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

by David Charters

  Like all good things, it came to an end, and in the first week of January I started work at Grossbank, on a package of ‘three by five’ – a five-million pound a year bonus, guaranteed for three years – with the same again in employee stock, plus a million sign-on (i.e., they pay me a million pounds just for turning up on the first day) and a further ten-million pound package of stock that vests in five years if I’m still around and achieve certain pretty astronomical revenue targets (I very cleverly hung out for this, because it made them think I might be here for the long term – as if…) I’m counting on Wendy not reading the financial press, because there are some inconvenient reports that I wouldn’t want her to see:

  Grossbank are rumoured to be paying top dollar for City hard man and former Bartons investment banker Dave Hart, who last year hit the headlines when he took on Yardie gangsters in Jamaica, killing their leader and rescuing British toddler Toby Mills.

  Hart, who still sports a prominent scar from a machete wound, was unavailable for comment…

  That’s it, I have my label now. I’m ‘City hard man’ – me! I’ve been defined. In any event, I need a disguise to wear to work at the new firm, and City hard man seems fair enough, at least for people who don’t know me. So I summon up my full chameleon-like capabilities and morph into a City hard man – or at least what I think a real City hard man might be like, if ever there were such a thing.

  It doesn’t help that it’s January, when most of the City goes dry. After the pre-Christmas excesses, bodies saturated with alcohol are drying out. This is when people briefly start going to the gym, try to lose a few pounds, and generally get serious. Where before they might have gone out at lunchtime, now they stay at their workstations. Where before they met for drinks after work, now they return home, miserable, unfulfilled, full of suppressed rage.

  And the markets roar. Analysts talk about the January effect in the stock market, referring to the way in which share prices soar – and sometimes plunge – amid heavy volumes of aggressive trading. Theses have been written about why it happens, but behind closed doors we know. Fifty thousand market makers, traders, sales traders, dealers and brokers are drying out. And they’re like a whole herd of buffalo with sore heads.

  That’s the backdrop when I arrive at the Grossbank London office on my first Monday morning.

  GROSSBANK ARE in a small building off Threadneedle Street, not far from the Bank of England, but a million miles from the giant concrete and glass palaces of Bartons and the other major firms. A few hundred people work here, but until now I’ve never even met someone from Grossbank London, let alone known anyone – they were just too far down the food chain.

  Sometimes new bosses like to make an impression by arriving at the crack of dawn, catching everyone unprepared, and then proceed to install a new regime of early morning meetings to show how macho they are. For their first month, they don’t leave the office until late into the evening, forcing everyone else to stay at their workstations. And they appear in the office at weekends, checking on who’s working.

  As a fundamentally lazy person, I think that’s all bullshit.

  I arrive just before ten, by which time they are wondering if something’s happened to me. I have a newly prepared corner office made by combining the offices of the head of equities and the head of research – who are now sitting in much smaller offices next to the trading floor, scowling at me. I make a note to fire them.

  I have been given a long-serving secretary, mid-forties, half-German, unmarried, and built like a barn door. Her name is Maria, and she has been with Grossbank in London and Frankfurt for nearly twenty years. She’s definitely a spy, put here to keep an eye on me, and I immediately decide I have to keep her.

  That’s right, I’m going to keep her. Keep her, and use her. She’ll be my back door communication channel to the board. I spend the first day going through formalities, getting my photograph taken, signing endless papers, and meeting the faceless, one-dimensional people who served the old regime.

  By four o’clock, having eaten nothing more than a sandwich at my desk, feeling the desperate need for alcohol, and with my face twitching at a medium fast rate, I’m overcome by the desire to do something. You know what they say. Lonely? Bored? Depressed? Call a meeting! I call a meeting.

  My meeting takes place in the conference room next to my office. Maria summons for me the heads of equities, fixed income, treasury, foreign exchange and structured finance. I ask where the head of corporate finance is, but am reminded that we don’t actually do corporate finance. Oh.

  I find myself staring around the table at a group of nervous, defensive verging on hostile, fifty-something men. So this is where they all go when they get moved on from proper firms. At Bartons only the Chairman and the people actually running the firm were over fifty. I realise then that the Grossbank London office was a sayonara job.

  I get them each to give me five minutes on their business area, its achievements, strengths, weaknesses, and finally ask them to say who on their team they would rate as their star performer. I make notes, nod, twitch, but don’t smile. When the last of them has finished, I pass a note to Maria, then while away the minutes in small talk, asking them how long they’ve all been at Grossbank, where they were before, do they have kids – or even grandchildren – and so on.

  The London head of HR is in my office, summoned by Maria, and in another glass-sided conference room, visible to the heads of business areas sitting with me, another group is assembling – the individuals they named as their star performers, or at any rate the people in their departments who were the least bad.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen – I’ll be right back.’ I leave the conference room and return to my office. The head of HR looks no different to the men I’ve just left – mid-fifties, tired, ragged round the edges, on the downward slope of a City career.

  ‘I’m Dave Hart – what’s your name?’

  ‘Charles Butler, Mister Hart.’

  ‘Call me Dave.’ I point to the conference room I’ve just left. ‘Charles, do you see those men in there?’

  ‘Yes, Dave.’

  ‘You know who they are?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good, because I’m firing everyone in the room. Call Security, have them send some people up to walk them out of the building. Tell your people to draw up severance papers.’ I pat him on the arm and return to the conference room, where there is a sweaty odour of fear and a deathly hush.

  I stand at the end of the table. ‘Gentlemen, this place is a joke.’ One or two of them frown and cross their arms, and there are a couple of muttered ‘Steady on’s’. I pause and stare around the table, waiting for absolute silence. ‘I don’t feel like I’ve come into an investment bank at all. I feel like I’ve walked onto the set of “Carry On Banking”. Well let me assure you, there’s a new era dawning at Grossbank.’ They nod, trying to summon some enthusiasm, though probably feeling sick to their stomachs. ‘An era of high performance, high ambition…’ I hesitate before allowing myself to smile. ‘…and high pay.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ It’s the head of treasury, Norman something or other.

  I pause and stare at him. ‘Be quiet, you obsequious little shit.’ My face is twitching, right on cue, and I stare at him.

  ‘I… I’m sorry.’

  ‘Quiet!’ I slam my hand down hard on the table, then look slowly around the room. On the trading floor beyond the glass walls of the conference room people are looking at us, wondering what’s going on. They know the men in this room. The men in this room run Grossbank London. They are Grossbank London. And now, as they look at me, they are truly frightened. This man kills. This Dave Hart, a man they’d never heard of until last year, a man who took out a gangster with his bare hands, now seems barely under control. They are fascinated by my twitching face, the scar, the manic spittle that flies whilst I talk.

  ‘A new era is dawning, and you, gentlemen, will not be part of it.’ I point at them each in turn
. ‘You, and you, and you, and you, and you, have failed. All of you. You had one of the greatest opportunities in investment banking in the City of London, and you blew it.’ I look up to see several security guards standing outside with Charles Butler and a couple of his assistants. All activity has come to a stop on the trading floor. All eyes are on me, standing in this glass bubble with five – five – petrified victims in front of me. For years I took this shit. Now I’m dishing it out. Awesome. My voice is a hoarse whisper. ‘You had the opportunity to build something great, with the strength, the muscle, of one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions behind you. And you didn’t even know it. You’re all fired. Now get out of here!’

  This job rocks.

  As if one meeting in an afternoon isn’t enough, I then walk over to the second conference room. The group sitting here are about ten to fifteen years younger than their bosses, one or two look quite keen and bright, but in general they strike me as classic big fishes in small, sleepy ponds. Only now there’s a shark loose in their pond.

  Once again, I position myself at the end of the table, standing looking down at them. ‘Gentlemen, good afternoon. We haven’t actually met, and if you’ll excuse me, I’m not proposing to go through the usual round of introductions.’ I look around the table with a sort of twisted half smile on my face. ‘You see that room over there?’ They nod and glance over to where I’ve come from, where a group of bitter, broken men are being led away to collect their personal belongings. ‘I’ve just fired everyone in that room.’ This brings a sharp intake of breath, tempered by a venal, self-interested glint in the eyes of one or two who think they see an opportunity. ‘Some of you won’t be around long enough to make it worthwhile investing the time in getting to know you. Those who make it will soon get to know me anyway. I’m placing each of you in temporary charge of your departments. If I don’t see a material improvement in results over the next month, you’ll be replaced. If you deliver, you can expect great things. Each of you will have a five minute slot with me each day to report how well you’ve done. Don’t send me paper, don’t send me e-mail – talk to me. And each day I’ll be spending at least an hour walking round the office, dropping in from time to time, just to keep my finger on the pulse. You’ll get used to it.’

  I actually have no idea what their results are like. For all I know they might be stellar, though from the look of the previous heads of businesses I doubt it. Anyway, it was my first Monday. I was bored, and I hate January.

  Two meetings in one day is quite enough. When I get back to my office I tell Maria to get me Herman on the phone.

  ‘Herman? Hi, it’s Dave. Great. First day’s been terrific. We’re making very significant progress already. I’ve just fired everyone.’

  By five thirty I’m out of there, in a cab home, calling up Ilyana from Kiev and Natalia from Bucharest.

  TUESDAY’S FINANCIAL press carries some interesting stories. The best headline reads Bloodbath at Grossbank. I wonder what Rory will make of that one. They’re all running the line that ‘City hard man’ Dave Hart marked his first day in his new job by firing all the heads of department in what was clearly a carefully orchestrated plan. The tiny quarter page devoted to business news in the Daily Post is the one I like best: Hart by Name, Hard by Nature.

  But now the heat’s on and I need to move fast.

  When I get to the office, somewhere around nine-thirty, I call another meeting. Maria’s already finding it hard to get people to come to meetings with me, but I insist that they drop whatever they were doing and attend. The first meeting is with Bill Foreman, who is nominally in charge of marketing and PR for the London operation. I say ‘nominally’, because before I came here, people had barely heard of Grossbank London.

  He’s a lean, nervous type in his mid-thirties, wearing a collarless shirt buttoned up to the top and no tie. Probably thinks it’s media-cool. He worked for a succession of minor PR agencies before winding up at Grossbank five years ago.

  When he first enters my office, I’m sitting in my big leather power-chair, staring out the window. He stands awkwardly, coughs, and then falls silent, waiting for me to acknowledge him. He probably thinks it’s a power game, but the reality is that Ilyana and Natalia gave me simply the best time ever last night. I don’t know what we were all on – well, I do, but I’m not telling you – but we carried on until four, and I’m honestly feeling pretty shagged out, as well as hung over – and yes, I know it’s January, but anyone can slip momentarily. I’ve got shadows under my eyes and I feel as if I’m labouring just that little bit harder against gravity today – it’s a 2G day. With a monumental effort I swing my chair around and stare at him. I have only a mild twitch, probably due to tiredness rather than stress. He remains standing, awkwardly, and I don’t signal him to sit down.

  ‘Bill, our PR is crap.’

  ‘I – I agree.’

  ‘You agree?’ I’m taken aback by his candour.

  ‘Of course. It’s all directed from Frankfurt, and they have no idea how the British press works. Their marketing campaigns are crass and heavy-handed, and they never want to spend any money.’

  ‘Oh.’ I gesture to the chair beside him, the strategically low, deep chair that leaves even the tallest visitor looking up at me, either hunched forward with their feet on the ground, or sitting right back with their legs dangling. He chooses to hunch, cravenly I feel, probably anticipating a summary execution.

  Perhaps he senses my hesitation, and like a Death Row inmate holding out for a governor’s pardon, he’ll say anything to secure a delay in the sentence. ‘Have you ever seen the posters they wanted us to put up? The huge ones to go on billboards in the City, and as full page ads in the financial press? If size matters to you, choose Grossbank – can you imagine? We’d have been a laughing stock. Then they had Grossbankers make sure our clients come first and we come second – they’d commissioned all this from a German agency that had never done any work in the UK. It was all I could do not to use this stuff.’

  Remarkable. A head of marketing and PR, who spends his time avoiding marketing. But I can see what he means.

  ‘Bill – which is the most expensive, trendy, high profile PR firm in the UK?’

  ‘Ball Taittinger.’

  ‘Get them in here. I want to meet them to discuss a marketing campaign for Grossbank London.’

  ‘You bet. Fantastic. It’s what I’ve wanted to do for years.’ He looks as if a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Hart?’

  ‘Call me Dave. Bill – congratulations!’

  ‘Wh… what do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve just survived a meeting with me. You see, it is possible.’

  He laughs, thinking I’m joking, but when I don’t respond he dries up.

  ‘Thank you, Bill.’

  He tries to stutter something, nods and exits.

  Next on is Charles Butler, the head of HR. I’ve got in front of me the bonus list for last year.

  ‘Charles, these bonuses were a disgrace.’

  ‘Wh – what do you mean, Dave?’

  ‘I mean how can people live, when they get paid like this, let alone perform out there in the market?’

  ‘I – I don’t see your point. Last year was a pretty reasonable year by Grossbank standards.’

  ‘But the biggest bonus paid, presumably to one of our “star performers”, was three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Charles, how can a man live on that sort of money? Don’t our people have wives and children and homes and yachts and fast cars? Don’t they have dreams and aspirations, mistresses and drug habits?’

  He’s not sure how to take this last point, and smiles and nods – just the way I did with Rory! – as if he’s getting used to my slightly zany sense of humour. ‘But Dave – the firm can only pay what it produces. We’re not very profitable.’

  It’s true. The whole London office produced less last year than the worst pe
rforming business area at Bartons – mine, as it happens – so they couldn’t pay out.

  ‘Charles, all this is going to change. We’re going to implement Plan Alpha.’

  ‘Plan Alpha?’

  I nod. ‘Plan Alpha. It’s what I discussed with the board in Frankfurt.’ They didn’t actually know it as Plan Alpha, and neither did I until a few seconds ago, but it’s all I can manage when I feel like this. I get up and walk over to a flip chart. ‘Charles – you know the management structure we’ve employed in the past in London?’

  ‘Of course. Matrix reporting. Business heads reported in functionally to Frankfurt, and each region had its “champion” on the board, with geographic responsibility.’

  I pause. I didn’t know that. It sounds pretty sensible to me. But it’s such an effort to stand here concealing my hangover, that I press on anyway.

  ‘We’re going to adopt a new structure.’ I pick up a red marker pen and draw a square box on the flip chart. Inside the box I write ‘Me’. ‘Okay, Charles, let’s take this slowly. Here I am. Are you with me so far?’

  He nods, giving me an uncertain, sideways look. I then draw two diagonal lines stretching downwards and outwards from the first box. I draw two more boxes and write in one, ‘Head of Markets’, and in the other ‘Head of Corporate’. I turn back to Charles.

  ‘This is the new structure. Simple, lean, streamlined, easy to understand and manage.’ I point at the two boxes. ‘The head of markets runs equities, fixed income, treasury, foreign exchange, and the head of corporate runs all the corporate client facing businesses – structured finance, corporate lending, project finance, new business areas we don’t yet have a presence in, like mergers and acquisitions, leasing and capital raising. The underlying businesses report in to them. They make a whole raft of strategic hires, bring in complete teams from other firms, and take responsibility for their businesses and their results.’