The Marketmaker

1

The man sitting opposite, coolly watching me through a haze of cigarette smoke, controlled the financial future of a continent. More importantly, he controlled mine.

‘Thank you for coming in to see us, Nick,’ he said. ‘Jamie has told me a lot about you. A lot of good things.’ His voice was deep, his enunciation careful, his accent public-school English with a tinge of South American.

‘He’s told me a lot about you too.’

In fact, for the last week Jamie had briefed me thoroughly on Ricardo Ross. His father was Anglo-Argentine, his mother Venezuelan, and he had been educated at a private school in England. He had been with Dekker Ward for ten years, and over that time had transformed it from a sleepy third-tier London stockbroker into the leading force in the Latin American bond markets. Ricardo’s élite Emerging Markets Group was now the envy of traders and salesmen in London and New York, and Jamie believed Ricardo would soon become one of the foremost figures in world finance.

And here he was, interviewing me for a job.

He looked good. Monogrammed striped shirt, delicate gold cuff-links, thick dark hair immaculately shaped. In a nod towards informality, his French silk tie hung a quarter of an inch below his undone top button, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up just enough to reveal a paper-thin Swiss watch.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ he asked.

‘Thank you.’

We were in a cramped, workmanlike meeting room in a glassed-in corner of the trading floor. He reached for the phone on the small round table between us and hit a button. ‘Alberto? Two cups of coffee, please.’

In less than a minute a tiny old man neatly dressed in a black suit and tie brought us two small cups of coffee.

‘What I miss most about living in London is the coffee,’ said Ricardo. ‘It’s improving, but it still has a long way to go. Try this. It’s Colombian. I can promise you, you will not find a better cup anywhere in London.’ He sat back in his chair, one elegantly trousered leg resting on the other. He allowed the slightest of smiles to play across his narrow, handsome face. I noticed that every few moments the fingers of his left hand twitched, deftly playing with his wedding ring.

The coffee was smooth and rich, an entirely different drink from the Nescafé instant I was used to.

Ricardo sipped his, took a moment to savour it, and carefully replaced the cup in its saucer. ‘How many of the guys have you seen so far?’ he asked.

‘You’re the seventh.’

Ricardo smiled. ‘A long morning. So, you know all about Dekker Ward by now?’

‘I’ve heard a lot. But it’s your firm. You tell me.’

‘Well, I only run the Emerging Markets Group here,’ he said, nodding towards the dealing room behind him. ‘The rest of the firm is back in the City, where they’ve been for a hundred and fifty years. I can leave them to Lord Kerton, the chairman. We like to keep our distance.’

They certainly did. We were sitting forty-odd floors up above Canary Wharf, three miles to the east of the City of London.

‘But your group makes ninety per cent of Dekker Ward’s profits?’

‘Ninety-five.’ Ricardo smiled.

‘How do you do it?’

‘We’re the best at what we do,’ he replied. ‘By a long way. We dominate the market for Latin American debt. We lead-manage more bond issues for Latin American borrowers than our next three competitors combined. We trade more aggressively than anyone else on the street. We know everyone. If you want to borrow money, you have to talk to us. If you want to invest money, you have to talk to us. We made this market. It’s ours, and there are big profits in it.’

‘I can imagine there are. But how did you get to that position?’

‘We’re always a step ahead of the rest of the market. We spotted the opportunity before anyone else did. When Andrew Kerton brought me in, ten years ago, I think he just wanted to build up a profitable little sideline to the rest of the firm. I’m sure he had no idea how big we’d become. Back in the eighties, when the rest of the world had written off Latin America, we were persuading people to invest again. Mostly Latin Americans who had money invested offshore. We teamed up with Chalmet, a private Swiss bank. They had plenty of clients who were eager to put money back into the area.’

He paused to take a drag of his cigarette. His eyes flicked at me to check if I was following him. I was.

‘Then the big commercial banks, who had lent billions to the region in the seventies, began to sell their loans at a big discount. We helped them, stood in the middle. In the early nineties, many of these loans were converted into bonds, known as Bradys. We traded them, passed them on from the commercial banks to new investors. And in the last few years people have been willing to invest new money into Latin America. So we’ve been organizing bond issues for everyone from Brazilian glass-manufacturers to the Republic of Argentina.’

‘Don’t you have any competition?’

Ricardo chuckled. ‘Certainly we do. Everyone is involved in this game. But we were there first, we have all the contacts, we have the best people. If any other firm wants to lead a bond issue for a Latin American borrower, they know they have to invite us as a co-lead. Those are the rules.’

‘And if they’re broken?’

‘Then the issue fails. Nothing happens without our support.’

‘A nice position to be in,’ I said.

Ricardo nodded. ‘But we have to be on our toes. That’s why I want to make sure we always have the best people in the market. Without that, we’re nothing.’

I glanced out of the window of the little meeting room, into the trading room behind, with its jumble of desks and equipment, and the men and women talking, dialling, staring at screens, milling around. The muffled murmur of all this action seeped in through the glass walls. I wondered what these people were doing, who they were talking to, what they were talking about. Numbers flickered on countless computer screens. What did they all mean?

Beyond this mysterious activity stretched the clear blue sky, the empty space above London’s Docklands.

Ricardo followed my gaze. ‘They’re young. Smart. Hard-working. They all have different backgrounds, from the Argentine aristocracy to a Romford comprehensive. There aren’t many of us, but we’re an élite. There’s no room for passengers. Every one of us makes a contribution.’

I nodded. Ricardo was silent, waiting for my next question. What I really wanted to ask was, ‘In that case why the hell am I here?’ Instead I settled on something a bit more intelligent. ‘What about the emerging markets outside Latin America?’

‘Good question. There’s not much we can do in Asia. There are plenty of banks out there, and the market for debt is pretty boring. Eastern Europe is more interesting, although even that is becoming more respectable. Did you know Slovenia is rated single A? That’s almost as good as Italy.’

I shook my head.

‘But Russia. That’s the real prize. In many ways it’s similar to the South American countries, and the profit potential is just as big. Maybe bigger.’

‘So that’s why you might want me?’

‘That’s the idea. I need someone who speaks Russian and understands economics and who’s smart. Someone I can train up in the way we do things round here. Someone who’s hungry and who has loyalty to the Group. We had some trouble with our Eastern European team recently. I don’t know if Jamie told you?’

‘They walked out, didn’t they? To Bloomfield Weiss?’

‘That’s right,’ said Ricardo. His voice was steady, but now his wedding ring was dancing across his fingers, never resting in place for more than a second at a time. ‘I made a mistake there. I took them on as hired guns, and they left me for a master who’d pay them more. I trusted them. I left them alone to build their own business. In future I’m going to rely on my own people. People whose loyalty I can count on.

‘I trust those people back there. We’re all a team, we all work together, and we all make money together. A lot of money. You see that guy there, the oriental-looking one?’

I followed Ricardo’s glance, and could just see a squat man of about forty laughing down a telephone. ‘Yes. I met him earlier. His name’s Pedro something, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Pedro Hattori. He’s a Japanese-Brazilian. He’s my chief trader. Last year his total compensation was in eight figures.’

I thought for a moment, counting up the zeros in my head. Eight figures! Jesus! That was more than ten million pounds. Or dollars, or something. That was more money than I could possibly conceive of any individual actually earning.

My astonishment must have shown. Ricardo laughed. ‘How much do you make?’

‘Fourteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds a year,’ I said. ‘Plus London weighting.’

‘Well, if we take you on we’d pay you thirty thousand pounds a year, with no waiting. If you produce income for us, then you get a bonus above that. How much depends entirely on you. How does that sound?’

‘Er... Fine.’

‘Good. Now tell me a bit about you. Why do you want to join us?’

I launched into my spiel. ‘I’ve always found the financial markets fascinating—’

He held up his hand to stop me. ‘Hold on, Nick. You’ve spent the last six years studying Russian. If you’d really found finance so interesting you’d be working in a bank somewhere, wouldn’t you? And we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

His blue eyes rested on mine, waiting patiently for the truth. I remembered what Jamie had told me. ‘Whatever you do, don’t bullshit Ricardo. All he wants to know is who you are and what you want. Then he’ll decide for himself.’

Well, Jamie had got me this interview in the first place. I would do it his way.

‘When I left Oxford, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was go into banking,’ I said. ‘The suits, the mobile phones, the silly salaries, the greed.’

Ricardo raised his eyebrows. ‘So what’s changed?’

‘I need the money.’

‘Why?’

‘Doesn’t everyone need money?’

‘Some need it more than others.’

I paused. How much should I tell this man? Then I remembered Jamie’s advice.

‘I need it more than most,’ I said. ‘I have a large mortgage, which I can’t meet, and my temporary job finishes at the end of this term.’

‘And when’s that?’

‘Friday.’

‘Ah, I see. Can’t you get another one?’

‘It will be hard. The number of positions for Russian lecturers is decreasing, and there are more of us about. Most are better qualified than me. There isn’t much I can do about that.’

Ricardo nodded. ‘So you’re hungry. I like that. But how hungry are you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, if you were to have a nice job and a nice salary so you could service your nice mortgage, would you be happy?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘If I’m going to do this I want to earn a lot of money.’

Ricardo raised his eyebrows. ‘And what will you do with it when you’ve got it?’

‘Quit. Read.’

The eyebrows shot up again. ‘Isn’t that what you do at the moment?’

I sighed. ‘No. What I do now is churn out research papers, teach, prepare for teaching, and admin. Lots of admin. And I don’t earn enough from all that to pay for the flat I’m living in. I’m trapped. This gives me a way out.’

Ricardo was listening closely to all this, focusing his whole being on me, making me feel as though I was the most important person in the world. I was flattered; I couldn’t help it.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘But what makes you think you’ll be any good? I mean, you’ve done well academically. A first in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford. Then a master’s in development economics. A glowing reference from the head of your department at the School of Russian Studies. But how do we know you can apply all this to the real world?’

‘I’m sure I can do it,’ I said. I thought for a moment, trying to put into words something I had trouble admitting to myself, let alone anyone else. But I knew if I was to get this job, Ricardo needed to understand. ‘I love Russian literature. I love reading it, I love teaching it. But since my contemporaries left university, I’ve seen them make a fortune in the City. They’re no more intelligent than I am. It’s not as if they have any innate business skills that I don’t. I suppose I just want to prove to myself that I can do it. I work hard and I learn quickly. I’ll figure out how it’s done.’

‘Are you a workaholic?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘I binge.’

Ricardo relaxed and returned my smile. ‘Well, Jamie said you’re the most intelligent person he’s ever met. And I trust Jamie’s judgement.’ He watched me for a reaction. He didn’t get one. My instinct was to protest at this, but I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. Good for Jamie, I thought. He was always prone to exaggeration, and for once I was glad of it.

‘There’s one other thing I’m curious about,’ Ricardo continued. ‘What about the morality of joining the City? Somehow I imagine that when you studied development economics they didn’t teach you that international capitalism was the saviour of the Third World?’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘In fact, at that time you could fairly describe my economic ideas as socialist. But then I lived in Russia for two years and saw the Soviet system disintegrate around me. I’ve seen what a mess state planning can make of an economy.’

‘So you believe in the free market?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t believe in any one economic system. There’s a lot of suffering in the world. I’ve read too many Russian novels to believe that there’s very much we can do about that. It’s always been there and it always will be there.’

‘Well, I think you’re wrong,’ said Ricardo. He leaned forward, his eyes grabbing mine. ‘Take South America for example. The nineteen eighties was a decade of poverty and hopelessness. The whole continent took a giant step backwards. And why? Because it was starved of international capital. OK, that was itself a result of the foolishness of the bankers who had lent too much money in the seventies, and the corrupt politicians who had borrowed it. I admit that. But now the outlook is much better. Thanks to us as much as anyone else, foreign capital is pouring into the region once again. And this time it’s being spent on things that will provide a real return. Factories, roads, education. It’ll make a big difference to the lives of millions of people. I’m proud to have been a part of that.’

‘I hope that’s true,’ I said, unable to keep the doubt from my voice.

‘I can see you’re not convinced.’ Ricardo leaned back and smiled. ‘Still, a touch of realism isn’t bad in our business.’ He paused and drew from his cigarette, never taking his eyes off mine. They were deep blue, and contrasted sharply with his thick black hair, and tanned skin. They showed power and a piercing intelligence, but somehow they were welcoming, not threatening. ‘Come here,’ they said, ‘you’re safe with me.’ Although I had only known him for quarter of an hour, I felt drawn towards Ricardo Ross. I could see why Jamie thought so highly of him.

I just sat there, letting him assess me, waiting for him to decide.

It didn’t take long. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, just stay here a moment. I want to have a word with the guys.’

He left me in the conference room, while he walked back to his desk. I watched as he called over the people I had seen earlier in the day. There was Pedro Hattori, then I recognized the tall Argentine aristocrat, the American woman who was head of Research, the Cockney trader, a Mexican salesman, a Frenchman whose job I had forgotten, and finally I saw the fair hair and broad shoulders of Jamie, with his back to me. Well, he had certainly done a good job for me so far.

The next three minutes seemed to take for ever, but finally the group broke up, and Ricardo returned. He held out his hand. ‘Welcome,’ he said, with a broad smile.

I hesitated for just a moment. Shouldn’t I think about this? Did I really want to change my life now, to sell out to the City?

Thirty thousand a year, with maybe much more to follow? Or nothing?

I recalled the letter I had received the week before from Mr K.R. Norris at my building society. If I didn’t meet the arrears on my mortgage payments within thirty days, then they would repossess my flat.

It was a simple decision. I shook his hand. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll see you at seven on Monday morning,’ said Ricardo.

‘I’ll be there,’ I said, and made for the door.

‘Oh, just one more thing.’

I turned. Ricardo glanced at my suit. Polish. One hundred per cent polyester. I tried not to wear it unless I absolutely had to.

‘How many suits do you have?’

‘Er. One.’

Ricardo pulled out a cheque book, and wrote in it with a slim fountain pen. He tore off the cheque, folded it and gave it to me. ‘Use this to buy some clothes. Pay me back whenever you can.’

I put the cheque in my pocket, and Ricardo showed me out of the little meeting room to the lifts. I caught Jamie’s eye as I left, and he gave me a broad grin.

As the lift sped the forty floors down to earth, I opened the cheque and studied it. It was large with an intricate pattern in green, and it was drawn on Ricardo’s personal account at a bank I had never heard of. The words were elegantly penned in black ink. Pay Nicholas Elliot five thousand pounds only.

‘Congratulations, Nick!’

Kate looked up at me with her big hazel eyes, and took a gulp of champagne. She and Jamie had come round to my flat to celebrate.

‘Don’t congratulate me, congratulate your husband. You wouldn’t believe what lies he told Ricardo.’

‘Just doing what comes naturally.’ Jamie smiled his broad white smile. ‘No, I knew what I was doing. Ricardo’s looking for someone just like you. And I know you won’t let him down.’ He laughed. ‘You’d better not. Or it won’t be just you looking for a job.’

‘Well, thanks anyway, Jamie.’

‘It’ll be good to work together. Just like those Hemmings tutorials, do you remember?’

‘I hope for Dekker’s sake you know more about the markets than you knew about Plato.’

‘It’s just the same. Shadows on the wall of a cave. You’ll soon discover that.’

Jamie and I had been good friends ever since we had found ourselves tutorial partners in our first term at Oxford. We were different. Jamie approached university more energetically than me, throwing himself into a series of different indulgences: playing rugby, drinking, smart parties, scruffy parties, affected ennui. The one thing he did consistently was chase women. This he was good at, with his twinkling blue eyes, and his broad infectious grin, which he used to reward anyone who paid him attention. I followed him at an amused distance through most of these activities. I was less successful with women than he, being tall, dark-haired, unremarkable and a little shy. But we had fun together. And after university the friendship had broadened and deepened.

‘I can’t believe you’re going to become a banker!’ exclaimed Kate. ‘Especially after all the grief you’ve given Jamie.’

‘I know. Shocking, isn’t it?’

‘So when are you getting the BMW? And you’ll need a mobile phone. And some braces.’

‘Hold on, Kate, one step at a time,’ said Jamie. ‘Do you have any pinstripe underwear, Nick?’

‘Does Ricardo wear pinstripe underwear?’ Kate asked him.

‘How the hell would I know?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s just all you people at Dekker are so close...’

‘I shall wear my M & S Y-fronts with pride,’ I said.

We drank our champagne. I was in good spirits, excited. I was feeling more and more sure I had made the right decision.

‘So, what did you think of the Marketmaker?’ asked Jamie.

‘The Marketmaker? Who’s that? Ricardo?’

‘Yeah. That’s his nickname. It comes from when he was about the only person in the world who made markets in Latin American debt. Now everyone trades the stuff, but he gets the credit for developing the market into what it is today.’

‘Well, I was impressed. But I suppose I expected that. What surprised me was how approachable he is. I mean, it would be wrong to say he was just an ordinary guy, because he clearly isn’t, but he seemed to treat me like a real person.’

‘That’s not so strange,’ said Kate.

‘I don’t know. I suppose you think that someone that powerful would treat someone like me like dirt. He’s used to dealing with presidents of countries, not unemployed academics.’

‘That’s part of his secret,’ said Jamie. ‘He makes you feel special whoever you are. Whether you’re the finance minister of Mexico or the coffee boy.’

‘Well, at least you can keep the flat now,’ said Kate, glancing round the small living room. It was pleasant enough, and looked out through some french windows on to a little garden. But it was tiny. My whole flat was tiny. There was scarcely enough room for all my books, let alone human beings as well. I didn’t know how Joanna and I had managed to spend so much on such little space. Sure, the location was good, just a few minutes’ walk from Primrose Hill in North London, but even so. Six years later the market had still not climbed back to the level it had been when we’d bought the property. Sometimes I doubted whether it ever would.

‘Yes, I’m glad,’ I said. ‘I’ve grown quite attached to the place. I would have hated to lose it to the building society.’ I was looking forward to writing to Mr Norris to inform him of my change of fortune.

‘Joanna might not have had much of a financial brain, but she had good taste,’ said Jamie.

‘She was awful!’ said Kate. ‘She was never good enough for you, Nick. And the way she left you with this place!’

I smiled at Kate. The subject of Joanna never failed to get her going. And I probably had been taken advantage of. Our relationship had survived my two years in Russia, and when I’d returned we’d decided to buy a house together. It would be a good investment. Joanna, with her two years’ experience in a merchant bank, was the financial brains behind the purchase, and she had found the flat. When, three years later, we’d split up and she had gone off to New York with an American investment banker, she had let me have her half and all the furniture in return for giving me the mortgage obligation as well. It had seemed like a good deal at the time, especially since she had put up all of the original equity, but my salary had never proved up to the task.

Or at least not until now.

Kate shivered. ‘It’s freezing in here. Can’t you put the heating on?’

‘Er, no,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. The old woman upstairs keeps her flat at eighty degrees. Some of that seeps down.’

‘Heat rises,’ said Jamie drily.

Kate paused a moment, looking embarrassed. I found there were often moments like this with my more affluent friends. Paying bills, to them, was an administrative inconvenience rather than a financial problem that never quite got solved, only postponed. Then she brightened. ‘Oh, come on. You can afford it now. You can make this a tropical paradise all summer, if you want.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. The real problem was that the boiler had broken in February. I could still get hot water, but no heating. It would cost eight hundred pounds to fix it. It had been a cold winter, and was still a chilly spring. But Kate was right, I could get a new boiler now. And sort out the damp patch in the kitchen. And maybe buy some new shoes.

I was fed up with my life of near-poverty. Being a poor undergraduate was fine. Being a poor postgraduate was OK. But I was approaching thirty and I still couldn’t afford to go on a decent holiday, buy a car, or even fix the bloody boiler. Hell, one of my students who had scraped a poor second last year, had landed himself a job for eighteen thousand a year as a consultant, five thousand more than I earned. And he was only twenty-two!

Jamie was obviously following my thoughts. ‘Life’s going to change, you know,’ he said.

‘That was the general idea.’

‘It’s hard work at Dekker. I wouldn’t say that Ricardo wants you twenty-four hours a day. He just settles for that part of the day when you’re awake.’

‘Huh!’ Kate snorted.

I glanced at her, just long enough to acknowledge what she had said. At least I was single. There would be no one to miss me. ‘I can work hard, you know that.’

‘Mmm. But we’ll see what you’re like at seven in the morning.’

I laughed. ‘I’ve often wondered what the world looks like that early. Now I suppose I’ll find out.’

‘And you’ll have to give up rugby,’ said Jamie.

‘Do you think so? Surely I’ll be able to manage something. I might miss a few training sessions, but the team needs me.’ I was the star number eight of the School of Russian Studies rugby team. They’d be in big trouble without me.

‘No way,’ said Jamie. ‘I used to play a bit when I was at Gurney Kroheim, but when I went to Dekker I had to give it all up. It’s the travelling that kills it. You have to leave at weekends with next to no notice. No team will put up with that for long.’

I caught Kate’s eye. It wasn’t just rugby teams that suffered. ‘That’s a pity,’ I said. ‘I’ll miss it.’

‘I do,’ said Jamie. ‘I still manage to keep fit, but it’s not the same. I suppose I just have to get rid of my aggression in other ways.’

Jamie had been a very good player, better than me. He had played behind me in the Magdalen College team as scrum half. He was short and stocky with broad shoulders, and strong legs, and he would shrug off tackles from men twice his size. He was a fearless tackler, too. I’ll never forget the time I saw him up-end the All Blacks’ number eight as he came charging round the side of the scrum. He had played some games for the university team, and if he hadn’t been so distracted by the other temptations of university life, he could have earned his blue. Now, as he said, all that aggression was harnessed in the service of Dekker Ward.

He drained his glass, and picked up the champagne bottle. ‘Empty. Shall I nip out and get another? There’s an off-licence just round the corner, isn’t there? The table’s booked for eight thirty, so we’ve got another half-hour.’

‘I’ll get it,’ I said.

‘No. It’s on me. I’ll be back in a minute.’ With that he put on his coat and let himself out.

Kate and I sat in silence for a moment. She smiled at me. She’s definitely getting more attractive as she gets older, I thought. She had always been pretty, rather than beautiful, with short brown hair, a bright smile, and those big eyes. But as she had grown from a girl into a woman and a mother, she had changed. There was a softness and roundness to her and, since her son had been born, an inner serenity that I could not help but find appealing.

I had liked Kate from when I had first met her, jammed half-way up a staircase at a crowded party in the Cowley Road. We had bumped into each other occasionally after that, and I had introduced her to Jamie in our last term at Oxford. He had moved swiftly and decisively, and unusually for him the relationship had stuck. Three years later they had married, and a year after that Kate had had a son, my godchild. She had given up her job in a big City firm of solicitors to look after him.

‘How’s Oliver?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s great. He keeps on asking when you’re going to come and play Captain Avenger again with him.’

I smiled. ‘I was rather hoping the Captain would be out of fashion by now.’

‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’

Kate took another sip of her champagne.

‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, Nick?’ she asked quietly.

There was genuine concern in her voice. It alarmed me. Kate had common sense, lots of it. And she knew me well.

‘Yes,’ I said, with more confidence than I felt. ‘After all, Jamie’s having a great time at Dekker, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘He is.’