Cobra in the Bath

by Miles Morland

  Until reading of the almost ethereal joy it gave you, I could not imagine how such a huge and powerful – and frightening – piece of machinery could become so compulsive as to rate second only to his young wife of less than two years. To me, it was a monster, a machine that seemed more likely to be master than mastered, so that one day standing alongside it outside this house, I banged my fist on its saddle, saying: ‘I hate this bloody thing, it’s a death trap’. Patiently, Paul said, as he had said often before: ‘No Dad, it’s not, it’s the most marvellous thing I’ve ever owned . . . I’m quite safe on it . . . I don’t take chances . . . I’ve had lots of experience and two Police courses . . . there’s nothing for you to worry about.’ He turned and put on his helmet, then looked at me over his shoulder: ‘Of course, Dad, none of us can handle a cowboy coming round a bend on the wrong side of the road.’

  Ten days later, at 11.18 at night on 2 August 1990, that is exactly what killed him. Coming off duty at Heathrow, a 20-year-old in a ten-year-old Capri, lost control on a bend in Clockhouse Lane, near Staines, hit the nearside kerb and, at about 50 mph, slewed across the road so that Paul could not avoid it, despite later investigation indicating that he had braked and was only doing 14½ mph. The BMW front wheel went into the car and killed the driver, the petrol tank exploded and the two dead boys were pulled out of the inferno by courageous passers-by before being burned.

  We, and his wife, know that he would never have given up his beloved BMW and that he was fully aware of risks, but to me – until I read your proud and happy piece of writing – it was incomprehensible that he should prefer it to their car. So, as I have said, your opening my eyes has provided a queer sort of solace, that my lovely son would prefer to die as he did than by the shotgun of a bandit – he had already won the High Commissioner’s Highest Award for Bravery for chasing and disarming a bank robber in the Strand in London, after being knocked to the ground and the gun placed at his head.

  So, thank you for writing it. I hope it gives you a sort of pride to know that, with my Son, you are part of a unique and perhaps-to-be-envied sect.

  Here’s wishing you happy and safe riding.

  Yours sincerely,

  David Freeman

  Miles Morland Esq.,

  c/o Sunday Telegraph,

  London

  21

  The Great Ghana Trade

  By 1992 Blakeney Management had outgrown the garden shed, and I needed to be in London to see my consulting clients. Shortly after the Walk, while we were moving to Norfolk, I had bought a houseboat on the Thames in Chelsea, the Rudyard Kipling, as a London pied-à-terre, or perhaps pied-à-l’eau.

  Sadly, the house in Blakeney had to go. Now that my business was starting to move forward we needed to be somewhere within an hour or so of London. In 1992 we sold Blakeney and moved to a creaking old house in a village in the Vale of the White Horse, between Wantage and Lambourn in Oxfordshire. The village sat at the foot of the downs, along the crest of which ran the Ridgeway, dating back to the Stone Age. This was horse country. Each village had a couple of trainers who would lead their strings of horses up every morning to where the springy chalk-grown turf on top of the downs made ideal training gallops.

  It was pretty, but I have never been a country person or a horse person. I like the sea. I missed Blakeney and left part of my soul there. Guislaine, who has never been as attached to the sea as I, liked our new country existence and soon settled in. I used to spend three or four nights a week in London on the houseboat doing Blakeney Management work; Guislaine, who had initially regarded the boat with detachment but had later become an enthusiastic, if nervous, boatie, would join me for half of that time and spend the rest happily lost in the country.

  I acquired a real office, the ground floor of a little building on the quay of the houseboat moorings, and Pips Wooderson came to work with me as my assistant. Life was as good as it could be. I loved scurrying around Africa and the Middle East talking to businessmen, politicians, journalists and stock-market people. There was still no one else doing it and I was regarded as a curiosity, but what fun I was having finding things out. I would have lunch from time to time with friends who still worked for big investment banks. The stories were the same: overwork, pressure, intrigue, politics, memos and meetings, arguments over bonuses, clumsy Americans showing the ignorant Europeans ‘how to do it’.

  How happy I was not to be part of that. Much of what I was now doing belonged more in the pages of Evelyn Waugh than in the City of London, nothing more so than the Great Ghana Trade of 1993. My best friend in West Africa was Ken Ofori-Atta, a charming and aristocratic Ashanti who had been to Yale, worked on Wall Street, and now, in his thirties, gone back to Ghana to found Databank, the first real investment bank in the country.

  Ken’s grandfather had been Nana Sir Ofori-Atta, the Okyenhene or King of the Akyem Abuakwa, a people who are kin to the Ashanti and acknowledge the overlordship of the Asantahene, the Ashanti king. Nana Sir Ofori-Atta had had 25 wives and 126 children. When he died in 1943 several of his pageboys went missing. The British authorities instituted an enquiry and found that they had been dispatched to accompany the Okyenhene into the afterworld, the tradition being that such a great man could not arrive unattended when he went to meet his ancestors. With blasphemous disregard for local custom the British authorities arrested three members of the family and hanged them for the murder of the boys.

  Ken was more interested in taking Ghana into the modern world than in burying pageboys. He knew everyone in Ghana and was generous in his introductions. In return I would sit in the office with him and Keli Gadzekpo, his partner, and give them advice on how to build an investment firm. On the office walls were pictures of his grandfather and of Malcolm X, the American black power leader.

  One day we drove to Kumasi, the Ashanti capital, a long and bumpy drive from Accra through the forest. On our way back, women jumped out of the forest like Italians with their baskets of porcini in autumn, and waved coconuts, tied in bunches of five or six and suspended on palm fronds threaded through their shells, at us.

  ‘Angie told me to buy some for dinner tonight,’ said Ken.

  He asked his driver to stop and stepped out of the car. I followed him. He stood there immaculate in his dark blue suit and Hermès tie, blue shirt with white collar, and gleaming shoes. Soon three or four women surrounded him thrusting their coconuts at him. The coconuts had funny pointy shells. Then I realised that they were moving around. These were no coconuts; they were the giant Ghanaian land snails I had heard about. They were the size of chickens. Ken bought a couple of bunches and threw them in the back of the Peugeot station wagon. We drove on. I was in the back seat. From time to time I would see snail horns and slug-like faces the size of tennis balls trying to climb over into my seat. I shuddered.

  ‘Jesus, Ken. How do you cook those?’

  ‘Miles, I’m not sure. I’ve never been in the kitchen. But they are delicious.’

  ‘I don’t mind the odd escargot but I’ll pass. Thank God you didn’t invite me to dinner at your house tonight. I really wouldn’t want to eat those.’

  Ken laughed. ‘Miles, what do you think you ate in the palm-nut soup last night.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The palm-nut soup had been thick and dark brown in colour. It was viscous and filled with fibrous matter. I resolved to feed Ken a kipper when he was next in London, possibly with jellied eels to follow.

  Ken introduced me to many important businessmen and politicians. One afternoon I had a meeting with Dr Kwesi Botchwey, who had been finance minister of Ghana for over ten years and was respected across the continent. I was ushered into his office, but Dr Botchwey did not look particularly pleased to see me. This was because Ken was associated with the Ashanti-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), which was in opposition to Dr Botchwey’s NDC. I was desperate to think of something that would make Dr Botchwey take me seriously. Ken had told me that Ghana was under strong pressure f
rom the World Bank to privatise and that Jim Wolfensohn, its president, was visiting Ghana in a few months’ time. If no progress had been made on privatisation by then it was possible that the World Bank would withdraw its support from Ghana.

  Ken and I were cooking up a scheme. We knew it could not work but it might at least get us noticed. He had told me that Dr Botchwey had been talking to S. G. Warburg, the respected British investment bank, about a scheme to sell off the government’s holdings in seven of the biggest companies on the Ghana Stock Exchange including Unilever Ghana and several of the banks.

  ‘Your Excellency,’ I said to Dr Botchwey, ‘I can help you with your plan to privatise the government’s stock-market holdings.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dr Botchwey looked at me suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, at present I understand you have mandated an international bank to do it. They will take many months to produce a prospectus, many more months to mount a marketing campaign, and finally, in maybe a year’s time, place the shares, for which they will charge you a fee of some 6 to 7 per cent. You will not get your money till next year.’

  ‘Mr Morland, I cannot comment on our plans. They are confidential.’

  ‘Well, Your Excellency, my firm, Blakeney, will do it for you both more quickly and more cheaply than Warburgs or whichever other advisers you are talking to. I know the people active in African markets better than the international banks because those people are consulting clients of Blakeney Management. Moreover, I will charge you nothing. Blakeney is paid by its clients.’

  Dr Botchwey looked out of the window, yawned, explored his right ear and then looked back at me.

  ‘What is this Blackney?’

  ‘Blakeney, Your Excellency, is a highly respected consulting firm known throughout the United States and Europe for its African research. Most of the biggest emerging-market investment institutions look to Blakeney for guidance on investing in Africa. I am its chief executive.’ I did not think it necessary to tell Dr B that I was also its only executive.

  ‘So what would this Blackney do and how long till the government receives its money?’

  As this whole exercise was fantasy, there was little risk in making a bold promise.

  ‘Your Excellency, we have consulting clients eager to invest in Ghana. From the time Blakeney receives your mandate, the firm will put its entire resources behind the initiative. I can promise you that it will take us less than a month to place the shares with our clients, at the end of which period you will receive your money at no cost to you.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Morland. Goodbye. I have another meeting.’

  Two weeks later I was back in London. The Ghana trip had been a success although Blakeney was still far from being taken seriously in Africa. The phone rang. It was a terrible line. Pips told me someone was calling from Ghana and put them through. Eventually I realised I was talking to Dr Botchwey’s deputy.

  ‘Mr Morland, you will remember what you said to Dr Botchwey about selling our holdings on the exchange. We have been in conversation with Mr Ofori-Atta following your meeting with the minister.’

  Now what?

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember well. It was an honour to meet the minister.’

  ‘Mr Morland, we accept your proposal. Mr Ofori-Atta will handle all matters in Ghana. All you need to do is to produce the buyers for the shares. You will remember that you informed Dr Botchwey that this would not be a problem and that your firm had clients eager to invest in Ghana.’

  ‘Um, yes, absolutely. Yes. It may take a little time. Maybe three months.’

  ‘No, Mr Morland, one month. The government needs to be paid in one month, as you promised Dr Botchwey.’

  ‘Of course, of course. No problem. I’ll get my people to work on it right away.’ I hung up. ‘Jesus Christ . . .’

  Pips looked at me.

  ‘Miles, are you all right? You look as if you’d just had a shock. Would you like a glass of water?’

  I had done some research on the shares the government wished to sell. They constituted 25 per cent of the value of the entire Ghana stock exchange. To the best of my knowledge no one had ever placed more than about 5 per cent of the value of a stock exchange in one go. Also and again to the best of my knowledge, no foreign institution had up to now ever bought a single share on the Ghanaian exchange. Yes, I had just had a shock.

  Fortunately, after a previous visit to Ghana I had written a seventy-page report on the companies listed on the exchange saying how cheap they were. I had sent this to my consulting clients and it had elicited a couple of questions and some mild interest. No one had asked me how they might go about actually buying some of these bargains, and if they had the liquidity on the exchange was so poor that their chances of putting much money to work were small.

  Now everything was different. The world-famous firm of Blakeney Management with its one-room office on a quay in Chelsea had a mandate to sell a quarter of the entire exchange. Although the value of this package of shares was tiny by international standards, about $50 million, it would provide enough liquidity to float a battleship.

  I called Ken.

  ‘Hi, guy,’ he said. ‘Did the deputy minister call you? Isn’t it great? Your pitch went over so well.’ I had omitted to tell Ken that my pitch was only vaguely rooted in reality.

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s great. May take a bit of work though.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Miles. We’ll handle this end of it. For reasons of transparency they want the trade to go through the exchange. The government will be the seller and your clients will be the buyers. We’ve just joined the exchange so this will be our first trade. We’ll get on with setting up the Ghana end. All you need to do is give us the identity of the buyers.’

  Simple really. I had one possibility. One of my clients was a powerful and aggressive New York hedge fund. Let’s call them Stone Partners. I didn’t talk to Micky Stone himself but to Jack, one of his associates, who was in charge of exotic markets. I needed a lead buyer and Stone could be it. Two days later I was in New York in Jack’s office.

  I explained that I had a unique mandate from the government of Ghana to sell a package of ridiculously cheaply valued shares. ‘Jack, I’ve had a lot of interest in these shares from my other clients. There’s big demand out there for the new markets, and Ghana is as cheap as it gets.’

  Jack had a copy of my report on his desk. I saw it had been well thumbed and annotated. Stone liked doing things that were off the map. They prided themselves on doing big macho trades and loved doing things that other people didn’t dare to.

  ‘Miles, I’ve been to see Micky. I showed him the report. Micky’s hot for frontier markets. We’ve had a great run in the large markets and he thinks the crap is gonna get off the floor and start dancing. We like this trade. Tell you what. I’m going to jump on the plane to wherever you fly to in Ghana, check it out, see some of the companies, talk to your Ghanaian broker buddy, and if we still like the trade when I get back, we’ll do it.’

  I resisted the temptation to jump over the desk and hug Jack. I tried to look cool and uninterested.

  ‘Well, OK. But as I say we’ve seen a lot of interest in this trade. If you decided you wanted to do it after your visit, how much of the $50 million would you want to do? You’d have to take a share of the whole package. I’m afraid we couldn’t allow you to cherry-pick the shares you liked best.’

  ‘Mate –’ Jack was Australian ‘– we don’t piss about. We’ll take the whole lot. Don’t want other people muscling in on the trade.’

  ‘Hmm, OK, Jack. Lemme think about that. The Ghanaians are keen on spreading the shares among a number of different buyers – but, hey, I think we might be able to make this work.’

  ‘Too right, mate – you’re gonna make it work. But look, no worries, if we do the trade it’ll be split among five or six of our accounts. It’ll look like five different buyers. That should satisfy your Ghanaian buddies.’

  I was now in a tricky position. I had other c
lients I was due to see in New York and needed a fallback in case Stone decided not to do the trade, but I didn’t want to excite people too much and then tell them they couldn’t take part. Luckily my other clients were generally more measured and careful. I went to see them, got some polite interest but found no one who was ready to commit. They asked to be kept in touch.

  A week later Jack made his trip to Accra. I had asked Ken to take good care of him, but there had been some misunderstandings. Jack was accustomed to being treated like a deity when he arrived in an emerging market. He expected to be met at the airport and glad-handed throughout his stay. He had taken his wife along with him to ‘show her Africa’, to which neither of them had ever been. Ken, on the other hand, was an aristocratic Ashanti who was delighted to take Jack around to see the companies, but it had never occurred to him that he was meant to be Jack’s butler.

  Despite Jack’s annoyance at the lack of limos at the airport and the fact that he and his wife were expected to make their own plans for dinner, the trip was a success from a business point of view. Ken phoned and told me that Jack wanted to go ahead with the trade. We now had the mechanics of the trade to set up. Someone needed to arrange for the transfer of $50 million to Ghana and simultaneously take custody of the shares released by the government. Stone had a close relationship with Salomon Brothers – Solly as they were universally known – the firm made famous in Michael Lewis’s book Liar’s Poker. Solly were not the biggest investment bank but they were certainly the toughest and most aggressive. They went where others didn’t dare.

  Jack, after a quick moan about how he had not been looked after the way he expected, said he was ready to do the trade and suggested using Solly to set it up and do the custody. I was delighted because my ignorance of the mechanics of such an unusual deal was complete.

  ‘Sure, Jack. Great idea. Do you want me to talk to them?’