Frame-Up

Gian Bordin

FRAME-UP

Accused of insider trading

Copyright © Gian Bordin 2010

Thursday, 16
^th
October, 11:05 a.m.

"Sheila, get your ass up to the boss right away." Edward Long is leaning
his bulky torso into the partition between our cubicles, bending it
precariously, a sneer on his face. As usual, his words are directed at my
breasts.

My name is Cecilia
, my mind replies silently, but I refuse to react and
continue skimming through Hong-Kong’s Hang Seng closing stock
exchange report.

"Did you hear me, sheila, or do you need it on paper?" The last word
pronounced ‘piper’, his strong Aussie accent betraying his origin.

I’m sorely tempted to reply in kind, such as
you bray loud and clear
,
but decide to ignore him, making sure my irritation doesn’t reach my
face. Nothing irks him more than being ignored. For the hundredth time
I question myself why I must share the office with this immature prick
from down under. Just because he drives a Porsche Carrera doesn’t mean
every woman wants to get into his pants.

"Blokes, you’re my witness," he shouts into the room. "I wash my
hands. I’ve done my duty by the boss."

His swivel chair groans as he slumps down and disappears behind the
partition. He badly needs to work out, more than just in his car. Except
for his beer belly, he has the build of a rugby player, broad shoulders, a
short thick neck, thighs like hams.

Two hours ago I read that devastating Reuters newsflash about
Sanvino Ltd. on the news bar of one of my three computer screens that
update share prices during trading hours of the London Stock Exchange.
Ever since I’ve been waiting for the boss’s call. That ruinous newsflash
announced that Sanvino has secured a highly lucrative three-year contract
with Singapore Airlines. Their shares instantly rose a staggering 20
percent and caused trading to be temporarily suspended. It has just
resumed a few minutes ago. And yesterday I acted on a rumor I thought
to be reliable that Sanvino was going to lose the Lufthansa deal. I sold the
12 million shares held by one of my biggest clients, Ventura
Consolidated, a possibly questionable Italian investment company.
Entering such a large parcel for sale on the stock exchange risks a
substantial drop in price, so I checked with a few stockbrokers I’ve had
contacts before. I thought to be lucky when Bob Gough at Goldsax
signaled he might have a buyer. The transaction was concluded two ticks
below the previous day’s closing price — an excellent price under these
circumstances, I thought at the time. But as it now turns out, I deprived
my client of a two-million-pound capital gain. The worst nightmare for
any stockbroker! Will Fred Garland pass the Ventura account to
somebody else? To silly Edward Long, for instance? That one wouldn’t
let a day pass without rubbing it in. It might take months, if not years for
my hard-earned reputation as a savvy stockbroker to recover.

But the boss’s call can’t be ignored. Reluctantly, I rise, straighten my
white blouse, slip on my regulation dark gray business jacket, briefly
check my make-up in the round mirror on my desk, and then aim for the
corridor at the far end of the brokers’ open-plan area, which gives access
to the manager’s and seniors’ offices and the conference room.

"Ice queen, this time a pretty face won’t get you out of the hole you
dug for yourself," Long sniggers, as I pass his cubicle. "You’ll have to
offer him much, much more. You’re in deep shit, sheila, deep shit." The
last is punctuated by a laugh that would do pride to a goat.

The temptation to take the opposite direction, scurry past the reception
and lift lobby and out of the building is overpowering. I force myself to
push open the glass door into the corridor leading the Garland’s office. In
front of his door I pause for a few seconds, filling my lungs deeply
several times — a conscious effort to compose myself — and then knock
firmly.

"
Entrez
!" Fred Garland loves to show off his meager knowledge of
French.

I enter. "Sir, you called me."

"Ah,
Cécille
." French again. He points to a chair, while rising at the
same time, and then walks around his desk, where he eases himself
against it, towering over me — a deliberately dominating position. "I
guess you know what this is all about." He locks eyes with me
questioningly.

"The Sanvino transaction."

"Yes. I’m at a loss to understand how you could get it so utterly
wrong. Selling Ventura’s holdings at a loss when everybody expected that
Sanvino was on the verge of securing another lucrative deal. I’m deeply
disappointed in you. How could you? Ventura lost at least three million
pounds."

"To put the record straight, they got about a million more than what
they paid for the shares when they acquired them on my recommendation
a year ago." I perceive that Garland is ready to interrupt. "But I agree that
they lost out on a potential capital gain of about two million."

"Still —"

Again I hurry on: "Sir, I thought I acted on reliable intelligence that
Sanvino was going to lose the Lufthansa contract. I even checked it out
with a friend at Goldsax who confirmed that they had heard something to
this effect just the other day. So I didn’t give Ventura the advice to sell
without good reasons."

"Do I understand that Ventura gave you a specific order to sell?"

"Yes, Signor Carvaggio did after I advised him to sell."

"He gave it in writing?"

"No, verbally only."

"I see …" He frowns, his gaze straying to the window before returning
to me. "This Mr. Carvaggio, what’s he like?"

"You mean as a person? … He is quite abrupt. So far, most of his buy
or sell orders have come over the phone, but he usually accepts my
recommendations when I make him aware of promising opportunities."

"Yes, you have done well by Ventura. Just out of curiosity, where did
your intelligence come from?"

"Edward Long, sir."
Why did I give credence to anything that guy
says?
I lament to myself.

"Long? I thought you two were not on speaking terms."

"We may not be the best of friends, but we are colleagues and do
occasionally work together," adding silently:
reluctantly, on my part
.
"Besides, he quite often seems the first to be privy to market
intelligence." Again, I don’t voice:
some of which is insider information
that he uses for trading on his own account
— strictly illegal, and that’s
how he funds his extravagant lifestyle. "But, as I said, I checked it out
—"

"Why go to your boyfriend?"

How does he know I checked with Gary, I wonder?

"Why didn’t you come to me, especially for a sizable transaction like
this?" he continues when I don’t respond immediately.

Because last time I did you told me in no uncertain terms to do my own
research, but I’m not going to remind you of this either
. "Edward Long
suggested I check it out with Goldsax."

"You did." He again looks out the window, frowning.

So far, things have gone better than I’ve feared. Nevertheless I wonder
whether he is going to take the Ventura account away from me. It would
be a severe blow, as well as cause a drastic cut in my commission and
bonuses.

"It’s a rather unfortunate affair. Let’s hope this Carvaggio never finds
out what happened to Sanvino. And take this as a lesson to make
absolutely sure your intelligence is sound."

"Thank you, sir." He lets me keep Ventura. I almost vent my relief
with a deep sigh. The threatened storm has spared me. "Is there anything
else, sir?"

He dismisses me with the customary wave of his right hand.

As I return to my desk, I can feel the eyes of all eight colleagues firmly
burn into my back. I make sure my expression reveals nothing. Long is
the only one who can’t resist a quip. "Very cool, ice queen. My deepest
respect. Even under fire you live up to your frigid image. And did he tell
you who’s going to get Ventura?"

"No, but he was keen to know who passed me that bum intelligence
about Sanvino."

"And you told him? How very unsportsmanlike of you."

Thursday, 6:50 p.m.

The sense of relief, bordering on optimism that my position at Lewis
Stockbrokers is not irredeemably jeopardized, evaporates when I spot
Carlo, my brother five years my junior, sitting on the entrance steps to the
apartment building in Queensway where I live a few steps from the
Bayswater underground station. His appearance invariably means trouble.
Charming, good-looking, unless he suffers from withdrawal, he only
shows up when he needs money for drugs or a bed to recover. Each time
he usually manages to score a few hundred quids off me, and each time
I also tell him that this is the last time. Obviously, he never takes me by
my word, and experience proves him right. He always has a hard luck
story — being robbed at the gym (I doubt he has ever set foot in one),
having lost his job (the eighth this year alone), the landlady threatening
to throw him out (isn’t he mostly freeloading with somebody?), his
girlfriend walking out on him (they all do or, more accurately, they kick
him out), an urgent trip back to Switzerland to see our mother (probably
a trip to Amsterdam where the drugs are cheaper), needing a laptop as a
condition for enrolling in a computer course (he has tried that one before),
forgetting his bag in the underground (the only one I can halfway
believe). And each time, I have to make a conscious effort not to let
myself be swayed by his endearingly innocent mien.

I’ve always felt responsible for him even before our father traded our
mother in for what I then suspected was a younger model and walked out
on us. Carlo was only a vulnerable ten-year-old. My father was and still
is a partner in a London law firm, and we grew up in Chelsea. My Swiss-Italian mother was chronically homesick for Montagnola, the quaint
village near Lugano she grew up in. So I was more mother to Carlo than
she was. And after the divorce, she simply couldn’t cope without a
husband in a country that had a remained foreign land to her even after
sixteen years of marriage. To survive, she took refuge in her parents’
home in Montagnola. She remained depressed for most of Carlo’s teen
years. I managed to steer him out of trouble until his last year at
highschool. By then I had graduated with a degree in computer science
from the Università della Swizzera Italiana in Lugano and shortly
afterward returned to London, when my father offered to finance me to
do an MBA at the London Business School. After I left, Carlo quickly got
into trouble. The university study allowance he received from our father
after completing highschool, he spent on drugs. Claiming to be enrolled
at the University of Zurich, he lived in the easy drug culture of that city.
By the time my father caught on to his subterfuge and cut him off, my
brother had moved to the even livelier scene of Amsterdam.