Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

A lot has happened since 2005 when this book was first published independently with a print run of five hundred copies. I’ve met many people who’ve accompanied and supported me along the way. I’d like to thank several of them here: First of all, my parents Dr. Bernward and Carola Löwenberg, my sisters Claudia Cohen and Camilla Altvater, and my brother-in-law Bruno Cohen, who translated this book into French—just for fun! Thanks also go to my agent, Andrea Wildgruber, and her colleagues from the Agence Hoffman literary agency in Munich. Special thanks to Susanne Hecker, who made particularly great contributions to this book. Susanne, you are simply wonderful! Thank you to Catherine Hackl for her work on reading the translated manuscript. And thank you to Gabriella Page-Fort, Declan Spring, and the entire team at AmazonCrossing—thanks to you all, my dream of bringing Swimming with Sharks to America has come true.

My biggest thanks go to my partner, Matthias Knöß. I’d only be half of what I am without you. I love you.

Vincent Levy was lost in thought. He stared out the window of his office on the LMI Building’s thirtieth floor. On this somber Friday afternoon, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was barely visible to the east. The Statue of Liberty raised her arm, and boats cruising New York Harbor drew white, foamy stripes in the churned-up black water. Snowflakes whirled through the air, and an icy east wind whistled around the glass facades of the skyscrapers. Vincent, in his early fifties, was already the fourth Levy in the firm. His great-great-uncle had founded the bank Levy & Villiers in 1902. Thanks to a prudent and conservative strategy, the firm had managed to safely navigate nearly a century’s worth of storms and scandals in the financial world. But unlike his predecessors, Vincent Levy wasn’t satisfied with simply leading a prestigious private bank. He started transforming the venerable private bank into a major investment bank during the mid-1980s, making the Levy & Villiers bank into the holding company of Levy Manhattan Investments. With a strong financial partner offering the possibility of becoming a global financial giant, Levy acquired competitors. He invested millions in computer technology and involved LMI in every important financial center of the world. Levy wasn’t afraid of spectacular innovations. In fifteen years, Levy—with strategic skill, vision, and well-camouflaged ruthlessness—had successfully turned LMI into an investment bank with more than two thousand employees worldwide. Every department had a strong leader who knew how to get the best out of its employees, whether trading in foreign bonds, derivatives, securities, OTC, syndicated loans, index and risk arbitrage, futures, or private equity. LMI’s reputation grew, with brokers on the NYSE trading floor and about two hundred traders on LMI’s fourteenth floor generating enormous revenues and profits.

Although LMI was a major market player in many areas, Levy had failed to recruit a real rainmaker in the one that was dearest to his heart. Other players on Wall Street were pulling the strings in the field of mergers and acquisitions. Incredible amounts of money were flowing into people’s pockets, sidestepping LMI in the current M&A boom—an almost unbearable situation! But this would soon change. The previous night he had heard that Alexandra Sontheim—the brightest star in Wall Street’s M&A sky—had quit Morgan Stanley and was looking for a new job. Someone knocked on the door, and Levy’s gaze turned from the harbor.

“Hello, St. John,” he said to his visitor, and sat down behind his desk. “Have a seat.”

“What’s new, Vince?” Zachary St. John asked in the disrespectful way that always annoyed Levy. He glanced disapprovingly at his head of M&A, which, unfortunately, had no effect. St. John wasn’t necessarily an ace when it came to his job, but he definitely knew everyone on Wall Street. Since joining LMI roughly nine years ago from Franklin Myers and Drexel Burnham Lambert, he had connected with almost every member of upper management at LMI. Levy didn’t like St. John because he was a glib, money-hungry opportunist, but his contacts were extremely valuable.

“As you know,” Levy began, “I have long wished for LMI to gain prominence in the area of M&A. Yesterday, I was told by well-informed sources that Alex Sontheim left Morgan Stanley after a disagreement.”

He paused briefly to see St. John’s reaction, but the latter appeared not to be impressed by his boss’s sensational insider knowledge.

“I already knew that.” St. John smiled smugly. “It was obvious she wouldn’t stay at Morgan Stanley much longer, because she was tired of playing second fiddle to van Sand, that moron. And after he foiled her TexOil deal three days ago, she put the gun to Neil Sadler’s head.”

“Oh really?” Levy wasn’t surprised that St. John was already familiar with some of the details.

“What else do you know about her?”

St. John leaned back and stretched his legs. He had just returned from a two-day business trip to the Bahamas. He had a deep tan. His short, reddish-blond hair was slicked back meticulously and had its usual perfect shine.

“Alex Sontheim,” he said, “is from Germany. She is thirty-five and single, studied at the European Business School, and received a full scholarship to Stanford. She graduated at the top of her MBA class. She rose to the top in the Goldman Sachs associate program, and she could have easily stayed there. Any corporation would have loved to hire her, but she accepted the lowest-paying job at a brokerage called Global Equity Trust, working as a fund manager. After two years, she switched to Franklin Myers and did futures, derivatives, and a little M&A there. Then she went to Morgan Stanley, where she’s been working exclusively in M&A for the past eight years. By now, everyone knows how good she is at her job.”

Levy nodded with a thin smile. Alex Sontheim was the star in the field, and hardly any deal eluded her. Recruiting her to his firm would be a dream come true.

“She’s ambitious and ruthless,” St. John continued, “and that’s why things came to a head between her and van Sand. Of course, everyone in the city knows that she makes the major deals, but Douglas is the big boss’s son-in-law. She’ll never get his job, and Alex isn’t the type of woman who is content with second place.”

Levy observed St. John with an expressionless face, but his brain was in high gear. He could already envision the headline of the Wall Street Journal : “Alex Sontheim Joins LMI…”

“Does she have any skeletons in her closet?” he asked.

“Not that I know of.” St. John shook his head. “No alcohol-abusing ex-husband, no children out of wedlock, no previous convictions, no rumors. This woman lives for her work. She is clever and tough as nails.”

“Why do you know so much about her, Zack?” Levy asked.

“Apart from the fact that I know a lot about most people in our industry,” St. John said with a grin, his tone even more smug than before, “Alex and I were colleagues at Franklin Myers. I know her pretty well.” He enjoyed playing Mr. Know-It-All. Levy squinted and observed him closely.