Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

Stahl introduced me as ‘the kid I was telling you about’. The bankers’ names were Schwartz and Godfrey. We hurried across the paved squares in the centre of Broadgate to a cab that was waiting for us on one of the side-streets that adjoined the complex. Dekker Ward’s office was in a small street just behind the Bank of England. It took us fifteen minutes to crawl there through the City traffic. It would have taken five minutes to walk.

Of course, I had never been to Dekker’s City office before. It was where the traditional, non-Ricardo business of the firm was carried out: trading in British and ex-colonial stocks, some private client business, a small fund-management group, and corporate finance. At least, that’s what I thought went on there. Sitting high up in the air three miles away in Canary Wharf, Ricardo’s team neither knew nor cared much what anyone else at Dekker did.

The façade was an elegant Georgian four-storey building, painted light grey. We walked into what could have been the entrance hall of a country house. The man at the reception desk was more like a butler than a security guard. After having our credentials respectfully taken, we were ushered into a lift and led into a boardroom one floor up. There, an assortment of Victorian financiers stared down at a long, polished table. I wandered over to look at the names. There was a Dekker, and a Ward, but most of them were Kertons.

Stahl, too, looked closely round the room. I could tell he liked it. He liked it a lot. ‘Hey, Dwight, do you think we could fix up the thirty-eighth floor like this?’

I glanced at the two bankers and only just managed to suppress a smile.

‘I dunno, Sidney,’ said the one called Dwight. ‘We’d need some old photos of your folks. I’m sure we could find an artist to add the necessary touches.’

Stahl laughed. ‘I’d get them to put up my old grandma. You know she was a matchmaker? One of those babushkas who arranged marriages? Boy, did she know how to create a deal out of nowhere.’

Just then the door opened, and Lord Kerton strode in. With his tall frame, longish fair hair and his elegant suit, he was all poise and self-assurance. ‘Morning,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Andrew Kerton.’

Stahl shook it. ‘Sidney Stahl. This is Dwight Godfrey and Jerry Schwartz. And Nick Elliot I believe you know.’

‘Actually, I don’t think I do,’ he said, but he shook my hand and smiled in a friendly way.

Stahl glanced at me strangely. ‘Nick used to work for Dekker Ward until recently.’

Kerton frowned.

‘In the Emerging Markets Group,’ I added quickly. ‘We did meet once.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I do know many of the people over there but I couldn’t quite place you. Jumped ship, have you?’

‘You could say that, sir.’

Kerton’s cool blue eyes studied me for a moment, and then he turned back to Stahl. ‘Have a seat, gentlemen.’ There was a knock on the door and a butler-type man brought in coffee. ‘As you requested, I’m here alone. I haven’t told anyone else in the firm about your visit, but I must admit I’m curious to know what it’s about.’

‘OK Mr... er...’ Stahl hesitated, caught uncharacteristically off-guard. ‘Andy OK?’ he said.

Kerton smiled. ‘Andy’s fine, Sid.’ I caught Dwight Godfrey stiffening a touch. I suspected Stahl preferred Sidney to Sid.

‘OK, Andy. It’s real simple. We’d like to make an offer for your company.’

Kerton leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m flattered,’ he said, looking it. ‘But Dekker Ward is growing very strongly, and we expect this growth to continue. I don’t think we’re too keen to sell at the moment.’

‘OK,’ said Stahl, and waited.

‘All right,’ Kerton said, a pleased smile on his face. ‘You’ve intrigued me. What price were you thinking of?’

‘Ten million pounds.’

Kerton snorted. ‘Ten million! That’s absurd. I’m sure you’ve discovered we keep our results confidential, but our annual profits are substantially more than that. In fact our monthly profits are several times that.’

‘Oh, we know,’ said Stahl, fixing Kerton with his brown eyes. ‘The thing is, we know you got a problem down there with your emerging-market guys. But we don’t know whether you know how big a problem it is.’

This had caught Kerton’s attention. ‘You’re referring, I take it, to the deal we launched last month for Mexico?’

‘That, and some other things.’

‘Well, the deal wasn’t a success. It suffered from unfortunate timing. But when you dominate a market like we do, you have to take the rough with the smooth. I can assure you we can handle it. Look, if you want to talk emerging markets, perhaps I ought to get hold of Ricardo Ross.’ He reached towards a telephone.

‘No, don’t do that, Andy,’ Stahl said. ‘There’s more. Nick?’

‘Well, sir, I understand that Ricardo has bought four billion dollars of Mexican bonds, and two billion of debt from other Latin American borrowers. As you know, the market has fallen sharply in the last two weeks. My understanding is that Dekker’s losses are more than one and a half billion dollars.’

Kerton didn’t respond at first. His expression switched from polite attention to hostility. Of course he didn’t know this. And he felt a fool for not knowing. He was cornered. He lashed out. ‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’ he said to me. ‘Did we fire you or something?’

‘I resigned before you had the chance, sir.’

He turned back to Stahl. ‘I can’t see how you can possibly listen to this man. He obviously bears a grudge. He’s making it up.’

‘It kind of fits with what we’ve seen in the market, Andy,’ said Stahl. ‘I believe him.’

‘Well, I don’t. And I think you should leave. There is no need for me to respond to such allegations.’

Stahl stood up. ‘OK, Andy. We’re going. But check out what Nick here is saying. And we’ll be in touch to see if you change your mind. But do yourself a favour, OK? Don’t tell Ross about our little talk. At least, not till you know he isn’t hiding anything from you.’

Kerton showed us out of the building in icy silence.

Stahl called at lunch-time the next day. ‘Kerton wants to talk. He wants to come to our offices. Can you meet us at three?’

‘I’ll be there.’

It was tight, but I changed into a suit, bicycled to the station, got the train to London and the tube to Liverpool Street, and arrived at Bloomfield Weiss at two minutes to three. We met in a conference room: Kerton, Stahl, the two corporate financiers, and me. It was a much blander room than the one we had occupied at Dekker Ward, but there was a nice view of a giant iron phallus that looked as though it had been blown down in the wind. Kerton was there with someone he introduced as Giles Tilfourd from Tilfourd and Co., a corporate-finance boutique. It was promising that he had his own independent adviser. It suggested he expected discussions to lead somewhere.

‘OK, Andy,’ said Stahl. ‘Shoot.’

Kerton did well. He kept his cool. Although he seemed thoughtful, he didn’t look like a man who had just discovered that his shareholding, which he thought was worth several hundred million pounds, was now worth just five.

But it was.

‘Perhaps you could go through the details of your offer again...’

Negotiations proceeded quickly. They have to, in these situations. Any further deterioration in the market would make Dekker Ward worthless, worse than worthless. It would become a liability that even Bloomfield Weiss wouldn’t be able to handle. Stahl left London, but Godfrey and Schwartz stayed, and kept me informed. Kerton was careful to keep Ricardo out of it. He sent a trio of his own people down to Canary Wharf under the guise of an internal audit. This apparently aroused some disquiet in Ricardo, but no suspicions. He was confident he could run rings round any internal auditors.