Emma's own family and her in-laws had not been permitted to travel to India, and if the truth was known there had been a secret sigh of relief. In any case there was little they could have done but comfort her. After the shock that had affected her during the first days she had recovered her strength, the presence of Barton had comforted her, he was discrete and uninvasive. Ryan's presence had also helped, and though she could not forget his hesitation, his cool professionalism and distance had reminded her of Stephen.
When Barton offered to accompany her to Delhi she gladly accepted and his down-to-earth approach eased her apprehensions. The embassy formalities were less complicated than expected; she presented her husband's death certificate with the papers relating to his cremation and his death was registered, it was over in a matter of minutes. She was then received in private by the ambassador who offered his assistance, sympathising with her personal disaster and that of her husband's firm - something that seemed rather strange to her.
She said nothing of the ambassador's enigmatic words concerning the 'firm' to Barton, imagining it was their loss too and after returning to the hotel she called her parents. Her father tactfully broke the news concerning West Mercian's difficulties and its consequences for Parkly's estate. Her family solicitors had been in contact with Parkly's who had informed them that probate would be a long process.
The idea of returning to London and facing Stephen's family and friends was not encouraging and now the additional problem of unscrambling Stephen's financial affairs frankly depressed her. Her father had proposed flying out to help, once travel restrictions had been lifted, but she had refused, she had been brought up with a very independent attitude and her parents, deeply affected by the tragedy, regretfully accepted in the knowledge she would survive the difficult period and probably come out stronger from the experience.
Her father had spoken with the British Ambassador in Delhi and had been reassured that they would do everything in their power to ensure her safety and wellbeing. Incredibly, with the exception of Stephen's life long friend and head of human relations at West Mercian, there was no news from the firm, not one single other person had contacted her, perhaps it was due to the difficulty of communications, besides the unresolved crisis at West Mercian had everybody fearing for their own future, not to mind that of Emma Parkly, who many saw as a little rich girl and the wife of the man responsible for their misfortune.
She announced no immediate plan to return to London and Barton raised no questions as to her plans, content for the moment by her presence and unclear as to his own plans. They fell into an almost silent routine of meals and drinks punctuated by Emma's phone calls to her family and friends.
Her life hand changed, she could not go back to the life of the frivolous young woman she had been before she married Stephen. Further, she was not ready to play the roll of a widow and go through the grieving that would be expected of her by her family and especially her in-laws. An even worse prospect was that of a Church of England memorial service in the village.
After three days Emma announced she wanted to visit the Delhi and produced a small guide she had picked up at the reception.
The weather was fine with spring like temperatures in the low twenties, a huge relief after the heat of Kovalam. After visiting India Gate and the parliament buildings, built in 1927 and designed by Sir Herbert Baker, they left for the Red Fort, a palace built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to adorn his new capital, Shahjahanabad, in 1639.
While they visited the extraordinary palace Barton could not help noticing that Emma seemed more relaxed and lighter hearted as she listened to the words of the guide. It was though a burden had fallen from her shoulders. Looking out through the open windows of the Fort she announced to his surprise that the Jamuna, the river below, was a tributary of the Ganges.
'You're very knowledgeable,' he said smiling in mock surprise.
She laughed and took his arm.
The next day they took a chauffeur driven car to Agra and the Taj Mahal, a three hour drive from Delhi. They watched the strange mixture of traffic on the road, over loaded buses, colourful trucks, a camel drawn cart, cows and even an elephant. They discovered the Taj Mahal, one of the world's wonders, according to the guidebook it was in fact a tomb built by a prince in memory of his young wife.
Though it was much smaller than they had expected, they had stood in silence and gazed at it spellbound for several minutes, the beauty, harmony and perfect symmetry of the dazzling white monument, built for a prince's lost love, was almost overwhelming.
On the road back to Delhi, Barton was aware that Emma sat closer to him, she seemed pensive.
'Tom, tell me about yourself?' she suddenly demanded.
'Myself?'
'Yes, I know almost nothing about you.'
'What can I say??'
'I don't even know - where you live for - don't you have a home?'
'Well I've never been married and I live?or lived in Epping.'
'Lived?'
Slowly he told her about his life and how he had decided to abandon everything, without any clear plans, embarking on a journey with no precise destination. She listened to his story, he was frank, he made no attempt to justify his actions, no excuses. There was a long silence.
'Life is strange,' she said slowly and then paused. 'When I spoke to my father he told me about West Mercian, it seems they are on the verge of bankruptcy?if what had happened to me in India had not happened, Stephen and I would have been in a similar position to you, but in the eye of the storm. I watched the news on the television?things look bad.'
'Yes, it seems that way.'
'Your timing was good,' she suddenly said brightly, smiling at him. 'That's important.'
'Perhaps.'
'I believe in fate, to some extent, in any case after events. Fate has decided things will be as they are and we have to make the best of it,' she said taking his hand.
*****
Chapter 93
After several weeks a mystery still surrounded the whereabouts of Tom Barton, the head of Barton Finance, a City mortgage brokerage firm, who was suspected of links with the West Mercian Finance scandal, had disappeared over the Christmas holidays.
Frantic calls from the broker's clients had been met by denials of any wrong doings. The firm's solicitors had published at statement announcing the firm was under new management and it was business as usual. Any link to the troubled West Mercian Finance was denied other than that of a mortgage broker's, and a small broker at that.
The statement continued, advising clients that enquiries concerning existing or approved mortgages by West Mercian were to be addressed directly to West Mercian Finance. Those who had paid deposits or who were in the process of buying or selling properties were reassured that there was absolutely no risk since the firm had respected all legal procedures concerning the safety of deposits.
One customer who had been trying to get in touch with Barton for weeks, relative to a mortgage application, suspected he was overseas.
Around that time, Barton, as he boarded a Thai Airways flight for Bangkok, where he was to be joined by Emma a few days later, picked up a copy of the Bangkok Post. The headline announced a huge banking loss in France, no doubt another subprime loss he thought, he was now used to the revelations over the past weeks and months that seemed without end.
He took his seat and unfolded the newspaper. The Bangkok Post announced that markets were stunned by the loss of four billion euros by an as yet unnamed trader at Soci?t? G?n?rale, France's second largest bank. He could not help smiling to himself thinking this was much more fun.
If he remembered rightly it was about five times the amount that Nick Leason had cost the Barings back in 1995. To make matters worse Society G?n?rale's loss was compounded by a write-down of a billion euros in its subprime dealings.
His first impression was that it was a cover up, the bank was accusing its trader, of apparently little seniority, of being responsi
ble for fraudulent trading losses that had wiped out its almost entire profits for the year just ended. It seemed to Barton highly unrealistic that such a loss could have gone undetected by the bank's control system. Most amusing was the information the bank had been the recent winner of the Equity Derivatives House of the Year award in the City of London.
The chairman of the renowned bank, Lehman Brothers, was reported in the Bangkok newspaper as saying the fraud, if that was the word for it, thought Barton, was 'everyone's worst nightmare'.
Leason, whom Barton had always openly admired, had served more than six years in prison, but had resurfaced again as a writer, speaker and football club executive. The same article reported he had been inundated with demands for interviews after the announcement of the French bank's losses, and his press agent was auctioning interviews to the highest bidder.
Barton was pleased to learn that the losses were 'gigantic and colossal', because, together with the other scandals that were rocking the financial world, including the Northern Rock, followed by West Mercian Finance and the strange and tragic death of its head Stephen Parkly in India, it meant that his own story would be considered of little real interest or in the worse case would attract no more than a cursory investigation.
The news from UK limited was grime, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the nationalisation of the Northern Rock, the country's fifth biggest mortgage lender. It was the first time a major high street bank had been nationalised in recent history, leaving the taxpayer with a bill that was expected to grow to tens of billion of pounds as the state took over the responsibilities for the eight hundred thousand mortgages Northern Rock held.
Finally all negotiations for a private take over had failed due to a lack of 'sufficient value for money to the taxpayer'. It seemed that the tycoon who had been leading the bidding had not come up with enough guarantees or was too greedy, whatever the reason he had wallowed in the free publicity, the name of his holding making almost daily headlines during the course of the previous six months.
The government announced the nationalisation after months of fruitless discussions with the press accusing it of incompetence, but was it really the government? Of course the government had taken the plunge to save Northern Rock, but had they any choice? But on the other hand, were they responsible for the events that brought the bank to its disastrous situation?
The whole country had been drawn in by a frenzy of spending on the never-ever, when money was dangled before consumers via their letter boxes every morning with new credit cards, offers of bank loans at interest rates never before seen, demanding almost no guarantees. It was as though there was no pay back date, and in any case the gains made from rocketing property prices would cover all sins.
It was the old story of a badly run company trading in a booming market, growth covered all incompetence and bad management decisions, but once the market slowed the chickens came home to roost, or were they vultures?
West Mercian had been eclipsed by the Northern Rock rescue, its employees were faced with massive layoffs and the tens of thousands of small investors facing huge losses without any hope of state intervention, the Chancellor had been caught once and he was not about to be caught the second time.
There was much talk in the market of a repeat of Black Wednesday, when billions of pounds were wiped off Britain's reserves when the government pulled out from the EMR, hiking interest rates to an astronomical twelve percent.
Barton saw a much larger crisis unfolding in slow motion and was reminded of how curious it was that memories were so short and how analysts mechanically repeated their time worn exhortations, desperately trying to convince the world all was well, when it was evident the game was up. Barton had always been prudent, avoiding the trap of willing the market up, that is until he himself had slipped.
Estate agents announced the numbers of properties on sale in the UK had increased almost twenty percent compared to the same period of the previous year, as home owners panicked, rushing to sell before the bottom fell out of the house prices, others were forced to sell because they could no longer support the burden of their heavy mortgages and growing debts. The mechanism was well known to the old hands: stock of unsold houses automatically grew as sellers asked for unrealistic prices.
Good for Leason's pal he thought as he folded the newspaper and slipped into the pocket before him, then leaned back in his comfortable seat and accepted a glass of Champagne from the pretty Thai hostess. In any event Barton concluded it was now time to turn to something new. The twists and turns of the last weeks were more than some could expect in a whole life time, he was tired, but life was finally beginning to look up and a new future was taking form.
*****
Chapter 94
India was a contradiction, its middle classes thirsted for recognition from the outside world, and while presenting a glowing picture of their country's success there remained nine hundred million or so poor Indians struggling for survival each and every day of their desperate lives.
The world business press spoke more and more of the rising middle classes in the emerging world and more specifically in India with its huge population of potential consumers. The question for marketers was how to define the much vaunted middle class of India?
It was not an easy task in such a large and varied country, but the Indian National Council of Applied Economic Research defined middle class as approximately sixty million Indians earning between ?2,000 and ?10,000 a year, which in terms of purchasing power was about five times greater than in the UK,
This, in simple terms, meant that few of these could afford to buy a car or indulge in overseas travel, not to mind thinking of a kidney transplant - without hugely indebting themselves.
Certain studies defined the twenty percent who owned a two, three or four wheeled vehicle, a colour TV or a telephone, as qualifying for middle class membership, even though most were in an income bracket of only ?750 to ?1,500 a year.
The vast majority of this so called Indian lower Middle Class were struggling to make ends meet, barely keeping their heads above water, living in big cities such as Mumbai in what could be described at best as slum dwellings if compared to Western standards.
A mere one percent of the population could afford the status symbols common in the West - less than ten million - and the remaining four fifths of the middle class defined by the National Council could only aspire to the lesser status symbols.
Beyond the hype surrounding India's economic rise, three hundred million Indians lived on less than fifty pence a day faced with the immense social and economic problems affecting most of the country's citizens.
Further, those who saw India and China reaching the level of the middle classes in the West should have stopped to think whether the economic resources of the world could support doubling and tripling its middle classes, a problem that also boded ill for the West.
Looking at the bad news from the Bombay Stock Exchange ticker tape on CNN it was more than strange to think that Indian punters had unwittingly tied their fate to that of defaulting investment funds on the other side of the planet and defaulting homeowners in distant Cleveland and Bakersfield.
*****
Chapter 95
India was already the world's second most populated country with over 1.15 billion people, not far behind China's 1.3 billion. The UN expected India's population to continue to rise eventually reaching around 1.6 billion by 2050, by which time it would have overtaken China becoming the world's most populated country.
Ryan's short stop in Mumbai, India's largest city, simply confirmed his idea it was one of the most crowded places on earth. He was not far off the mark, the city's population was estimated at around twenty million and it could also boast the world's largest slums, and an infrastructure system, which to all intents and purposes had collapsed.
Traffic was permanently jammed and railways stations and trains were packed to bursting point, passengers still perilously hung ont
o the sides of wagons sixty years after independence, and air pollution reached catastrophic levels
Some explained the population increase by people living longer. In any case, progress had been made since India's independence at which time average life expectancy was just thirty three, since then improved food supplies and medical care had raised the average life of Indians to sixty.
Birth rates had fallen, but not sufficiently so to compensate for the increased life expectancy of the overall population. The tradition of large families in rural areas was linked to an increase in the number of hands contributing to feeding a family, an insurance for aged parents, in a certain manner of speaking a retirement plan.
Family planning was a mere a drop in the ocean for reasons to do with culture, religion and the lack of education, mostly affecting the poor who had the highest birth rates.
As a consequence the population of India was inexorably set to rise for another fifty years with another five hundred million mouths to feed by the middle of the century, presenting the country with an almost insurmountable problem, and in a world where competition for food and resources would be fierce.
Its own resources were limited, especially its agricultural and fresh water resources, and expanding these to provide for a population of 1.6 billion an almost impossible task - without taking into account the country's industrial needs and the effects of pollution caused by the same industries.
India had gained its independence without war, without revolution, and the traditional landed ruling class had inherited the reins of power. A selfish power, where wealth was gathered uniquely for the good of the family - families such as the Tatas, Mittals, Birlas and others, whose extravagantly lavish living styles mocked the poor masses of their fellow countrymen.
Death of a Financier Page 26
