Hillboot Intergalactic Asset Management,
Cardew House, Bleeding Heart Yard, London EC1
I am just signing my way thru the latest pile of bonus checks when Holey Buckett sticks his head round the door and asks if he can have a blank one, Think of it as a corporate development expense, he says, if the check is blank enough we can get Wonderwoman.
At this I figure he finally flips, it comes of watching too many repeat programs, tho' I enjoy watching Wonderwoman first time round, she whirls like a dervish and wears fantastic costumes and karate-kicks her enemies, and now Holey wants to hire her as an asset manager, just what we need, he says, to put our business on the map.
Something sure has to, it is like I tell him, in this town there is $30 billion of other people's money, which these other people pay to have looked after, tho' they may not realize this, nobody asks them, or tells them even, and if some of it ends up in fees and bonuses they never notice, so this has all the marks of a truly great business to be in.
Quite right, Holey says, funds under management are money for old rope, they do wonders for our fee income, and our placing power too, and we can turn our thumbs up and down on deals, and all the guys who want our orders ask us out on freebies, Covent Garden is wall to wall fund management, and so are Glyndebourne and Ascot and the better class of trout stream.
So we swing into action and charge by results, we buy stocks and if they go up our clients are pleased, and if they go down we say they outperform the index, or some index, anyhow, you can always find one, but progress is slow, NatWest never even tries to buy us out and no more does Dresdner, and Holey keeps saying we need a big hitter.
Now he claims he finds one at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, which it seems is where Wonderwoman is located nowadays, she manages pensions for them when she is not having babies, which shows her devotion to duty and motherhood, but she feels that dmg does not appreciate her, or not beyond paying her a £1 million a year.
Holey reckons for a little more appreciation we can persuade her to move across the road, which sure puts us on the map, underlined in red, I tell him this busts our budget wide open but he says she soon pays for herself if her team and her clients come with her, and at this he starts winking and scratching his nose, and sets off for what he calls a discreet lunch with her at a corner table in the City Brasserie.
At that I think no more about it, Holey has these ideas before lunch and even after, until I get a snorting fax from some guy named Smith at DMG, Kindly cease poaching on our preserves, it says, we report you to the Bank of England for ungentlemanly conduct if we still think they care, but if you are short of staff can we interest you in Peter Young?
This makes no sense to me till I open the blatts and there is Wonderwoman spread all over them, I must say she fills out a bit from those heroic days when she sets the world to rights, not that she loses the habit, from the way she puts it over on the guys from the FT you figure they are publishing a special pink edition of Hello!
She explains how she stands up for the rights of every working wife and mother with a mortgage on her house and a bigger mortgage on the house she plans to buy in some place called the Boltons where housing is in short supply, she does this superb job for DMG and how ungrateful can they be, just because she is seen lunching tête à tête with a mere acquaintance they suspend her.
Mom, this only for openers, DMG says she resigns and she says she does no such thing, they keep misunderstanding her, all she wants is her job back and of course her salary and bonus too, she plans to march straight in on Smith and tell him, and since by this time the cameramen are all over her doorstep, she says, OK, you guys, come with me.
Maybe Smith reads the blatts too, because by the time the convoy reaches DMG he is mysteriously not available, or is having himself fitted out with a false beard, or something, but does this discourage our heroine, no, she steams off to the airport and books herself a flight to Frankfurt, so she can tell the guy's bosses back at Deutsche what she thinks of him, and all the rest of the convoy comes too, it makes Lufthansa's day.
She is never in Frankfurt before and knows no-one at Deutsche and does not speak German but zooms in on the twin towers and lands on the 27th floor and gives some in-house lawyer a slice of her mind for an hour or three, me, I figure this is not the right approach to Deutsche, already Rolf complains how DMG lacks discipline, his sense of humor gives out early.
Well, if Wonderwoman gets this hint she does not take it, she zooms back to London where her public relations flack fixes up more photo opportunities, infants and all, she says they are upset by what their classmates read about her in the blatts, also she intends to stand for parliament, but of course she is good at her job and wants to do that too.
I figure the odds shift against her, it is true hers remains a great act, she shows she can still whirl and make with the fantastic costumes and karate kicks, but I tell Holey I do not require any more of these qualities in office life, especially if we have to pay gala ticket prices for them.