Paul Murray: The Mark and the Void

‘Are you joking? It’s perfect.’

We push through the double doors.

‘So many people,’ Paul marvels.

‘Yes, the spectacle can be a little overwhelming,’ I agree. The plaza is a sea of suits and twinsets, identically dressed men and women milling about like the CGI crowd in some blockbusting movie, there to portray the mundane reality that will be shattered when Godzilla’s foot comes down; although as the companies this particular crowd spends its days working for constitute some of the most powerful forces in the world, it’s perhaps closer to the truth to say that we are Godzilla. This seems to me a rather clever thought; I try to think of some way of introducing it into the conversation. ‘Have you seen the film Godzilla ?’ I ask.

‘No,’ Paul says.

Of course he hasn’t! He is an artist! Why would he waste his time with such pabulum?

‘Why do you ask?’ he says.

‘The lunchtime crowd here sometimes reminds me of Godzilla,’ I say.

‘Oh,’ Paul says. The red notebook remains in his pocket.

Jurgen, Ish and Kevin are already in the Ark.

‘You come here a lot,’ Paul observes, taking his seat.

‘It’s the only restaurant in the whole Centre you can get freshly prepared organic food,’ Ish says.

‘That’s why it’s usually empty,’ Kevin says. ‘That, and the art.’ He points to the canvas that hangs over our table, an enormous abstract that loosely resembles a crossword puzzle having sex with a pie chart.

‘Simulacrum 12 ,’ Paul reads from the label underneath. ‘Ariadne Acheiropoietos — wow, what a name. You’d hardly need to actually paint at all with a name like that, it’s like an artwork in itself.’

‘I wouldn’t call that painting anyway,’ Kevin says.

‘Right, and you’d know,’ Ish says.

‘Simulacrum 40 ,’ Paul reads from the label of the painting at the next table, then leans back to squint at the adjacent alcove. ‘ Simulacrum 59 — are they all called Simulacrum ? What’s that about?’

‘Obviously the work of someone with mental health issues,’ Kevin says. ‘Probably all the organic food. You can’t eat that much quinoa and stay normal.’

There is a small throat-clearing noise: we look up to see the waitress has materialized at the table.

It’s the same girl who served Paul and me on Friday, dark-haired, olive-skinned, rangy without quite being tall. ‘Ready to order?’

‘I’ll have the quinoa,’ Ish says. ‘And so will he,’ she adds, pointing to Kevin.

When the waitress has gone, Jurgen asks Paul if he is getting good material.

‘I’m still finding my feet,’ Paul says. ‘It’ll take a few days, I suppose.’

‘The world of banking is full of complexity,’ Jurgen agrees. ‘But once you have understood the basics, you will find a story as exciting as any thriller. Look at Bank of Torabundo. Three years ago we were the little minnows. Now we have become the big fish on the block.’

‘I read something about that,’ Paul says. ‘What happened?’

‘A lot of our competitors were badly damaged by the financial crisis. Some collapsed entirely; others, judged too big to be allowed to fail, were given huge government bailouts. But BOT came through it untouched.’

‘How come?’

‘We managed to avoid exposure to toxic investments. Our CEO at the time was deeply suspicious of complex derivatives, and forbade us to take big positions in those markets.’

‘Or property,’ Ish said. ‘He didn’t like the look of the global property market, so that’s another bullet we dodged.’

‘The result, anyway, is that the bank has been, as one might say, “punching above its weight”.’

‘You must be pretty grateful to your CEO,’ Paul says.

‘Yes,’ Jurgen says. ‘Although he has just been fired.’

Paul looks surprised. ‘Fired?’

‘Yes, his conservative stance cost the bank a lot of investors.’

‘Even though he was right?’

‘There is a happy medium,’ Jurgen says.

‘Between right and wrong?’

‘Sir Colin’s a smart guy,’ Kevin says, ‘but definitely on the cautious side.’

‘In some ways he belonged to an earlier era of banking,’ Jurgen concurs. ‘It is true that his sceptical attitude saved BOT from financial catastrophe. But once we had survived, the board felt a more audacious leader was needed in order to press home our advantage. The new chief executive was appointed only a few days ago. His name is Porter Blankly.’

Even speaking his name seems to quicken the atmosphere; our eyes glitter, as if we were sharing some magical secret.

‘Sounds familiar,’ Paul says, frowning.

‘He is quite a celebrated figure,’ Jurgen says. ‘He joined BOT from Danforth Blaue, which you may remember was one of the biggest casualties of the crash.’

‘It needed a fifty-billion rescue package from the US government,’ Kevin chips in eagerly. ‘Then it was bought for a dollar by Takahashi Group.’

‘This is the guy you made your new CEO?’ Paul appears confused. ‘Isn’t that like pulling the captain of the Titanic out of the water and asking him to skipper your catamaran?’

‘He has proved he is a man not afraid to take chances,’ Jurgen says seriously. ‘Sir Colin was very much a traditionalist. He had the classic view of the merchant or investment bank as a go-between, bringing together companies and investors for a fee. But in recent years, many investment banks have begun trading for themselves. That is, instead of just acting in their customers’ interests, they also bet on the market with their own money using complicated financial instruments called derivatives.’

‘A derivative is a contract derived from an underlying asset,’ I explain, seeing Paul’s look of bewilderment. ‘An asset being something you own — your house, your car, and so on. Instead of buying or selling the asset itself, a derivative allows you to do other kinds of deals based on it.

‘For example, one simple kind of derivative is an option . This is a contract that gives me the right, but not the obligation, to buy something from you for an agreed price at an agreed date in the future. I am calculating that when that date comes, the price will be more than our agreed price.’

‘Isn’t that just a bet?’ Paul says uncertainly.

‘If you do it in the bookie’s, it’s a bet,’ Ish says. ‘If you pay some 23-year-old in an Armani suit two hundred grand to go to the window for you, it’s a derivative.’

‘Because there is no limit to how often derivatives can be sold back and forth, the market for them is astronomically bigger than the market for actual things. In fact, no one knows how big it is.’

‘And these derivatives are what your Sir Colin didn’t like the look of?’

‘Exactly. Wall Street banks were using instruments so complex that almost nobody understood how they actually worked. When their bets turned bad, they lost literally trillions of dollars. Sir Colin’s instincts were on that occasion proved right. However, the BOT board …’

‘… wants to give it another shot,’ Paul concludes, with a smile.

‘There is a feeling that things are different this time,’ Jurgen says.

‘Our share price has jumped three points since the news came out about Blankly,’ Kevin says. ‘A lot of people in the office are talking about buying in now. Take out a loan, even; if the price keeps going up at this rate, you’d make it back in a couple of months.’

‘Perhaps it is Fate that has brought you here at this time,’ Jurgen tells Paul. ‘To capture the bank at the moment of its metamorphosis from minor player into unstoppable banking force.’