Michael von Clemm was a visionary of the Euromarkets. He was also a friend of anyone who saw, in the derisory little offshore Eurodollar markets of the 1960s, the forerunner of the mighty international capital markets we work in today. He saw many things clearly that others could not, and he probably lived the most exciting and interesting life of any investment banker of modern time as a result.
With Rainer Gut, he created Credit Suisse First Boston which dominated the Eurobond markets while he ran it. To do so, he convinced Gut that he should buy a special bracket firm in the US, instead of the less risky choice of Dillon Read. He originated (a carefully chosen verb for an investment banker's actions) Canary Wharf and called me from his car phone to say: "Fallon, guess where I'm calling from." The usual guesswork followed; then with his customary tone of drama he announced: "The Isle of Dogs. You think I'm looking at a bunch of derelict warehouses. I know I'm looking at the world's next financial centre."
He invented the Eurodollar certificate of deposit on May 1 1966. That may seem relatively minor now, yet it was one of the main foundation stones of the international capital markets. Without a short-term money market, there cannot exist a medium and long-term debt market.
He took the concept of the floating-rate note (one of the very few international financial instruments that did not originate in the US) and built it into the largest single component of the international bond markets. He did so almost single-handedly and, in von Clemm fashion, totally single-mindedly. Banks, power companies, governments: all received the famous von Clemm personal visit: the compelling sales talk, the piercing eyes transfixing issuers in the remotest parts of the world. Whenever there was a need for capital, the von Clemm nose sniffed it out. Where other investment banks sent hopeful mandate-hunters, von Clemm went himself to show the issuer that his business was so important that it deserved the chairman of CSFB in person, even if he had had to tramp though the snow when Ian Molson's car broke down. "I'm a hunter," he told me in a Euromoney interview in the 1980s. "I like to bag things."
He went on to great things: to the board of Merrill Lynch when his time at CSFB ran its course, to the chairmanship of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets and to the presidency of Templeton College Oxford. But his greatest days, his peak, was as a pioneer at CSFB: that is how I, as his friend for 23 years, see it looking back, because of the air of concentrated excitement and enthusiasm he generated, and which infected those around him. Those were his finest hours because they were the days of the pioneer, and he, with Gut, Craven, Genillard, Warburg, Yassukovich and Zombanakis, was one of the great pioneers.
He probably made plenty of mistakes in the career, in common with other great achievers and builders. Credit Suisse First Boston heaved with culture problems for years because of the enormous gulf between the offshore firm of CSFB and First Boston itself. At First Boston the culture was sloppy and lazy. At CSFB, achievement was accompanied by bursts of friction and anguish, but the firm was top of the league tables, year after year, largely because of von Clemm's floating-rate note mandates and CSFB's incredible franchise with frequent borrowers. In 1997 Credit Suisse is the only foreign bank to have a serious presence in the US capital markets: now it is received wisdom that to be a global firm, the US has to be conquered. No other foreign bank has done that yet, but the most ambitious now acknowledge it as the necessary next step.
It was during a lull in the debt markets that the bought deal was introduced to the Euromarkets. Ossie Gruebel, then head of White Weld Securities (a sister company of CSFB) said at a morning meeting to von Clemm and Hans-Jörg Rudloff (later to succeed von Clemm at CSFB): "We have demand [from investors] for triple-A paper, but no enthusiasm from other underwriters. Why don't we go to an issuer and offer to buy the paper direct?" Von Clemm picked up the phone and the first bought deal was brought to the Euromarkets.
He turned his failures into scars that he was proud to exhibit. The sensationally poor issue for Export Development Corporation of Canada was turned into an expression of commitment and defiance by the creation of a pair of cufflinks with the EDC initials "Look at these," he would say. "Isn't it a sign of a firm committed to its clients that I wear these?"
In his life he studied anthropology, lived with a tribe near Kilimanjaro, lectured as a professor at the London Business School, actively supported musicians and unknown painters, fished with the hawk-like intentness that was the von Clemm characteristic, shot game birds in different parts of the world, became an academic again towards the end of his life, and still goes down in history as one of the great pioneers of international investment banking. But I will remember him best for his unthinking kindness to his friends, of whom I was very lucky to be one.
He left a splendid family: Lisa, his wife who supported him to his last breath, and Stephanie and Charlotte, the daughters he adored. One of the greatest joys of his final months was his baby grandson. I am very glad he lived long enough to know him. Padraic Fallon