‘Do you think so? I’ll tell him that,’ I said, as I drifted out of the room, feeling Kate’s puzzled gaze on my back.
Bloomfield Weiss’s offices were in Broadgate, a modern complex of brown marble offices behind Liverpool Street station. I negotiated security guards, reception and secretary, before being directed to a sofa outside a closed door. As I was waiting, I remembered Isabel and my visits to Humberto Alves’s office. I smiled as I recalled the going over she had given him for awarding Bloomfield Weiss the mandate for the favela deal. I would need all her audacity if I was going to pull this off. I felt almost that she was there with me, and I resolved not to let her down.
After half an hour, the door opened and a small, birdlike man in a white shirt and braces came out. He took me in in an instant, and wasn’t impressed. I could almost see him deciding there and then that this was going to take five minutes, not fifteen.
He held out a hand, ‘Sidney Stahl. Come in,’ and he ushered me into a large plush office with a huge desk and a suite of cream sofas and chairs. Two men, who had been perched on the edge of a sofa, stood up. One young, tall and preppy, one older and more world-weary. Stahl waved towards them. ‘My assistant Preston Morris, who I believe you’ve already spoken with, and Cy Wolpin who heads our emerging-markets unit in London.’
We shook hands briefly. Stahl’s voice was rough New York. He really was very small, scarcely taller than five feet, and he can’t have weighed more than nine stone. He seemed dwarfed by the two men next to him, but you could tell he was the boss. They stood back from him, giving him space, as though they were uncomfortable looking down on him.
‘What can we do for you, Mr Elliot?’ Stahl sat down, and the others took their cue from him, as did I. Stahl’s eyes looked my way, but they weren’t focused. He was thinking of his last meeting, or his next.
I came straight to the point. ‘I worked for Dekker Ward for just over a month. I left a couple of weeks ago.’ So what? said Stahl’s face. ‘I happen to know that Dekker have taken on huge positions in Mexican bonds over the last few weeks.’
‘The whole market knows that,’ said Cy Wolpin. ‘Dekker did that Mexican deal that bombed, and they’ve been buying back bonds ever since.’
I ignored him. I had got half of Stahl’s attention. His eyes were at least focused, and pointed in my direction. ‘Dekker’s positions are much bigger than that. They own four billion dollars of Mexico paper, and two billion of other stuff. Their losses on these positions are so great that they’re technically insolvent. They’re relying on funding from their Swiss shareholder, Chalmet, to keep them afloat.’
Now I had them. ‘Go on,’ said Stahl.
‘Well, I know that Bloomfield Weiss want to expand into emerging markets. And everyone knows that that’s Dekker’s market. So my suggestion is that Bloomfield Weiss acquire Dekker. Then it will be your market, not theirs.’
Stahl laughed. It was a kind of extended cackle that worked its way up through lungs thickly coated with mucus or tar. The other two men’s expressions instantly switched from scornful seriousness to mild amusement.
‘D’you hear that, guys? That’s balls for you. The kid’s pitching for an M and A mandate.’ He reached into his pocket for a cigar and lit up. It looked huge compared to his tiny body. Despite the laughter I was encouraged. Stahl’s cigar deliberations were giving him time to think.
‘Isn’t Dekker a private company?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t that guy they call “The Marketmaker” own most of it? What’s his name? Ricardo Ross, that’s it! He’s not gonna sell to us, is he?’
‘You’re right, it is a private company,’ I replied. ‘But Ricardo owns very little.’
Stahl raised his eyebrows. They were pencil thin, as if they had been plucked.
‘Ricardo finds other ways to take cash out of Dekker,’ I said. ‘Lots of it.’
The eyebrows fell back to their normal position. ‘So who does own it?’
‘Fifty-one per cent is owned by Lord Kerton and his family. His ancestors founded the firm a hundred and thirty years ago. Chalmet et Companie, the private Swiss bank, owns twenty-nine per cent. They picked that up in 1985 just before Big Bang. And the remaining twenty per cent is owned by other directors.’
‘And Ross is one of those?’
‘No, actually. Ross refuses to go on the board. He wants his Emerging Markets Group to be as separate as possible from the rest of the firm.’
Wolpin and Stahl exchanged glances, Wolpin’s I-told-you-so, Stahl’s irritation. I realized I had briefly trespassed on a political battlefield. But in a moment Stahl’s attention was back on me. ‘Well, how can we buy the company if it’s that tightly held?’
‘Kerton doesn’t know what a hole Ross has got him into. If we tell him, he may want to sell. Especially if, once we’ve hit him with the problem, we give him the solution.’
‘Which is?’ asked Stahl, puffing on his cigar.
‘Bloomfield Weiss taking on the Dekker portfolio and trading their way out of it. There can’t be many firms in the world that could do that. They’d have to be big, they’d have to know how to trade, and they’d have to know emerging markets. That means Bloomfield Weiss and about nobody else.’
‘That would be one hell of a position,’ said Wolpin. ‘The risks would be substantial.’
I looked straight at Stahl. ‘I thought that’s what you did. Take risks.’
Stahl cackled again. ‘I like this guy. Of course we can handle the risk, Cy. We’re gonna be buying the bonds for peanuts. But what about the Swiss?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve no idea what Ross has told them about his position. It’s also impossible to tell where their money is coming from. You can get very little information on Chalmet. Theoretically it’s a small bank based in Geneva, but it has undisclosed billions under management, and I think that it’s using its clients’ money to fund Dekker.’
Wolpin interrupted, ‘Chalmet have a reputation in South America as a good place to park dirty money. I’ll bet they’ve got all kinds of drug dealers and corrupt politicians on their client list.’
This was a subject I wanted to steer well clear of. I didn’t want Bloomfield Weiss to scare themselves off with talk of money-laundering.
‘There must be a lot of loyalty to Ricardo Ross at Chalmet,’ I said. ‘But if they think they’re going to lose everything, they might be prepared to change their minds. And, once again, the best way for them to get their money back might be to have Bloomfield Weiss take over Dekker’s portfolio and trade out of it.’
‘Interesting,’ said Stahl. ‘So, what do you want, kid? A two per cent fee? We have our own people who know about this corporate-finance stuff, you know.’
I smiled. ‘I’m sure you do. And I don’t want a fee. I know you wouldn’t pay me one anyway. All I ask is that you keep me informed. Tell me what happens.’
‘So what’s in it for you?’
‘Dekker Ward treated me very badly,’ I said, the intensity of my voice surprising even me. ‘I want them to pay.’
Stahl smiled quickly. He understood revenge as well as greed. A more noble motive would have raised his suspicions. ‘Well, they will. That is, if we decide we want to go along with your idea,’ he added quickly. But there was something in his voice that made me feel sure he would. I couldn’t help smiling. He caught it, and his quick brown eyes twinkled. ‘OK,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ll be in touch. Soon.’
‘So where were you going this morning in your nice little suit?’ asked Kate. We had just sat down to supper, a salad I had thrown together. ‘Interview?’
Both Kate and Jamie looked at me expectantly. I had been worrying about how to deal with this all day. There was no way I could tell them the truth. It would be expecting too much of Jamie for him to keep quiet, and it would be hard to stay in his house.