Now I can see why Bob Alexander asks me to look in here, apparently this is the home of the NatWest’s up market brandname, you might figure it offers taxidermy as a sideline but Bob says the clients find the atmosphere soothing, it lends money to royalty and gentry since time immemorial and sometimes gets repaid.
Bob is persuasive, he takes me aside at this banking reception to say farewell to Mr Sayonara or some such and asks if he can call in a favor, he has this kinda wayward client who is in need of financial advice and my name comes to mind.
I figure at once who he means, on account NatWest is lead banker to Eurotunnel, but Bob says no, not Alastair, he is really quite rational some of the time, or least by comparison, Bob says, and keeps his account in good order, the only trouble is his sums do not add up, what they do instead is multiply.
It appears Bob’s problem client is a single parent, or semi-detached, who is active in work for good causes that pay her expenses, but has to get by on a small private income, which she supplements by writing children’s stories, about a poor little private jet called Chubbie, which has trouble with its payload ratio, and gets into scrapes and almost crashes, but somehow it bounces, or at least its checks do.
All this never quite covers her outgoings, try as she may, she lives in rented housing and buys her clothes in wholesale quantities and takes her children on self-catering holidays in rural France, and also she makes major cutbacks, she dispenses with her second manicurist and insists that her dresser and tiara fly sub-sonic.
At this Bob lowers his voice and explains to me about his client’s mother-in-law, who bails her out from time to time, tho’ when the overdraft gets up into the stratosphere, word of this leaks out into the blatts, maybe his client breaks the habit of a lifetime and looks at her bank statement, but the mother-in-law asks if she guarantees this account, and all she has to say is: We are not amused.
Well, of course, this brings down the creditors like missiles, ladies who give our client money from the goodness of their heart now claim that these are loans, and behind them come the caterers and hairdressers and tennis professionals and other tradesmen, and the bank would not mind having some of its money back too.
Herbie, Bob murmurs, maybe she listens to you, she has American financial advisors before now and they start her off on the right foot, just get us out of this hole and we never forget it, and someone else does not forget it either, you can expect a friendly gesture from the mother-in-law, in time for New Year’s Day.
Mom, to an old hand like your boy this is like handing candy to a baby, first of all we set up a corporation, with good wide articles, which issues reams and reams of stock to this mystery client, and options, too, of course, in exchange for exclusive rights to her services, or some of them, and also rights in Chubbie, the loveable jet.
Then we put the word around how Lear Jet is about to sponsor Chubbie, and Disney is in an auction for the rights, bidding up against the guys from Looney Tunes, and Andrew Lloyd Webber is working on Chubbie: The Musical, plus all the usual merchandizing deals and personal promotional appearances, and maybe here and there some kid actually buys the book and reads it, I try this myself, it is not too demanding.
On top of this a 24-carat no-brainer deal is now on offer in the markets, this comes courtesy of the Banco Central do Bulimia, I pick the tale up at the Comex dinner, all the traders there are bragging how much business they do with this guy in South America, he sells them options on his country’s gold reserves, and between them they figure this Bulimian banker pledges his reserves to each and all of them, a few times over.
This is a good deal for him so long as the price of gold does not go up, and since it falls into a haunted sleep some years ago this does not worry him, and besides, if it wakens up he can always borrow some more gold and sell it, and friendly Swiss banks stand by to help him out with this.
Finance this imaginative does not get seen in the markets since Nick Leeson goes on sabbatical, but if the Bulimian guy is this short, then the long side is the side to be, I buy a few ingots for the Last National and they perform very nicely, so the guy is obviously passing thru the wringer, now the hedge funds come in I figure on selling to them but maybe I sell to the Chubbie corporation.
Then we take it to Vancouver or some such undemanding stock exchange and launch it on the world, it sells for zillions, I even ask Bob whether his client’s children’s settlement is able to subscribe for stock, he says: No, Granny had it drawn too tightly, good try tho’ Herbie, he says.
So I put all this in draft and take it down to Charing Cross, where Bob operates this banking theme park, we both figure we have the solution but we neither of us reckon with his client, she makes a personal promotional appearance right there in the manager’s office, to tell him how she and some us advisors make a magic deal for her, worth megabucks, she says, so stop being so tiresome and give me more money.
Bob and I look at each other, I ask if he still has the billions he gets for Bancorp, he says it does not all come in yet, Well, I say, when it does, don’t lend or spend it all at once, I figure you are going to need it, much love from
Your advisory son
Herbie
Herbie is advised by Christopher Fildes
