Michael Ridpath
‘I’ve had a dozen interviews here and in New York, I’ve met the head honcho twice and he loves me, everyone else thinks I’m perfect for the job, so tell me why I shouldn’t take it.’
We were sitting in ‘The Bunker’, the wine bar beneath the twenty-six-storey office block in Bishopsgate that Peter Brearton and I had occupied along with a few hundred other bankers several years before. Between us were two glasses, empty, and two bottles of Sancerre, one empty and one half-full. I refilled Peter’s glass. Peter was ambitious, energetic, highly intelligent, unfailingly successful in everything he did. He was thirty-one, a year older than me, although he looked younger, with his square face, short blond hair and round glasses. He was mellowing as he often did after a bottle of wine. I would get to the truth.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ he said.
‘Of course I trust you. I trust you more than anyone else I know. We’re old mates. That’s why I want you to explain to me why you left.’
Peter shook his head. ‘I told you, I can’t tell you.’
‘They’ve got a great reputation,’ I went on. ‘They’re aggressive but fair, they’re cunning but people trust them. They might not be big, but they’re the best in the world in their market. Bill Labouchere is a genius. Everyone says so.’
‘Don’t do it,’ Peter said.
I took a deep breath. ‘My boss gave me a month to find another job.’
Peter raised his eyebrows. I squirmed. It was something I hadn’t wanted to admit. A last resort.
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘Oh.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Still don’t do it.’
I couldn’t conceal my frustration. Labouchere Associates was a small elite outfit that had been responsible for some of the most daring takeovers and mergers in the oil business of the last decade. And they paid well. I would be doubling my salary as a vice-president. Partners, of whom there were a dozen or so, were reputed to earn many millions of dollars every year. That was certainly something to aim for. And the only thing that was standing between all that and me was Peter’s opinion.
‘I’m going to take it,’ I said.
Peter shook his head sadly. ‘You’re making a big mistake.’
‘If you can’t give me a good reason not to, I’m taking the job.’
Peter drained his glass, and stared at me thoughtfully. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you. But first get us another bottle of wine.’
He began:
It was last February. I had been at Labouchere just over two years and I was doing pretty well. The firm usually promotes new partners in March, and that year there was only one opening. They take the process very seriously, too seriously according to some of the partners, but not according to the only one that matters, Bill Labouchere. He insists on a weekend off-site session of role play, where the vice-presidents on the partnership track are put through a string of exercises, all watched closely by him and one other partner. The sessions are notorious within the firm, but unavoidable if you want promotion. And believe me, we all wanted promotion.
There were six candidates. Labouchere prides itself on its international staff: there were two Americans, a Canadian, a Colombian, a Norwegian and myself. The session was to be held at Lake Lenatonka, some godforsaken camp in New Hampshire. I flew over from London to Boston and drove a hired car from there all the way up to the lake. I was knackered, I had been pulling several all-nighters on a big financing project we were setting up in Rajasthan. Believe me, the last thing I was in the mood for was corporate games.
Lake Lenatonka was fifteen miles off the main road, down a dirt track in what they call the White Mountains. And they were white, or at least a blue shade of white in the moonlight. I didn’t pass a single car on that track, just pine trees, thousands and thousands of pine trees. I stopped every couple of miles to check the map. I dreaded getting lost; I could easily spend the whole night driving around those back roads without seeing anyone.
It takes a long time to drive fifteen miles along a dirt track at night, and I was relieved when I saw the wide expanse of the lake, a white board of snow on ice. The camp was a series of a dozen log cabins clustered around a larger building, from which a welcoming column of smoke twisted. There was indeed a roaring log fire in the reception and I went straight in to dinner, which had started without me.
The five other candidates were there, with Steve Goldberg, one of the partners, and Bill Labouchere. Everyone, even I, was wearing American corporate casual clothes: chinos and designer button-down shirts. It was warm, the drink was flowing and we were all having a great time. You’ve met Bill; he can be charming when he wants to be and he knows how to relax people. He’s a Cajun, from Louisiana, you know, that’s where he gets that weird accent. His father has his own oil company and sent him to Yale and then Columbia, where he read Psychology. He only went into the oil business himself when his father’s company ran into trouble. He couldn’t save it, but he did learn how to do deals. He’s the expert at doing the deal. The thing to remember about Bill is that it’s impossible for you to read him, but he can read you like a book.
It was a great dinner, exquisite food, wonderful Californian wines, Armagnac, cigars, we were all having a good time. I was sitting next to Manola Guzman. She’s a Colombian from the New York office, very smart, very poised, with dark flashing eyes, as sexy as hell. She speaks perfect American English with only the trace of a Latin accent. Her father is high up in the Colombian national oil company and she joined Labouchere out of Harvard Business School. She had a very good reputation, although people said that when she lost her temper she became quite scary. We hadn’t worked together much before, but she and I got on well that evening. I was enjoying myself. So was Bill, on her other side; the two of them were charming the pants off each other. He’s maybe sixty-two, but he’s quite handsome with his tanned face, black eyebrows and that shock of thick white hair. He had just ditched wife number three.
Then Bill made his speech. It was only a short one; he basically said two things. Firstly, we would all receive a package of information to study overnight, a ‘case’. We would be divided into three teams of two and would role-play a takeover battle. This was bad news: I was shattered and now a little drunk, not at all in the mood for reading documents late into the night.
Then came the second announcement. ‘You’ve all come a long way for this weekend,’ he said. ‘I would like to thank you for that. I know you are working on some very important transactions.’ We all tried to look important. ‘But I think it only fair to let you know who it is you have to beat. You all have a chance to make partnership, that’s why you are here, but one of you is in pole position.’
Suddenly we were all sober. Bill let the moment rest. He had that frustrating, slightly amused look on his face that he wears when he’s playing with you. We glanced around the table. There had been much office gossip about who would be promoted, and frankly I considered myself the favourite, with Manola and a Canadian smooth-talker called Charlie Cameron close behind.
‘Harald Utnes,’ Bill said. There was an intake of breath around the table. Eyebrows were raised. I noticed Manola next to me give a little smile. Perhaps she was pleased that my name hadn’t been mentioned. I knew Harald well. We had worked together for a year in London before he moved to New York nine months before. He was a tall Norwegian, a very nice guy, a geologist, totally reliable, but in my opinion he lacked the killer instinct, the ability to close a deal. And in our business, it’s closing deals that makes the money.
Deflated, we staggered outside