Shadow Banking

by C. M. Albright

  A couple of hundred yards away, Miles was also in a hurry, making his way over to Mayfair for a meeting at Claridges. He and Philippa Lawrenson had been meeting like this every Friday evening at this time. It might have been awkward what with Imogen’s sister, Georgina, also working at Bank Berne but Philippa was very discreet. That’s what he liked about her. Their relationship had started off as a meeting to discuss whether Miles might be interested in a position at the bank. From the outset, however, he had made it clear that he wasn’t. But a position with Philippa, on the other hand, well, that was something else entirely.

  The schedule of events was the same every week. Miles would make his way to the suite where Philippa would greet him with a glass of Champagne and after little in the way of conversation or pleasantries, they would engage in some energetic and totally guilt-free sex. As Miles approached the door of the suite that night, he thought not only of the money but also of the opportunities that lay ahead in 1997 and thought that perhaps he would enjoy himself more than any Friday evening he had had since he arrived in London.

  10 Trading Up

  Gold: 349.5 USD per troy oz

  FTSE 100: 4423

  ‘I’d heard that Trenchart Colville was about to be bought by the Development Bank of Hong Kong.’ Michael Osgood smiled and nodded his head as he phrased the statement as a question. Al nodded, shrugged his shoulders as though to say, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’ This was talk around the camp fire; they were playing a game.

  Osgood was a City head-hunter. He and Al had arranged to meet in an out of the way subterranean wine bar near St Pauls. Al thought that Osgood was possibly the most well-groomed man he had ever met – and that included Miles Ratner. His nails were finely manicured, even the hairs on his wrist, that poked beyond his crisp white shirt cuffs appeared to be conditioned and trimmed to a uniform length. It was as though Osgood had stepped straight out of a 1950s British spy movie such was his suave and debonair demeanour. His conspiratorial air was designed to make Al feel special as though he was uniquely privileged to be party to this secret information.

  ‘Well, that’s what I’d heard,’ said Osgood, a faint chewing of the vowels betraying his West Country origins. ‘If you look at the strength of their Asian franchise, it’s almost unbelievable that they have such a low profile in the UK. They want a strong UK corporate presence and seeing as Trenchart Colville is clearly courting a suitor, it’s a win-win situation for both sides.’

  Osgood paused, took a sip of his white Burgundy before continuing. ‘But Al, it’s not such a win-win situation at Trenchart Colville if you’re an old-timer, you don’t want to go and live in Hong Kong or you happen to work in rate sales, given DBHK’s strength in this area.’

  Osgood wasn’t saying anything that either of them didn’t already know. After all, Rob Douglas had already left to be co-head of rates sales at Bank of the South and it was he would had set up this meeting.

  Osgood smiled reassuringly and leaned forward in his chair. ‘So what are your plans, Al? What are you looking for?’

  Al feigned nonchalance. He had thought of little else than the answer to that question for the past couple of days since he had agreed to meet with Osgood but he spoke as though he had never really given it much thought.

  ‘Well, I don’t really want to go to Asia. I’d like to stay in London so I guess I’m looking for a good European or American bank.’

  ‘How about Hartmann Milner?’ Osgood watched Al as he nodded his head thoughtfully, suppressing any outward signs of excitement. Hartmann Milner was everything that Trenchart Colville wasn’t, a high end global investment bank with a strong risk culture and a phenomenal client list. ‘There’s an interesting position come up there. You’re clearly frustrated by the situation at Trenchart Colville with the lack of product to sell and the narrow client base. At Hartmann Milner, as you can imagine, it’s a very different picture. Somebody of your age and experience can develop there faster than anywhere else. They exploit new markets better than anyone else. This would be a big opportunity for you, Al, for the medium to long term.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’ Al was already imagining himself striding through the big glass doors set into the marble edifice of the bank’s headquarters in Wellington Street with a Hartmann Milner business card in his pocket with his name on it.

  Osgood could sense Al’s growing excitement.

  ‘They would like to talk to you, Al. I have the mandate for the role. They’ve heard very good things about you from the street and from some of your clients. It would be a fantastic opportunity for you.’ Osgood took another sip of his wine, pausing to savour it and while still looking at the glass, said softly: ‘So, Al, what evenings are you free to meet them?’

  UK base rates: 6%

  Brent Crude Oil: 19.3USD per barrel

  For Imogen, lunch with her father at his favourite Italian restaurant, Giusto, on Marylebone High Street, just around the corner from his Harley Street practice was a pleasure that had become all too rare for her since she had started working in the City. With a few days off work – for no other reason than she just wanted a rest from the daily grind – it was something she had looked forward to. But as with so many things in her life of late, she just couldn’t let herself go and enjoy the occasion. Her father’s chosen topic of conversation didn’t help matters. Whereas usually she enjoyed listening to him talk about his work at the clinic, today all he seemed interested in discussing was her job which was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

  ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’ she asked as her seafood linguine was brought to the table.

  ‘I’m just concerned, that’s all,’ said Tobias taking the first mouthful of his lasagne.

  ‘Please don’t be, I’m fine.’

  ‘You just don’t seem very happy. And I want you to be happy. We both do.’

  ‘I am happy.’

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  ‘Come on, I didn’t mean it like that. You just don’t seem to be your usual sparky, happy-go-lucky self.’

  ‘I’ve never been happy-go-lucky, Dad.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘The problem is that you’ve never liked me working in the City. It doesn’t seem to bother Mum but you really don’t like it. You think it’s . . . wrong in some way.’

  ‘We’ve been through this before. I just don’t think that what you’re doing makes you happy.’

  ‘It makes George happy.’

  ‘You’re both very different. You both achieve your fulfilment in different ways. You have more of an artistic temperament. You always talked about doing something artistic when you were at school.’

  ‘Like Mum did, you mean?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I’m just worried that you’re – I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Stifled?’

  Tobias took a sip of water from his glass. ‘I was going to say stressed.’

  ‘But you think I’m stifled too, right?’

  Tobias smiled. He reached across the table and took his daughter’s hand in his. ‘I don’t know what I think. All I know is that you don’t seem as happy as you used to be and this seems to coincide with you working at Trenchart Colville. What do I know? Maybe you’re just working for the wrong company. But my hunch is that it’s more to do with something fundamental relating to the industry itself and your motivations for working in it. You never even mentioned finance until Georgina became interested in it.’

  ‘Oh not this again.’ Imogen put down her fork on her plate with more force than she had intended and it clattered onto the table. ‘You think I’m competing with Georgina, right?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  Imogen took a deep breath in an attempt to assuage her rising anger. He was right, she was competing with Georgina. Was that such a terrible thing? Georgina was competing with the whole world. Imogen loved her sister – of course she did – she just found George’s constan
t need to achieve the single most irritating thing about her. But that didn’t make her own need to stay in the race any less potent.

  ‘No, I’m not competing with her. You and Mum are obsessed with the fact that we’re in some sort of stupid race for glory.’

  ‘No we’re not. That’s not fair. Come on, let’s talk about something else. How’s Miles?’

  ‘He’s fine.’ Imogen hated the tone of childlike petulance in her voice. Her father always had the ability to touch on her psychological sore points and in doing so, bring out the worst in her.

  After they had finished their lunch and said their goodbyes outside the restaurant, Imogen watched her father as he walked off towards Harley Street. She hated falling out with him. It wasn’t as though they’d had an argument – she never argued with her father – but she couldn’t help but become defensive whenever he mentioned her job and her suppressed hatred of it. She felt wretched as she walked back to Manchester Square where she had parked her car on a meter.

  She was only five minutes late but already the traffic warden was writing out a ticket. Her existing bad mood and feelings of guilt towards her father fuelled her anger and when she started to berate the traffic warden – a sturdy middle-aged man whose bloated figure stretched his uniform – she surprised herself with the fury in her voice.

  ‘This is fucking ridiculous! I’ve gone five minutes over. What were you doing, waiting by the car? This is entrapment.’

  The traffic warden had a stoic, heard-it-all-before nonchalance, was unmoved by Imogen’s pleas and walked away leaving the parking ticket under the windscreen wiper of her VW Polo. She snatched it up and tore it into as many pieces as she could manage before the bundle of paper became too difficult to tear in half. Then she dropped the Westminster Council confetti into a litter bin. Unlocking the car, she climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine and pulled away from the kerb. She didn’t look in the mirror, she didn’t signal but she did manoeuvre, fast, and the wing of the car smashed into the driver’s door of a passing saloon, her headlight exploding in a shower of broken glass.

  ‘Shit!’ Imogen reached for the door handle. She wanted to shout at someone. She wanted to call whoever was driving the offending car every name under the sun. The words were forming in her head. This useless bastard would rue the day. She opened the door and was about to step out of the car when she felt the first sob erupt in her chest. By the time the driver from the car she had crashed into had come around to the open door, she was making no attempt to staunch the flow of tears. She couldn’t look at him. It was clearly her fault; everything was her fault. He would shout, call her names possibly, just like a proper London driver. Why don’t you look where you’re going?

  ‘Hey, what’s the matter? Are you hurt?’ He was French, made no attempt at mastering an English accent and his voice was all the more rich and melodic for that. ‘Do you want me to call you an ambulance?’

  Imogen turned to look at him for the first time. He was medium height, had long brown hair down to his shoulders and a goatee beard. Her continued silence only seemed to confirm his suspicions that she was indeed hurt.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Imogen, taking control of her sobs. ‘Well I’m not – look at the state of me – but it’s nothing to do with this.’ She gestured at the two cars pressed against each other. ‘Sorry about your car.’

  ‘It’s not my car. It’s a hire car. It’s horrible. I’m glad it’s dented. I mean, look at it. I’m more embarrassed that an attractive woman like you should see me driving a piece of shit like that.’ Imogen couldn’t help but laugh and the scruffy good looking Frenchman grinned back at her.

  ‘It’s nice to see you smile. Why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m having a bad day. Tell you the truth, I’m having a bad year.’

  ‘This is the last thing you need, eh?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Well, there’s no harm done. We exchange numbers, eh? We let the insurance companies deal with it – let’s tell them it was 50:50 eh? Both our faults.’

  ‘No, it was my fault ...’

  ‘No please, I want to do my bit to make you happy. Allow me, you’ll be doing me a favour. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Daydreaming.’ He was bending down to the driver’s window, his head level with Imogen’s. She could smell him and he smelt wonderful. His straight white teeth glistened as he spoke. So many British men attempted the grungy look and it just looked scruffy but the Frenchman carried it off with Bohemian panache.

  Imogen climbed out of the car and they exchanged names and telephone numbers. On a scrap of paper, she wrote down his name, an inner London 0171 telephone number and his car’s registration number.

  ‘I can’t let you say that it was both our faults. I clearly wasn’t looking where I was going.’

  ‘I insist. Anyway, I’m glad you weren’t looking where you were going.’

  Imogen thought about asking him why then stopped herself, enjoying his smile.

  ‘See you,’ he said, whispered it, then he was gone, back into his dented hire car. He peeped the horn as he drove off and waved out of the window. Imogen looked down at the piece of paper in her hand, above the telephone number and number plate details a name, written only moments before in her own shaky handwriting, Francois Remercy.

  It was a couple of days before he phoned. He told her that the hire car company’s insurers had been notified about the accident; Imogen confirmed that she had notified her company too and then he asked her out. She didn’t have time to think about whether what she was doing might in some way be construed as being disloyal to Miles.

  ‘Let me buy you a drink to say sorry for getting in the way of your car.’

  ‘OK.’ Her reaction was pure reflex. How could she say no?

  Nikkei: 17915

  5yr USD swap spread: 25 bps

  Big Keith often said to Fergal that he needed a ‘quiet word’. It was a sign that he wanted to go for a drink and the quiet word was usually nothing more than office gossip or football. But that night, as they made their way to the Red Lion instead of the Golden Hind after work, it looked as though Keith did genuinely want to speak to him about something.

  ‘Thought you might like to hear the latest goings-on,’ said Keith after he had got the beers in. ‘I guess you’ve heard the rumours?’

  ‘I presume you mean about us getting sold to the Development Bank of Hong Kong?’

  ‘The very same. Well, news is that the sale’s definitely going ahead.’

  ‘Shit.’ It was all over. The world that he had called home for nearly two and a half years was about to come to an end.

  ‘Joking and piss-taking aside, I think you’re a very good trader, Fergal, so I’ll cut straight to the chase.’ Here it came, Keith was letting him down gently. ‘How do you fancy making a move to Hong Kong to work on the spot desk at DBHK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Keith, I thought you were telling me I was going to get made redundant.’

  ‘Don’t be a daft sod, I want you by my side. The Little Fella’s already on board. I spoke to him about twenty minutes ago. I think his enthusiasm might have something to do with the fact that he won’t feel so small over there. Either that or the fact that he thinks he might eventually get to lose his virginity. So, Basher, what’ll it be?’

  Ever since the morning at Al’s parents’ house when he had been found naked on the kitchen floor with the lingerie catalogue, Fergal had been known as Basher.

  ‘What choice do I have?’

  ‘You have plenty of choice my old son. You can stay on in London and work on the spot desk here, or there are probably a few other banks who might like to take a look at you. But the point is that I’m asking you whether you’re going to come with me as part of my team. I’ve been asked to run the spot business over there. We can have a lot of fun, Fergal. There’s a huge untapped potential in that business. And the opportunities for you to misbeha
ve are like you wouldn’t believe.’

  Keith told him that he could think about it for a week or two and Fergal said thanks, he would. But he felt it in his gut – he didn’t need time to think – the big man was going to Hong Kong.

  11 Hitting the Bid

  Nasdaq: 1216

  Silver: 4.85 USD per oz

  Imogen and Francois went for dinner at the Blue Bird on the Kings Road. It didn’t feel like a date but then it didn’t feel like dinner between two friends either. Francois was a fashion photographer and he was either a charming imposter or he really was the Francois Remercy that she had read about in Vogue. He actually said Kate, Naomi, Christy and didn’t sound like a name-dropping prick doing it. But although he talked about his career for a few minutes because Imogen had asked him what he did, he wasn’t eager to talk about himself. He wanted to talk about Imogen. He was either charming by nature or he was deliberately charming her. She hoped it was a bit of both. What sort of women did this guy date? He was friends with fashionistas, lived in that world – and he was gorgeous. He was intuitive too, knew straight away that all was not right in her world.

  ‘Why banking?’

  ‘I like the challenge.’

  ‘Does it challenge you?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘You don’t look like a banker.’