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

by David Charters

  ‘The government holding’s been overhanging the share price for months. As soon as it’s gone, the price will rise. Come on – let’s win this sucker. We’re Grossbank – Grossbank rocks!’

  It’s only then that I recall that at Bartons, no one ever took any notice of my views on bidding for blocks, or much else for that matter, so it really didn’t matter what I thought. The problem is, now I’m in charge, and despite the obvious misgivings of the team, the bid goes in, to the amazement of Paul’s old buddy at Financial Solutions. Since anyone with a brain is bidding at least a small discount to the closing price, we win.

  Paul Ryan looks sick. ‘What do we do now? We own twenty per cent of the company. First thing tomorrow everyone’s going to be shorting the hell out of it, the price will go into free-fall, and if we manage to get rid of half of it, even at a huge loss, we’ll be lucky. What’s the plan, boss?’

  I like it when he calls me boss. It’s late, and I have a rendezvous with Fluffy and Thumper from the Pussy-Cat Club – beautiful Thai twins, who do an extraordinary double act guaranteed to whet even the most jaded appetite – so instead of saying how the hell should I know, I’ve never bid on a block trade before and I didn’t expect to win, I look confident, wink and tell him we’ll think about it in the morning.

  He thinks I’ve got nerves of steel, and carries on looking sick. The reality is that I still haven’t fully fathomed out exactly what I’ve got us into.

  In the morning, the shares do indeed go into free-fall. I’m scared shitless, a rabbit caught in the headlights, everyone looks to me for a lead, and on my instructions, we do… nothing.

  ‘Sit tight – don’t lose your nerve.’ No trader ever sits tight. But I’m desperately tired, it’s a 3G day. I feel like I’ve got alcohol oozing from every pore, my whole system saturated from a night of truly excessive excess with Fluffy and Thumper, and there’s a brass band marching up and down in my head. When the stock hits fifty euros a share, I panic and tell our traders to go into the market and buy a shed load more. If we own some at sixty-three euros a share, and some at fifty, our average price will be a lot lower than it was. At least that’s why I keep telling myself it’s a good move.

  By noon, we’re up to thirty per cent of the company. Herman wants to know what’s going on. So does Paul. So do I.

  ‘Let’s just say it’s a reverse block trade. We’re not selling these shares, we’re buying them.’ It’s a vague attempt at humour by a condemned man, as I face the imminent prospect of the whole pack of cards collapsing around me.

  I say it to Paul in the middle of the trading floor, and word spreads like wildfire. Since no investment banker can ever keep a secret, and everyone on the trading floor has at least one telephone, the word soon gets around the market.

  ‘Grossbank isn’t selling Société Financière du Sud – it’s buying it!’

  A couple of minutes later, reports are going across the wire that there is speculation in the market that Grossbank may be buying SFS, either acting on behalf of a potential acquirer – various names are mentioned – or possibly for its own account, as part of a foray into merchant banking-type principal investment. Herman calls.

  ‘Are we buying SFS?’

  ‘I don’t know. Are we?’

  The price is no longer in free-fall, but rising rapidly as the market gets wind of the fact that not only has the government overhang been removed, but there’s a predator on the loose, hoovering up shares with a view to launching a bid. An official announcement is expected imminently. Now all the short sellers are rushing to buy shares, closing out their short positions. Sell something at sixty euros a share, and buy it back at seventy, and the trade doesn’t look quite so clever, does it sucker? The institutions which actually owned SFS shares and sold them on news of the block trade are out there buying them back, not wishing to miss out on the action now that something’s happening. On the trading floor at Grossbank, the traders cheer every time the price goes up another euro. At sixty-five euros, we start unloading shares, and carry on selling them as the price reaches seventy, finally losing the last of our position at seventythree. When the French Trésor call up to ask what the hell’s going on, I don’t even need to lie. We’ve sold the whole position, and no, we have no idea where the takeover speculation came from.

  Amongst our own traders, my stature and prowess have reached previously unimaginable heights. When all around were panicking, I stood there, saying nothing, doing nothing, while the stock went through the floor. Balls the size of melons, and made of steel. No wonder, because I’m Dave Hart – or Chopper as they call me now. For the first time, I hear two of my own employees saying ‘Grossbank rocks’ and giving each other a high five. Truly, I am a legend.

  I’M FLYING TO the Fatherland again, but this time things are different. Tom, my new driver, has taken me to Northolt in the armoured, S-class Mercedes the firm is insisting I use for my own security and their well-being – I’m a key man, after all. Tom is well over six feet tall, strongly built, and if he wasn’t working for Grossbank, could probably get a job with Mike Moss. I’m flying from Northolt because I’m taking a smoker – a private jet – so as to avoid the pressures and delays of public transport, and because it affords me the privacy to work on sensitive things during the flight. The sensitive thing I’ll be working on during this flight is twenty-two years old and used to be an air hostess with one of the major airlines, before switching to private aviation. The bank pays a thousand pounds a trip for her to take care of me. She serves drinks and snacks during the flight, and makes sure my newspapers are on board. Anything else is a private matter between consenting adults. Honestly.

  Today I’m feeling particularly pleased with myself, even by my standards. Last night I had a major coup. Wendy and I are hardly speaking since I moved out of the flat in Sloane Square and she moved in. I’m living in a large house in Holland Park, which is still in chaos while an interior designer gives it a total revamp, chooses furniture, art, books, sculptures, etc – everything a tasteful, cultured, well-rounded, successful investment banker would wish for at a certain stage in his life, but couldn’t possibly find time to buy for himself.

  In the meantime Wendy is getting hate mail, packages of human excrement, and even a pretend bomb from the AFF and associated nutters – all addressed to me, and all arriving at the flat. She thinks I did it on purpose. At the same time, the flat is bursting with presents I’ve sent round for Samantha, and Wendy is seething that my financial fortunes have improved so dramatically since joining Grossbank – and only after we signed our final settlement.

  The only cloud on the horizon is Sally Mills. How any woman could be saved by a hero in single combat, taken by him to hospital, sent flowers by him, and then simply disappear off the radar screen, after he had put his neck on the line to save her brother’s business, is quite beyond me. When I make enquiries, I’m astonished to learn that Trevor the teacher has quit East Hampton Comprehensive and the family have moved – not even waiting till the end of term – to Scotland. What’s going on? I have visions of flying in to a lonely Scottish farm in my Grossbank corporate helicopter, playing the Ride of the Valkyries over loudspeakers, and rescuing my beloved from imprisonment in the cold and clammy North.

  In the meantime, and just so you know I’m not pining too hard, I’m getting through hookers at the rate of one or two a night.

  So back to my coup. I haven’t seen Samantha all year, but it’s Easter and her new school in Belgravia has organised an Easter play, where we can all sit and coo at our little beloveds as they scamper around on stage in fancy dress and fluff their lines.

  When it comes to parenting, mine is the ultimate outsourcing generation. We hire private obstetricians to make neat little cuts in our wives to take the pain out of pushing, maternity nurses to take away the sleepless nights, nannies and maids to take away the everyday drudge, kindergartens and private tutors so we don’t have to read or spell or do adding up with our kids, and instructors to
teach them everything from swimming and sport to dancing and drawing, all of which is terribly important, and none of which we could possibly do ourselves.

  But the one thing we can’t delegate is attending school functions. We fight to get our kids places at the most exclusive schools – because it shows how much we love them – and once we get them in, there’s major kudos to be had from showing up at events. The bigger the swinging dick of a husband, the greater the New Age brownie points to be had from showing up to gaze adoringly as little Nathan and little Susie play two of the six snowflakes present at the birth of Christ in the school Nativity play, or in my case, Samantha plays an Easter bunny.

  The problem is, school functions are an intense form of competitive sport, and without a team – in my case a wife – you can’t win. It all begins way ahead of the official start time for the event, when the pushiest mothers – the fathers are always still at work – show up to claim the best seats, right at the front, so that they can show little Nathan how much they adore him by swooning from the front row. They mark their territory with coats and bags and then disappear to form a gossipy cabal in some trendy wine bar round the corner. Naturally, they are all fully war-painted, dressed to kill, finest jewellery, hair freshly done, mani/pedi and waxing taken care of, and they scrutinise each other for the slightest flaw or weakness. The guys show up much later, stressed out with whatever they’ve escaped from at work, no time to shave or freshen up, still in their work clothes, and usually still on the mobile when they arrive to take the places their wives have saved for them.

  Wendy and I used to be a great team, but I know she won’t have kept me a seat, and it’s not my style to sit at the back and look like a loser.

  Fortunately, I have Tom. Tom’s a fixer, a multi-talented man who can deal equally well with weirdos and nutters from the AFF or the PTA. Tom visits the school the night before the play, slips the caretaker a lazy fifty, and gives him a pile of coats, jackets, hats and gloves, all freshly acquired from the hospice shop on Sloane Avenue. When the ÜberMums appear on the night, two hours before the play is due to start, they are shocked to discover the entire front row taken.

  The best is yet to come. I arrive bang on time, with the hall full, walk to the front, ignoring Wendy, who’s in row three, lift a coat from one of the front seats and drop it on the floor in front of me. Then I sit down, lean back, cross my legs and relax, ignoring the tutting and muttering from behind me, the nudges and whispered comments that they hope there won’t be a scene when the owner of the coat arrives.

  It gets even better. Just as the play is about to start, there’s a buzz of conversation from the back of the hall, and heads start turning. It’s Two Livers and the turbobabes. Two Livers has been hoovering up all the talent she can find from any of the major investment banks, to form the first female-dominated corporate finance department in the City. She arrives looking like a million dollars – courtesy of Manolo Blahnik, Prada and Versace, followed by dark-haired Nicky from Toronto – twentynine years old, Harvard MBA, wearing Dolce and Gabbana with jewellery by Bulgari; fair-haired Sabine – twenty-eight years old from Italy, INSEAD MBA wearing Donna Karan with accessories by Mappin and Webb and a two-tone gold pendant from Kiki McDonough; Connie from Cologne – twenty-six years old, Chicago MBA wearing Armani with jewellery by Van Cleef and Arpels; and Marie-France from Nice – twenty-eight years old, Price Waterhouse trained accountant, wearing Dolce and Gabbana, with diamonds by Graff.

  I could have brought hookers, but these girls are even better. In the City they’re starting to be known as ‘Hart’s Angels’. If you think it’s amazing what a thousand pounds can buy by way of female company, try a million. Or two.

  Two Livers has told them I’m going to be hung out to dry tonight by the ex-wife, and I’m too good a man for that, so here they all are. Every woman in the hall is wondering who the hell they are, and wishing they would die, but only after they first get fat. The turbo-babes ignore the women in the hall, and the only acknowledgement any of the men get is when Nicky nods to a corporate lawyer she recognises, who then has to explain to his wife sitting beside him that they work on merger and acquisition deals together.

  Two Livers and the babes greet me, paying homage with a kiss on both cheeks while I remain seated and acknowledge them with a nod, godfather-like, and then they similarly discard the clothing from their seats and join me in the front row.

  The very best of all happens half way through the performance. The girls and I are clapping Samantha, ensuring that anything she does is greeted with even more flashes from digital cameras than anyone else, when the Chairwoman of the PTA starts coughing. She’s seething in the second row, fuming that for the first time she doesn’t have an uninterrupted view of darling Abigail, when she has a serious coughing fit. Without asking, she grabs the small bottle of Evian that Two Livers has placed discreetly under her chair, and takes a long swig. Then she really starts coughing, goes red, starts gasping, eyes watering, mascara running, pointing to her throat, unable to speak, and is helped from the hall mid-performance by her unfortunate husband.

  There are drinks afterwards, at which I am surrounded by some of the most beautiful, glamorous women in London, all of whom have brains the size of planets. This is so far outside the normal social order, that most of the mothers retreat hissing to the corners, while the more adventurous husbands try to engage the babes in chitchat, rapidly backing off when they find themselves interrogated about why they haven’t made partner yet, or when their firm’s stock is going to start trading in line with their competitors. Nicky takes a call from New York, and Two Livers and Sabine are discussing a proposal for a Japanese private placement, and it’s all just so intimidating that Wendy leaves with Samantha without stopping by to say hello.

  MY TRIP TO Frankfurt coincides with Doktor Biedermann’s emergence from hiding, after what can only be described as a sustained campaign of terror and intimidation by the extreme wing of the German radical movement. They flour-bombed him when he was giving a talk to university students, threw paint bombs at his house in the suburbs of Frankfurt, and tipped pig swill over him on a visit to the opera. He has born it all stoically, living with police protection in a constant state of nervousness, reminded by his security advisers that he has to be lucky all the time, the bad guys only need to get lucky once.

  And what is it that kept him going when another man would have caved in to the pressure, resigned from the board and gone into hiding on a South Sea island?

  Me. Dave Hart. The man he loathes above all others. The man behind Grossbank’s extraordinary success – yes, success – in investment banking. As I take the elevator to the fifty-fourth floor, I wonder if the doors will open and he’ll be waiting for me with a machine-gun.

  Things would be going well for me if only I didn’t feel so constantly tired. I’ve been running on empty for so long that my brain feels permanently fuzzy. I’ve twice fallen asleep in meetings, and worse still, I’ve started falling asleep in bed, when I had quite different things in mind. My eyes seem to be shrinking back into the dark circles that surround them, I have a permanent cold and runny nose – probably because I am so run down – and nothing seems capable of lifting me for long.

  I feel desperately in need of a buzz, of something to raise my spirits and boost my energy levels again. Instead, I meet Doktor Biedermann in the corridor, muttering quietly to the fossils, while an uncomfortable Herman looks on, obviously the outsider.

  ‘Dave – how are you? Welcome to Frankfurt.’ At least he’s pleased to see me. Biedermann just scowls.

  I hand my coat to one of the All Germany Ladies Piano Throwing Team and we go into Biedermann’s office. His ‘Me Wall’ is gone, and instead there are vivid splashes of red paint all over the wall and the back of the door.

  ‘Doktor Biedermann, did you commission this?’

  One of the fossils chokes back a laugh. Probably the most excitement he’s had in decades. No wonder they like coming to my meetings.
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br />   ‘No. One of our junior employees did this. Someone who was… unduly influenced by things he read in the media.’ Oh. But there’s more. ‘I suppose you’ve heard the news from Gruenkraut?’

  Now both the fossils are trying not to laugh, but their shoulders are shaking and Biedermann has a nervous tic in his cheek. Herman is studying his fingernails.

  ‘Gruenkraut? You mean from…’ I search for the name, without success.

  ‘Jan Hagelmann, my nephew.’

  I snap my fingers. ‘Exactly. Jan – a great kid. No, I haven’t. How’s he doing?’

  ‘Very well. Your theory was correct. He has been very successful.’

  I feel sure it’s a wind-up, because there is no way that an arrogant little shit like Hagelmann could have found any new business opportunities in a village of seven hundred people.

  ‘Have you heard of a computer game called Spectres of the Night?’

  I start to wonder if the pressure has finally got to him.

  ‘Should I?’

  Well, you will, Mister Hart, believe me, you will.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘Because it was designed by a computer programmer in Gruenkraut. It’s a live, real-time fantasy computer game played each night by millions of people all over the world, and managed from a farmhouse in Gruenkraut. My nephew met the founder and creator on his first night there, and now they are charging the players ten Euros each month by subscription, and my nephew is to be Chief Executive with twenty-five per cent of the company, and they will float on the stock exchange in a few months’ time.’