Chapter Nine
Brian pushed himself to the limit from his first day at the firm. He quickly “unlearned” the techniques he had been so carefully taught at Merrill Lynch and he found unbelievable exhilaration from cold calling. He learned that his new employer charged much higher commissions than other firms because they weren’t competing for the same business. Its deals were usually successful, people knew it, and they were willing to pay the price to get into a WT&C public offering. Higher commissions from the buyers of stock meant the firm could offer top commissions to its best performers. And they did. The percentage increased exponentially as a broker’s sales increased.
The firm bought lists of high net worth individuals worldwide who had previously been big investors in the risky deals that could allow very high returns on investment.
Every morning at Warren Taylor and Currant began with “The Push”, the name for the eight am sales meeting nobody wanted to miss. On Brian’s second day, he arrived at the building at 7:45, eager to attend his first meeting of The Push. He was surprised to find the parking garage filled with incoming brokers. Everyone was yelling, laughing or gulping Starbucks as they left their cars and headed for the elevator bank. He and a dozen other brokers, male and female, entered the next car.
“You the new guy on Team Bravo?” the guy next to him asked.
“Yeah, I’m Brian Sadler.”
The guy stuck his hand out. “Jim Poteet. I’m glad you’re here. Your team has to get Malco done this week and they’ve been short of people. The last guy who occupied your cube took a dive out the window last Thursday. Thirty-five stories down. Wow. Just couldn’t take the pressure!”
Brian’s mouth dropped open as he stared at the guy. He couldn’t think of a response and the entire elevator car was totally quiet. There was a ding and the door slid open. Suddenly everyone burst out laughing.
“Just messin’ with ya, pal,” Poteet said, slapping Brian on the back. “We’re all too damn rich here to take a dive.”
Everyone continued laughing as they walked onto the sales floor. Brian forced a laugh too, even though he had to overcome the knot that had just formed in the pit of his stomach. I’m the new kid. I have to get used to this stuff, and I’m damned sure not at Merrill Lynch any more.
Brian had just dropped into his chair and fired up his computer when he saw Carl Cybola run to the middle of the sales floor, jump on a large round desk and yell, “This is THE PUSH!”
All around him people in every cubicle stood up, shouting and cheering. Brian had never seen such frenzied enthusiasm. Guys were waving their suit coats around over their heads. Hands were held high in the air. It was like a football game. These people are crazy about this place!
Carl let the cheering continue for a minute or so, then held up his hand to shush the group.
“This is Tuesday of Malco week,” he said to the crowd. Brian could hear Carl through the overhead speakers used for paging, and he noticed Carl was wearing a lapel microphone.
“Team Bravo, you have 9 million bucks of Malco left to sell and you have three days left to sell it. We’re going public on Friday morning, and I want this damned boat floated and on the high seas by then.”
He told the group that Bravo had pre-sold $31 million in shares by close of business yesterday. “You guys know what happens on the Tuesday of offering week,” he yelled to the crowd. More cheering erupted, interrupting the discussion for a full two minutes.
“OK, OK, calm down. Today’s the day Team Bravo gets a little competition. Teams Alpha and Charlie, it’s your turn to see what you can do. Bravo continues to sell but you other two teams can make some big bucks pushing this baby cart around the park. Malco’s hotter than a dog in heat, folks. This thing sells itself. And here’s the kicker. We have nine million bucks to go. The person who sells the most Malco between now and the market close on Thursday gets…”
He paused and the crowd again went wild.
“Diamonds!!” a girl near Brian yelled.
“Trip to Paris! Trip to Paris!” a guy shouted.
Carl once again got the crowd under control. “Here’s the deal, kids. The person who sells the most Malco between right now and four pm Thursday gets…a brand new Lamborghini!”
This time the yelling and screaming went on for a full five minutes. Carl tried in vain to hush the crowd and finally he got things back under control. “Here are the game rules. Your customer’s cash has to be in house by Thursday night. The car will be a new Lamborghini Gallardo worth $189,000. And it’ll be yours. No lease, no nothing. Titled in whatever name you wish. Watch out where you title it, though,” Carl yelled, his arms waving wildly. “All together now…” and the group in unison shouted, “Everything offshore…means no tax man knocking on your door!”
The pandemonium was incredible. Brian wondered how people working on the floor below the firm’s offices could hear themselves think. And he wondered how anyone could win a two hundred thousand dollar car and not pay tax on it. But he wanted to find out the secrets this firm obviously knew. He made a pledge to himself to be a star within six months.
The meeting ended when Carl yelled, “Get to work, everyone! You have calls to make, people to separate from their hard-earned money, and a Lamborghini to put in your garage!” Yelling and clapping, everyone sat down in their cubicles.
Chapter Ten
The week was the most incredible adventure Brian had ever been on. The days were filled with calls, many of which resulted in sales. The firm’s intranet had a page where lists of names were posted and from which the brokers could pull names. As he called these people, Brian discovered most were professionals or executives. All had gatekeepers, like an executive assistant or a front office receptionist, but when he mentioned Warren Taylor and Currant, almost all of the potential clients took his call.
Discussing it later with his cube-mate Jim Palmer, he was told that WT&C had a reputation for making people money. “Most of our deals are still hot months and months later. We do a lot to make sure the price stays up. We make the owners of the company sign in blood that they won’t dump stock for a year, even if it’s up a thousand percent. The tradeoff for the owners making a shitload of money is that our investors have to make a shitload too. That way, everybody’s happy…including us brokers!”
Brian’s calls went very well and many people seemed pleased to be offered the chance to invest in the next hot WT&C deal. Almost no one asked anything specific about Malco Energy itself, even though Brian had prepared a fact sheet he was ready to use if someone wanted to know something. In reality, he had had trouble finding selling points, since the company had no seasoned management, no business and nothing but hopes and dreams, but he at least could fall back on the firm’s success with prior offerings, most of which had looked just like Malco when they hit the street.
After the market closed on Tuesday, the trading floor was uncharacteristically quiet.
“I wonder if everyone else is as exhausted as I am,” he thought.
Jim Palmer stuck his head around the wall and said, “How’d you do, newbie?”
“I made some sales. When do you guys get the report that shows how you did? Tomorrow?”
“Is that how they did it at Merrill?” Jim explained that WT&C didn’t want people to go home wondering how well they’d done. They needed the rush of knowing they were successful, or the need to push harder, before tomorrow.
He showed Brian how to go on the intranet to a page that had a number of listings and names posted.
“This stuff is all in real time. As soon as you post an order, it hits the sales sheet, showing the amount you sold and your commission.”
Brian saw several lists on the page. At the top was a ranking of the firm’s top brokers for the month. There were ten names listed. The top guy had already put a half million bucks in his pocket as commission income. Brian’s throat got dry as he scrolled down the list, making himself a promise that he would do anything, anything in the world, to be on that top ten
list.
Other “top ten” lists showed the various deals the company was working on. Since this was Malco Week with the company set to go public on Friday, Malco’s list was at the top. Not surprisingly to Brian, a couple of people who were on the Malco top ten list were also top sellers company-wide. Jim Palmer was one, with sales over $4 million and commissions of nearly $25,000 for the month. He knew Jim had other sales than Malco so he figured Jim’s total income for the month had to be way over fifty grand. He suddenly was more impressed with Jim.
“Have you found the Malco rankings for today?” Jim yelled through the wall.
Brian said he hadn’t so Jim showed him how to scroll down below the master Malco list. There was a smaller grouping, showing all of today’s sales for Malco with each salesperson’s numbers. Jim explained this sub-list would be posted from now until Thursday, and had no purpose other than to determine Carl’s contest winner.
“Speaking of the contest, Jim,” Brian asked, scooting his chair back into the aisle so he could see into Jim’s space, “WT&C must be making big bucks in order to give away a Lamborghini.”
“Did you look at the registration statement?” Jim responded. “WT&C will make millions on the deal but they’ll also put our chairman on Malco’s board and pay him a couple hundred grand a year for that. Plus Malco will become a client of ours for investment management. Don’t forget, we’re handing this company thirty-five million bucks after expenses and they don’t have a damn thing in mind to do with the money except look for some oil sometime. It’ll take a while to spend that kind of money. And while they’re sitting on it, guess who’s going to be investing it for them? You got it. Good old WT&C. And a bunch of that money we just raised for them will go right back into other new deals of ours, because in our infinite wisdom, we’re recommending our own hot stocks as the best investments for Malco!”
Sliding back into his cube, Brian pondered how all that worked. No wonder these stocks continued to be high flyers after they went public. People buy Malco. The company doesn’t need their money for a while so WT&C puts that money in the next deal. Malco doesn’t need to sell its investments so when the stock goes up after the public offering, a lot of shareholders, like Malco, just hold on to it, because many of those investors are WT&Cs own companies, holding all that stock.
“This is a dream deal,” Brian thought. “Investors can almost be guaranteed to make money as long as the market stays hot.”
Turning back to the screen, Brian saw that a broker named Gillian Jensen was top seller of Malco for today, earning thousands of dollars for her effort. He didn’t recognize any of the other names, and saw that only two of them were Team Bravo people. Obviously opening the floodgates to allow the other teams to sell was a good thing. It was working. He also saw his own name, far down the list, showing total sales of fifty thousand dollars and commission under a grand.
“Not bad for day one of sales,” Brian thought. “If I do this same thing for twenty-two business days in a month, I’ve made over twenty grand. In a damn month!”
A final Malco screen showed the tally for total sales at $34.5 million, which meant that $3.5 million had been sold today. They had five and a half million bucks of Malco stock to sell, and two days left in which to do it.
Chapter Eleven
Brian went home exhausted. He ordered Chinese food for delivery, popped a beer, and settled back. His mind was racing. The sales calls today had been easy. He really hadn’t pushed himself. He thought of himself more in the Merrill vein – calmer, more reassuring to customers, confident about his product, and with a good solid pitch to make.
I don’t need to be a hotshot like some of these other guys. I can do this my way, and I can make half a million a year.
At that moment, on day two, he set a personal goal. I’m going to have forty grand in commissions in my third month. And I won’t ever have less than forty grand a month after that for as long as I’m a WT&C broker.
If he had known then what the next two years would bring, he would have been astounded at his lack of vision.
Chapter Twelve
Dallas, Texas
Two years later
January 2005
In two years, Brian had paid his dues at Warren Taylor and Currant. The place was a madhouse and he was one of the madmen. He’d paid a price but what a reward awaited those who were good at this, he thought as he left the garage of his apartment building and pulled on to Turtle Creek Boulevard. He passed the Mansion on Turtle Creek a block from his place. Brian thought about how far he had come in so short a time. His entire lifestyle had changed. He had gone from living paycheck-to-paycheck, to having not a worry in the world about money, ever. His only concern was whether he would be number one in sales each month. I eat the competition for breakfast, he thought satisfyingly. I am the threat at WT&C.
He only had to drive a few blocks to work; the Porsche 911 convertible made it in less than ten minutes. Traffic was light before eight and Brian always got to work before The Push started. It was his time of day to shine, to be recognized for the success he’d always known he was, and to get energized for the day.
“Hey, Carl,” he said to his boss as they both entered the elevator in the parking garage. “Have you tried Usa yet?”
“The new Japanese place? No. I hear they have some kind of exotic beef.”
“Yeah. It’s Akaushi beef. It puts Kobe beef to shame – they have a New York Strip there that’ll set you back a hundred and fifty bucks.”
Brian went on to explain that he and a girl he was seeing had drinks and dinner there last night and ended up with a tab of nearly eight hundred dollars.
Some of the newer guys at WT&C were in the elevator. Brian saw surprised looks on the faces of some of them.
“Hey guys, I was where you are two years ago next month. I was wondering whether my next meal would be McDonald’s or Burger King. You guys have the world at your feet. If you can sell, you can make a fortune. If you can’t, you’re in the wrong elevator!”
Everyone laughed, and the opening of the door ushered in a new day at Warren Taylor and Currant.
Chapter Thirteen
Malco Energy, Brian’s first sales effort, had given him something far greater than the few thousand dollars he had made in commissions. He hadn’t made the top ten list for Malco. He hadn’t made the top anything list. He was just one of the guys, selling some stock to some people. But the gift he got from Malco was the knowledge, deep inside, that Warren Taylor and Currant would make him a star – a success in everyone’s eyes – and he was ready to grasp it. At whatever cost.
He watched from the sidelines as a girl he’d never met won the Lamborghini and got over fifty thousand in commissions besides, all for being top Malco salesperson in the final week. Malco went public, the former WT&C broker who owned most of it was an instant multi-millionaire with an annual salary of nearly a million dollars, and he didn’t have to work very hard since the company didn’t have any business. All he really had to do, Brian knew, was let the firm handle his company’s investment portfolio. Nice work if you can get it.
WT&C had invested most of Malco’s money in new hot deals and the company’s stock skyrocketed, reflecting the increase in its investment portfolio of the broker’s other companies. There were a few losers, sure. There always were. But, Brian thought, an average of nine winners out of ten ain’t bad.
The Push that morning started with Carl Cybola’s usual frenzied announcements, followed by the usual screaming session, and ending with discussions of the deals the company had working that week. Now WT&C was taking fifty companies public a year – about one a week. The firm had nearly two thousand employees, seventy percent of whom were brokers. The rest spent their time pushing paperwork for the salespeople. The firm occupied five floors of The Strand and things were absolutely going crazy, every single day.
Chapter Fourteen
Six months later
The day the Feds walked in was a gorgeous one.
It was the middle of June and already nearly ninety degrees every day. Brian had lowered the top of his convertible so he could enjoy the breeze during his brief drive to work. The Push that morning had been just like always. There had been yet another crazy contest and a young hotshot who’d only been there a month won a thousand bucks just for correctly spelling the name of the latest hot deal’s CEO. At least it was a contest, Brian thought; the guy’s name turned out to be Khalim Salamandi, not your household name.
Brian had known there were a few things going on that weren’t all rosy. There had been several investigations into the marketing techniques of WT&C’s salespeople. The Securities and Exchange Commission had even fined the firm $25,000 for allowing its people to be overly aggressive, in the SEC’s opinion. That news was greeted with guffaws at The Push the morning after it was announced.
“Twenty-five grand they fine us,” Carl yelled through the overhead intercom system that now piped his meeting to brokers sitting in cubes on three floors of their building. “Twenty-five grand is what I wipe with in the morning!”
People went nuts; they were laughing, yelling and clapping. Brian Sadler was clapping right along with them, giving and receiving high-fives from the people around him.
A bigger concern was the SEC’s investigation into a couple of public offerings WT&C had done in the past six months. There was beginning to be pressure for the firm to stop doing so many “blind pool” deals, which was the term used for companies that raised money but didn’t have any immediate use for it. The firm’s logic was that all their public deals ended up doing one thing or another, mostly in the fields they were supposed to be doing it in, and everybody made money, so what was the big issue?
The broker’s biggest problem at the moment was a major issue indeed. It seemed investors were a little upset when Bellicose Holdings, one of the firm’s offerings, turned out to be headed by Francois Rochefort, a Canadian who was both a coke addict and a convicted felon. Turns out he had served ten years for fraud in a French prison.
Brian Sadler Archaeology 01 - The Bethlehem Scroll Page 5