Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

As if on a signal from my arrival, Ricardo cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure you all read the article in last week’s IFR,’ he began. ‘The content of the article itself doesn’t concern me, it was obviously rubbish, and a gross insult to Martin and his family. What does concern me was that one of us spoke to a journalist, and gave him information that was highly detrimental to the firm. This person has been fired.’

There was a murmur from the gathering. Everyone looked round at everyone else to see who was missing. Quickly, the murmurs took shape into a recognizable word. Dave. Dave! Why had he done it? What had he said?

‘This person will not only not work for Dekker again, but he will also not work in the bond markets,’ Ricardo continued in a clear voice. ‘He has breached the confidentiality agreement you all signed as part of your contract when you joined Dekker Ward. As a result he has lost all of his interest in the employee trusts. He has been warned not to talk to the press any further. The market will be told that he made large trading losses, and that he covered them up. I expect all of you to back this up if asked.’

We were all silent now. Dave was a popular member of the team. The mood of the room felt finely balanced between sadness at his dismissal and shock that he had betrayed the rest of us.

‘Some of you may think this treatment is harsh. But we’re all a team here. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. There are many people out there who don’t like Dekker and what it has achieved. Together we can win. But if any one of us betrays the others, as this man has, then we’re all vulnerable. I will not allow that to happen.’

Ricardo glanced round the room. His eyes, which were usually so cool, were angry now. But even his anger drew us in. We were all angry.

The meeting broke up, and we exchanged glances. Many eyes rested on the empty desk where Dave had worked. Alberto, the sixty-year-old ‘coffee boy’, was putting his belongings into a couple of boxes. Under Ricardo’s stern gaze, we returned to our desks and picked up phones, but over the course of the morning the room buzzed with speculation.

And so did the outside world. Word had already gone round the market that Dave was one of that most dangerous of animals, a trader who not only made losses but lied about them. The rumour echoed back into the Dekker trading room, where to my surprise it was confirmed. Even Jamie told Chris Frewer it was true.

‘Why did you do that?’ I asked him, shocked. ‘Couldn’t you just say you don’t know why he left?’

Jamie sighed. ‘In these situations you have to follow the party line. Ricardo will be watching. This is a test of loyalty for all of us. And he’s right. We’ll only succeed if we stick together.’

I listened in mounting disgust to what was happening around me. The initial shock and sadness at the loss of a friend was already changing, as Dave’s character was rewritten. Just as the Dekker machine could persuade itself that a lousy bond issue was the investment opportunity of the year, so they came to believe that Dave was an incompetent fraud. They did it with determination and purpose, and without looking each other in the eye.

I watched, stunned. I had no idea whether Dave was a good or bad trader, but I knew that he was not what these people were portraying.

The man leaning against the bar lifting his second pint of bitter to his lips seemed very different from the boy I had known at Oxford. First he was a man. He had a grown-up suit and briefcase, but then so had Jamie and I, and that didn’t mean anything. But he also had a receding hairline poorly hidden with wisps of blond hair, a wife and baby, and a way of talking that made him sound closer to forty than twenty.

Stephen Troughton had studied PPE with us. He had always been precocious, capable of discussing knowledgeably mortgage rates, house prices and unit trusts, when the rest of us would have nothing to do with such bourgeois concerns. He had talked his way into the City with no difficulty, and had been one of the lucky few that Bloomfleld Weiss had plucked from British universities during the 1988 milk-round. He had taken to Bloomfield Weiss like a duck to water, and had done very well. Even though he was the same age as Jamie and me, he looked thirty-five at least, and used this to his advantage. Stephen Troughton had gone far.

Jamie saw him once or twice a year for a drink, to ‘catch up’. I had tagged along this time, even though I hadn’t seen Stephen since university. We were in an old pub in a mews in Knightsbridge, touristed by day, besuited in the evening.

I was beginning to realize that ‘catching up’ meant comparing careers. I watched them at it.

‘Did you hear about that big Brady trade we did last week?’ asked Jamie, at the first opportunity.

Stephen laughed. ‘Oh, that, yes. We were just dipping our toe in the water.’

‘Got a bit wet, didn’t you?’

‘A little, but we can take it. We’re the biggest trading house in the world. That kind of loss just gets hidden in one day’s profits.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Stephen. He lowered his voice, as though he were about to impart something of great importance. ‘You’d better watch yourselves, Jamie. Bloomfield Weiss are serious about the emerging markets. And when we get serious about a market we tend to make our mark. Don’t get me wrong, Dekker are a clever little firm, but when a market matures, then it’s only natural that the big boys will take over.’

Stephen said this in a tone full of fake reasonableness designed to irritate Jamie. It succeeded. He rose to the bait. ‘And there’s that big Mexican mandate that you lost,’ he said. ‘That must have been a bit of a blow.’

‘We do those kinds of deals every day for the likes of the World Development Fund. It won’t be long before we’re doing them for Mexico as well.’

Jamie snorted.

‘So, tell me about this trader you sacked,’ Stephen said. ‘Dave Dunne, wasn’t it? He must have lost you a packet.’

Jamie shrugged.

‘He asked for a job at Bloomfield Weiss,’ Stephen went on. ‘We didn’t give him one, of course. We can’t be seen taking Dekker cast-offs.’

‘He was a good trader,’ I said. It was my first foray into the conversation. Jamie threw me a warning glance.

Stephen ignored my comment as though it had no validity, given my short experience. Which was, of course, true. But I had drawn attention to myself.

‘Well, I never would have imagined you in the City,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I need the money.’

‘Fair enough. And I suppose Dekker wanted your Russian expertise?’

‘That’s right. Although Ricardo wants me to see how they operate in South America first.’

‘Russia’s a huge growth area for us at the moment. We picked up your Russian team, of course.’ Stephen shot a glance at Jamie when he said this. Touché. ‘Actually, that’s something I’m curious about,’ he went on. ‘A couple of them are suddenly having problems with their visas. Ricardo doesn’t have anything to do with that, does he?’

Jamie spluttered into his beer.

‘So he does?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jamie. ‘But serves ’em right, that’s what I say.’

Stephen raised his eyebrows and turned to me again. ‘Tell me, Nick, what’s this guy Ricardo Ross really like?’

This was the question I had been asking myself ever since the first time I met him. I decided to give Stephen a straight answer. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘He has quite a reputation. All this stuff about being “The Marketmaker” and everything. Is he that good?’

‘Oh, he’s good. And he does treat the market as if he owns it. That’s why he’s so pissed off about you guys muscling in. He has great judgement. He always seems to know exactly what to do when things get tough. Don’t you think?’ I turned to Jamie, who was watching me closely.