MONEY TREE (3 page)

‘Survivor’s…? O
h, you mean the banking debacle. Maybe.’

‘Perfectly understandable, my dear.’ She smiled wickedly. ‘You people got away with murder. But why do you have to put your pretty little neck on the block? There’s other ways to get news out.’

Erin chewed for a minute. ‘You mean just leak it?’

‘Sure. Unleash the Fourth Estate. They
love snuffling around in mud.’

Sally’s eyes gleamed like she’d got her client’s spouse on the ropes
and was moving in for the kill. . .

Erin was thinking now that it had been good advice. But it would founder on the rocks of Ted Saddler’s scepticism and inertia unless she opened up some more. She did what she always did when challenged. She sat upright on her stool and hit him with disdain, a flash of the corporate executive.

‘Do you think that quote you got from
the GA analyst was just a happy coincidence?’

It struck home. A tiny bit of
Ted had been wondering about Burton Stacks. He worked for GA’s investment banking arm, a separate division, but same parent. Stacks had made an unsolicited call. Like this lady come to that. It sometimes happened. But ten years ago Ted would have phoned three or four analysts in other banks for independent corroboration. His annoyance with himself showed.

‘P
roves nothing. What about the World Bank. You’re not telling me they’re part of some global plot?’ 

‘You
think that’s a stretch? The collapse of global capitalism? The Middle East in flames? The polar ice-caps melting? The Cold War restarting? A Clinton or a Bush back in the White House? Is anything unbelievable any more?’

Ted
persisted ‘What have you got? And more to the point, why are you telling me this?’

‘Let’s grab that table.’

Erin pointed to a quiet spot outside of the bar girls’ hearing. She moved, sure Ted would follow. He admired her confident stride for a second or two then slid off his stool. They blended into the tableau of couples being intimate. She took a deep breath and told him about a meeting that took place just under a year ago at Global American’s head office. She was good at telling a story. He could see and hear the whole thing, as if he’d been there. But from the sound of it, he was glad he hadn’t.

T
he boardroom curtains slowly whirred shut, closing out the 48
th
floor panorama of skyscrapers, including the Freedom Tower framed by the grey-blue Hudson. Five people sat round a perfect oval of burnished American walnut studded with glowing tablets. One of the five held the seat of power at the apex facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. His dome of a forehead, his slicked back hair and the great axe of a nose came straight off a Roman coin. His left hand caressed the glowing screen in front of him. 

His vassals – three men and one woman - kept a respectful distance clustered round the middle and the far end of the t
able. The woman’s soft-cut grey jacket and slash of cream silk blouse contrasted with the men’s dark suits and muted ties. Her blue eyes were glued to her tablet.

On the wall to the left of Caesar an array of flat panels displayed the upper halves of four men, like
living portraits. All eyes were on the screens in front of them displaying a spread sheet entitled Global American Bank, 2
nd
quarter forecast outturn.

‘Actuals by region
, Charlie.’

It was a command, not a comment from the seat of power. In response, the man
to his right flipped his finger across his controlling tablet.

‘Versus budget.’
Column-keeper obeyed and flipped on. There was a long pause, then.

‘Forecast for
Q2 and for full year.’

A graph appeared. The
room froze while every person digested the meaning of the lines that projected gently upwards through the first quarter of the year, flattened in the current quarter, and fell markedly by year end. A simple, sorry story.

Eyes slowly came up and rested on the man at the centre. He was turning a sleek cell-phone over and over in his hand. He scanned each of the faces in turn before hefting the phone and sending it crashing down on the polished wood. It bounced once, broke in t
wo and the bits sailed towards the windows. Eight faces flinched, even those hundreds of safe miles away on video link. Eagle-nose shot to his feet. His chair crashed behind him. He pointed a finger round the room and then at the four video images.

‘Shit! This is fuckin’ shit! The analysts will kill us. Then the board will flay us. All of you are dead meat!’ He jabbed his finger at each face, as though he had a stiletto.

‘You hear?! Dead meat! You think we can repay Fed hand-outs one year and go back the next for more?’

His voice turned girlish and sarcastic. ‘Oh gee, sorry, we got it wrong. We’re not in as good a shape as we thought. Can we borrow another $50
billion?! Again! Pretty please?’ His eyes lasered everyone in his path.

‘
In my twenty years with GA I’ve pulled this bank out of the fire half a dozen times. Do you think I should cave this time? If you do, you might as well send in your resignations right now. On the same plate as your balls. I’m not taking this shit. If you can’t do better I’ll get someone who can. Capice?’

Warwick Stanstead’s rages
had become commonplace but they’d lost none of their impact with frequency. The eyes of all the men tried to look tough, as though each had done his part, and someone else had failed to deliver. Only the woman seemed calm, though she was gripping the arms of her chair. She was studying her boss, noting the flushed cheeks and throat, the tiny beads of sweat on his domed forehead. He was thinner, his pale skin stretched over the jutting bones of his face.
You stupid sod, Warwick. All those tearful promises
. . .

She
was about to speak but was beaten to it by Charlie Easterhouse, Chief Operating Officer, keeper of the graphs and the controlling tablet. Charlie had been with the Chief for longer than anyone and had seen all his moods. Charlie began gently.

‘Warwick? Maybe we should look at some of t
he stuff behind these figures?’

‘You think they’ll get bet
ter if we look harder at them?’

Warwick’s
soft tones made the other men wince in anticipation. Charlie held his ground.

‘W
e need to understand where the problem is and then we can maybe focus on how to solve it. Some of these figures are good, Warwick. Great even. Considering where we’ve been.’ He poked at the columns now appearing on all the screens. ‘We’re above target in two of our four regions and three out of five business lines. We can still pull it up.’

Warwick’s eyes slitted and the right side of his thin mou
th lifted in his famous sneer.

‘Show me.’

Charlie Easterhouse enlarged the spreadsheet. He gave his colleagues a second or two to home in on the serried columns. Then he clicked on chosen lines and let them see the underlying figures.

‘Europe and North America we
re on target for first quarter in terms of new accounts, total under deposit, and the all important Net Interest.’ He paged down and highlighted some figures.

‘Global M&A activity wa
s actually 3% up on budget and 15% up on last year. Same story on our dealing operations – client and own book. We’re up nearly 5% on budget for Treasuries and Triple A bonds, and almost 7% on equity market making.’

Easterhouse looked round for support, if not applause, f
rom his colleagues. No-one responded. Charlie battled on.

‘
Got to admit, second quarter is forecast to be flatter, and then, sure, we tail away. But we have time. If we take the right action,’ he pleaded.

T
he Chief Executive of Global American bank looked through slits at his Chief Operating Officer. He picked up his chair and sat back down.

‘So, Charlie, you think these bums
will earn their bonuses by year end? Averaging $10 million a piece? You think?’

He waited for the riposte which was never going to come. His voice
strengthened.

‘The recession is over. Half our competition has been wiped out. It’s a
fuckin’ bull market out there!’

He pointed towards the massive plate glass windows of the room and the towers a
nd drops of Wall Street beyond.

‘My goddamn grandmother could
make these numbers. And she’s dead! What about our forecasts for Asia Pac and Latin America? What about the retail business – banking and insurance that’s forecast to lose 3 points in a fuckin’ quarter! What about the cost base that went up by near 10%! What the fuck is going on?!’

The men and woman now dropped their eyes. There was no hiding place.

‘Ok, we go round the table. Cadenza?’

José Cadenza met his boss’s eyes, swallowed and wished he was on a plane down to Rio to see his wife, kids and his deputies in the Central and Latin America region. He knew they were busting their balls off for this madman, and the plain fact was that he’d set impossible targets. He wished for the thousandth time he’d held out for realistic numbers during the budget last year. But between his boss and Charlie Easterhouse, not to mention the hefty bonus, he’d been bludgeoned into a 20% hike.
Before Stanstead could begin the one-sided duel, a soft but carefully pitched Scottish voice deflected the thrust.

‘Warwick?’

She was sitting back in her chair, slim fingers neatly latticed in front of her. Apart from the rising colour in her neck, and the faint quaver in her voice, she looked the least nervous round the table. It wasn’t insouciance; Asia Pacific was doing worse than any other region.

‘
Miss Wishart. Erin. I was saving you till last.’ The Chief was gentle now, caressing.

‘And not because I’
ve got the best numbers?’

Her chin lifted and her voice steadied.
Erin Wishart reminded herself of the power of her accent to hold the attention of an all-American male audience. She went on without waiting for a reply.

‘Asia Pac is the worst performer because that’s where the problem started. Take a look.’

She began stroking the screen in front of her. The wall chart faded and came back into focus with new slides.

‘These are 3D charts of each of our regions showing our results against target and against our nearest competitors in each area. See the red bumps in Asia and Latin America? And this next screen, our global business lines, it’s the same story.’

She waited a beat to see faces absorb the information and got a few nods.

‘Our usual competitors – the big US and European banks – are seeing the same trend line as us. One competitor is rising higher and faster than any of us.
The People’s Bank. It started in India, but now has a massive penetration of Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, and not least, China. Thanks to the Internet and their business model, they’re coming after the rest of us. They’re gobbling up our target markets and business lines like an infection.’

‘But this is some
nothing bank! A fucking pipe dream. It’s a bank for people we don’t even want as customers! They’re picking up our cast-offs!’

‘They
were Warwick. They were. But they’re getting the volumes, and now they’re moving up the food chain. They’re
fashionable
.’

Erin
Wishart, Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, said the last word with a mixture of irony and wonder.

She went on, ‘It’s a post-recession reaction. We – the big Western banks - completely alienated our customers. We lost their trust.
PB has an image that combines good finances with good works. No bad loans to speak of. No government hand-outs. They’re untainted.’

Erin
paused and watched the nods of agreement round the room and on the video screens.

‘Our research shows People’s Bank hoovering up everything. They’ve just announced they’re moving into micro-insurance, so we can expect Aaron’s side to be picked off next in the developed world. They have well-advanced plans for ethical investment banking and fund management.’

She couldn’t hide a certain ruefulness in her voice. The Chief Executive of Global American blinked at her.

‘Ethical investment banking? That’s like low carb doughnuts!’

‘The Fed likes that bit, even if they don’t like the interest rates they charge. It’s an old model retuned for the Internet. People’s Bank raises money from depositors and only lends what it takes in. No big bets on the wholesale market. No fancy derivatives. No unmanageable risks.’

‘And no fat bonuses!’ Warwick cut her off with a slap of his hand on the desk.

He swept his malignant eyes round his underlings like a serrated knife. His voice went quiet, almost whispering, the level set so low that even with the room’s magnificent sound system, they each had to lean a little forward to hear his pale words.