were satisfied with our explanation.’
Skinner closes his file. ‘The Department’s obliged to satisfy itself on certain questions. Of course we'll keep the recommendations of the Panel in mind.’
‘Who instructed you?’
He raises an eyebrow.
‘You said you were instructed to make inquiries,’ I remind him. ‘Instructed by whom?’
At this, Skinner looks distinctly uncomfortable. It occurs to me that he isn't actually enjoying this sudden departure from routine, that he hasn't had time to properly prepare.
‘We take our instructions from the Department, Mr Carlton,’ he says finally, and his colleague flips open a briefcase. Two pieces of paper are handed to us: the details of the Johnstone deal above a paragraph of incomprehensible Whitehallese.
Leaning across Sir John’s desk, I hit the line to Funds Management and tell Mannetti to come down. While we wait, I try to draw Skinner out, but he responds to my questions in such vague and guarded terms that he might as well be speaking a foreign language. A language from well west of the City. He reminds me, in fact, a little of Charles Aldridge.
Mannetti arrives. He keeps smiling after I’ve introduced him, but I can tell he’s surprised. I hand him the DTI note.
Skinner asks, ‘Do you trade on your own account, Mr Mannetti?’ but Sir John cuts in to explain that Carltons has clear guidelines for employee trading.
‘Mr Mannetti?’ Skinner presses.
‘Do I trade personal?’
Skinner nods. That is his question.
‘Sometimes.’ Mannetti looks from me back to Skinner. ‘Occasionally. Look, I didn’t buy any Parnells if that’s what you're getting at. Not personal.’
Most of our staff hold accounts with Carlton Brothers, it’s an in-house rule that all private trading goes through us. The accounts are open to the scrutiny of our compliance department, so if any Parnells went through Mannetti’s, Karen Haldane would know. Yesterday I asked her to double-check Mannetti's account: she found nothing.
‘We'll need to see the records of your account, Mr Mannetti,’ Skinner says.
‘What is this?’ Mannetti looks disbelieving. ‘You’re investigating me?’
‘A statement for the past six months should do initially.’
‘You gotta be kidding.’
Skinner is clearly unaccustomed to having his demands questioned. ‘I do not kid, Mr Mannetti,’ he says coolly, and he turns aside to his colleague.
Mannetti steps forward and taps Skinner on the chest with one finger. ‘Hey, smartass. Neither do I.’ Daniel used to joke that with a name like Mannetti, and coming from New York, Tony had to be mafia. Now, in the chilling moment of silence that follows, the joke seems very unfunny. The air of threat is apparent to all of us. Skinner looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Mannetti stares him down then steps past him, leaving without a backward glance.
Skinner doesn’t seem to know where to look at first. Sir John begins to explain that Mannetti’s an American, and gradually the atmosphere slides back into something like normality. Skinner’s colleague asks who else has been involved with the bid.
‘Our head of Corporate Finance. A few in his team. The PR people.’I shrug. ‘Take your pick.’
‘Names?’ Skinner says, recovering.
But I tell him he’s using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. ‘It happened the way we told the Takeover Panel. If someone suggested it didn’t, I’d like to know who he is.’
‘Mr Carlton, do you trade a personal account?’
Beside me, Sir John mutters, ‘This is absurd.’ But I have Skinner’s measure now. He doesn’t want to be here, he hasn’t had time to prepare for a proper inquiry, and finally, and most importantly, these are not his own questions.
Taking my cue from Mannetti, I face Skinner square. ‘I do have a personal account. I use it to invest long-term. Day-trading is a dangerous business, Mr Skinner. People get burnt. You think you’re onto a winner, then you find you’ve backed the wrong horse.’ He tries to hold my gaze, but he's wilting, so I finish, ‘Even very clever men come unstuck. Perhaps you should keep that in mind.’
That look comes back to his eyes. Mr Skinner, our man from the DTI, is caught in the headlights once more. I tell him to feel free to pass my message on to Gerald Wolsey.
6
* * *
Darren Lyle has called a meeting. It’s common practice for the advisers on either side of a takeover to meet during the course of a bid, but most of our overtures to Sandersons have been rebuffed. Now, after the announcement of the final offer, and Vance’s session this morning before the Panel, Lyle has contact
ed us. Vance set the terms: two o’clock in our conference room.
While I wait for them to arrive I work on the discs, copies of those I gave Hugh. Scrolling through the Shobai-Carltons deals from December, I try to see them as he might. I focus on one deal, and then another. I assemble deals, break them up and reassemble. I search for patterns. I fiddle. After half an hour I’ve got precisely nowhere and I flick off the screen and kick back.
Odin, I think. How did Hugh do that? It worries me that he retrieved the name, but what worries me more is the ease with which the trick was done. If Hugh found it, why not some keen young programmer in our IT department? Too late now, I regret the whole Odin business.
Vance looks in. Our friends from Sandersons are here.
The Sandersons team, Lyle at their centre, is arrayed on one side of the table; Vance, two lawyers, Haywood, Cawley and me, are seated opposite. Each of us has a folder open in front of him: dogs, marking territory The meeting has not gone well. There was the usual speculation before the Sandersons team arrived: Haywood and Cawley almost convinced themselves that the bid was over, that the Sandersons team was coming to convey the Pamells concession of defeat. It hasn’t worked out like that. Jeremy Quin, Vance’s opposite number at Sandersons, has done much of the talking, mainly a recap of what's already happened. Lyle is doodling on a pad.
‘Jeremy,’ I say, interupting at last. ‘You’re telling us the Parnells aren’t conceding. Is that right?’
Quin turns to Lyle who puts down his pen.
‘That’s right,’ Lyle says.
I ask him why he's called the meeting then. What, I say, do we have to discuss?
Lyle stares at the doodles on his pad. ‘The Parnells want some light shed on the Meyers’ intentions.’
Ludicrous. Cawley snorts in surprise. We’re weeks into the bid, the final offer has been lodged, and now the Parnells want to know the Meyers’ intentions?
‘You’re asking us what the Meyer Group wants?’
Due Diligence Page 47