The Money Makers (57 page)

Ballard’s smile had completely vanished. His smiling, pudgy face focused intently on George’s, his shrewd eyes searching there for an answer to something. At length, the veteran banker spoke again.

‘You’re right, George. If you stay at Gissings, re-invest your profits sensibly and keep your eye on the long term, it’ll take you at least five years to make a million. As you say, it’ll probably take longer. You’ll expand your production area, then you’ll add to your product range, then your marketing people will do their stuff again and quite soon your production people will be clamouring for more toys. So it might be five years, it might be ten. All you can be certain of is that Gissings will grow, and prosper, and enrich you and all those who work with you.’

Ballard paused again, unsure whether to continue.

‘Yes?’ George prompted. Ballard continued to hesitate, but then appeared to make up his mind. ‘But that’s not your only option. You can sell the company. It’s making three hundred grand profit before interest. You should be able to sell it for six to eight times that amount. If you’re lucky you may even fetch ten times. You’ll need to knock something off that for the debt, of course, but you should clear two million. Possibly more.’

George was astounded. Never once in all this time had this thought occurred to him. He had assumed he would come third out of three in the race to the million. He guessed that Zack and Matthew would each make their fortune, and his best hope had always been not to be ashamed in front of them when the contest was settled. And now . . . now Ballard was suggesting he could actually come first. Make his million - his
two
million - and scoop his father’s jackpot. Thirty million quid, or more. Just imagine the look on Zack’s face! And Matthew’s if it came to that. He’d feel damn sorry to say goodbye to Gissings, to the whole bunch of them who had helped him turn the company around - but it was hard to argue with thirty or forty million quid.

‘But who would buy it?’ he asked lamely.

‘If you want to sell it, tell me. I can probably find you buyers if that’s what you want. But think about it, George. Think about it hard.’

8

You’re in your car, driving peacefully along. You stop at some lights. A bloke comes up to you and says: ‘Please get out of your car and give me the keys. I’ve just offered the finance company ten grand for the car, and they’re inclined to accept.’ What do you do?

Well, let’s assume you succeed in refraining from violence. Let’s assume you manage to think calmly. The first thing you might do is get on the phone to the finance company. Don’t waffle on to them about ties of obligation, your long-standing relationship and all that blah-blah. Instead, say this: ‘Ten grand? Are you crazy? This is a genuine low-mileage vehicle, immaculate paintwork, engine as clear as a bell. Don’t even think about accepting such a ludicrous offer.’ Be convincing. Be clear. And if you feel you have to, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of personal abuse directed at the person making the hostile offer.

OK. That’s your turn. Now it’s his go. What does he do? He does the same. He gets on the phone too. ‘Low mileage? Yeah and my aunt’s the Pope. That car’s higher mileage than the bleeding space shuttle. The only thing holding the body together is the paintwork, and as for the engine ... all I can say is, don’t sneeze when you’ve got the hood up. Ten grand is five more than it’s worth. Take the money and scarper.’ Most likely, this bloke is stung by the nasty things you said about him: all that stuff about his parents’ marital status and his personal hygiene habits. He probably feels that now would be a good time to add a word or two about your own less pleasing personal characteristics.

Good. Now it’s your go. Your go, his go, your go, his go. The war of words continues for a while. If you begin to bring the finance company round to your way of thinking, the bloke’s got a choice to make. He can raise his offer, or hope to swing it with the cash he’s already put on the table. It’s a tough call, but either way a bit more personal abuse won’t go amiss.

And this was the stage that Hatherleigh Pacific and the South China Trust Bank had reached. South China had just fired off its latest broadside at its shareholders. Now it was Hatherleigh’s tum.

Zack and Lord Hatherleigh were in Hatherleigh’s Pall Mall offices, hunched over a speaker-phone on a conference call with Scottie and Phyllis Wang in Hong Kong. They had all been impressed by how hard South China was resisting their attack. The beleaguered management seemed to have shaken off its lethargy and come out with all guns blazing. The battle swayed from side to side. Hatherleigh attacked South China’s abysmal record. South China attacked Hatherleigh’s bid for being opportunistic and cheap.

‘What do you people make of their latest document?’ rasped Scottie.

‘Eight pages of abuse. Eleven pages of stuff they’ve already said. One page which matters,’ said Zack.

‘Page three, right? The new profit forecasts?’

‘Correct. They claim that their profits this year are going to be thirty percent higher than the stockmarket was expecting. If that’s true, then, on the face of it, we should be offering thirty percent more than we are.’

‘And d’ye believe they can make these profits? They’ve never managed that kind of increase in the past.’

‘Yes and no. They’re not allowed to tell out-and-out fibs, so they must be pretty sure that they can achieve these profits. But -’

‘What?’ Scottie roared in, without waiting for Zack to finish. Are you saying we’ve got to pay another thirty percent? We don’t have that kind of money.’ Scottie’s excitement threatened combustion. Zack could imagine his red face almost bursting with the pressure.

‘Wait a minute, Scottie.’ He glanced sideways at Hatherleigh, expecting a smile from the more self­contained aristocrat. But Hatherleigh wasn’t smiling. This was too serious. ‘If you look carefully at these profit forecasts, you can see that all the extra profit is coming from financial trading. Buying and selling foreign currency, that kind of stuff. Now South China’s markets haven’t suddenly gone through some kind of boom. We know that, because our own Far Eastern dealing rooms have been quiet. And that means only one thing.’

The silence was audible. Zack continued.

‘They’re making more profits because they’re speculating more. Gambling. They’ve nothing to lose. If they make money, they boost their profits and stand a chance of keeping their independence. If they lose money - well, hell, they were going down anyway.’

‘So before we were buying a bank. Now we’re buying a casino?’ The question came from Lord Hatherleigh.

‘Yes. But you can close down the casino part as soon as you take control.’

‘Can we walk away? Can we walk away from the deal now?’ Lord Hatherleigh asked the question so quietly the listeners in Hong Kong could barely hear him.

‘Why would you want to walk away?’

‘We wanted to buy a bank, not a casino. Can we walk away?’

Zack paused. He hadn’t expected this.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not allowed to drop your bid. If South China had revealed some huge hole in its accounts, it would be a different matter. But the authorities won’t let you abandon your bid, just because the target company had made unexpectedly large profits. That would be unheard of.’

Hatherleigh drummed his fingers softly on the lacquer coffee table. It was the only sign of excitement in his whole lean, thoughtful body.

‘How do you feel about running casinos, Scottie?’

Scottie laughed, a laugh that was more like a bark.

‘I just do what you tell me, boss. You tell me to run a casino, I’ll run a casino. You tell me to run a brothel, I’ll run a brothel.’

‘We can close the gambling rooms as soon as we get control, right?’

Zack nodded. ‘Yes.’

Hatherleigh drummed his fingers and pondered. He and his family owned thirty percent of Hatherleigh Pacific. Zack had married Sarah, who owned a big chunk of it herself. Just for once, here was a banker with almost as much to lose from a wrong decision as the company executives themselves. Hatherleigh had an old-fashioned distrust of financial speculation, and steered clear of it wherever he could. But this was a short-term thing, wasn’t it? And all the fundamental reasons for buying the company were still intact.

‘OK. We’ll compromise. We’ll put out a document blasting away at these new profit numbers. Make it as strong as you can, right, Zack? And we’ll add just $1 to the bid price. We’ll go with $46. That’s our final offer. Make that clear. I don’t want to overpay just because some young fool with stripy braces has made a couple of good bets.’

Zack nodded. ‘OK.’ Hatherleigh looked at him approvingly. God, what a good son-in-law he was. He was proud as hell of Zack’s performance right through this whole bid. Zack would produce a document so scathing of South China’s new profit forecasts, the company would feel shamefaced for making them.

Zack’s calm nod concealed tension, though. Thanks to him, Hatherleigh Pacific was winning the shouting match, but in the end money counted more than words. They would be cutting it fine, very fine. The bid was wide open now. His forty million dollar fee was wide open. His partnership prospects and his key to his father’s millions. Zack was gripped with anxiety.

Scottie and Phyllis signed off from Hong Kong, and the phone went silent.

‘Good luck,’ said Hatherleigh to Zack.

‘Yes, likewise, Jack,’ said Zack.

They were more than chairman and banker now. They were father and son. Roped together by Sarah, the wedding, their family company, the shared ordeal of the bid. If this were a movie, they’d have hugged.

9

It’s accountants who run hospitals these days, but even if the place had been run by a choir of angels, the doctor would have been forced to question the value of continuing.

‘I’m not sure that our recent progress really justifies us in carrying on,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the patient makes further gains once they’re completely removed from a hospital environment.’

Helen’s chart had been flat for a year or more. Speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy had all brought about some early improvement - then nothing. Josie could see the chart, but she didn’t need it to know the truth.

‘If you mean we should stop coming, then I agree,’ she said.

‘I think we should continue with medications aimed at treatment of anxiety and depression,’ said the doctor.

‘Particularly if you feel your mother continues to suffer from lifestyle stress.’

It was a bizarre phrase to use. Nursed by her daughter every evening and weekend, looked after by care assist­ ants at all other times, you could hardly call Helen a victim of classical stress. On the other hand, the doctor was right. Bernard Gradley’s will had laid a curse over the family, and Helen was its principal victim. Her sons were fighting each other for money, her daughter struggled with scant resources of time and income, while the fortune that Helen coveted seemed likely to disappear for ever. She was anxious; and anxiety made her prefer the shelter of a muddled head to the clear and cold realities of a difficult world.

‘Say goodbye to the nice doctor, Mum,’ said Josephine.

‘We shan’t be coming here any more.’

Helen scowled in concentration, forcing her lips to pluck words from the babble. Eventually they came, slow but perfectly distinct.

‘Thank God for that.’

Winter 2000-2001

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat. If you haven’t got a penny, a million will do. If you haven’t got a million, then who needs you?

It is 15 December 2000. There are 210 days to go, and for the first time, each of the brothers is hopeful.

1

Matthew tapped at Fiona’s door.

‘Coming,’ she called, and a moment later stepped out into the hall.

She was wearing a full-length cashmere overcoat with a woollen scarf at the neck. Matthew noticed she had touched up her make-up for the evening instead of removing it completely as she usually did. They walked to the lift together and rode down to the joyless lobby. They were still living in their pair of serviced flats in Blenheim Court. They were stuck, no longer because work took up too much time, but because they simply didn’t know where else to go. Matthew wanted to live with Fiona. Properly live with. One front door. One living room. One bedroom. But he was worried that asking Fiona to live with him would push her away, and that would be unthinkable. And, though Josephine was keen for him to move back to his mum’s house in Kilburn, nothing could appeal to him less. After a long day’s work, coming home to find your disabled mother sitting up in the dilapidated front room of her shabby little house and feeding her mashed up food when she was unable to feed herself? No thank you.

Fiona, for her part, liked their current arrangements. She still needed space. She still needed to be able to ask Matthew to leave the bed after sex, even though she seldom did now. He didn’t have a key to her apartment and she still occasionally needed whole weekends, even weeks, of separation from him. But despite her reflexive need for an escape route, Matthew knew she needed him as much as he did her.