The market maker (3 page)

I climbed the stairs into the square at the foot of the tower. It, too, was pristine: lines of small trees fresh out of the nursery, a fountain splashing tidily in the center, neat low walls, benches of expensive wood. The tower stretched eight hundred feet up into the air in front of me, its roof still obscured by the mist and by steam billowing out of pipes near the top.

Nervously, I made my way through the ultramodern atrium with its swank boutiques and into the brown marble lobby of One Canada Square. I entered the elevator alone and shot up forty stories.

I waited in the Dekker reception area for Jamie, perching on the edge of a deep black leather sofa, under the occasional stare of a well-groomed blond receptionist. He was out in a minute, striding over, hand outstretched, grinning broadly. White rabbits cavorted on his tie. "You made it. I didn't think you would. Did you pedal all the way?"

"I certainly did."

He looked me up and down. "Nice suit. I hope you got rid of the old one. Mind you, you'd have to be careful how you dispose of it. Toxic waste and so on."

"Tm keeping it. Sentimental value. Besides, it's probably the only genuine emerging-market suit here."

Jamie laughed. His clothes weren't showy, but I knew he spent large amounts on them in Jermyn Street and its immediate neighborhood. I couldn't tell this by looking at them, but Jamie had assured me that the kind of people he dealt with could. According to him, it was a necessary expenditure.

"Well, if you do insist on cycling in. Til show you the

health club later on. You'll be able to take a shower there/'

"No, I'll be OK/'

"Nick. Trust me. You're a hotshot banker now. Take a shower. Now come through. Let me show you your desk."

He led me through some double doors. After the dimly lit quiet of the reception area, the trading room hit me in a burst of sound, light, and movement.

"Tin afraid your desk is on the outside," said Jamie as I tried to make sense of the activity in front of me.

"The outside?"

"Yes. Sorry, I'll explain. You see those desks there." He pointed to a group of about twenty dealing desks in the middle of the room arranged in a square, each facing outward. I saw Ricardo standing by one of them, talking to Pedro. Most of the others were manned. "That's the inside. It's where all the salesmen and traders sit. It's a good setup. We can all communicate with each other across the space in the center. These desks here"—he pointed to three lines of desks facing each edge of the square—"these are the outside. People sit here who don't need to be in the thick of things. Capital Markets people. Research, Admin, you."

I looked suitably dismayed.

"Don't worry. You can sit with me this week. You'll find out what's going on soon enough/'

Just then there was the sound of hands clapping twice. It was Ricardo. "Ok, compancros, gather round. It's seven-fifteen."

Everyone moved into the central space, looking at him expectantly. They were outwardly relaxed, but I could feel the tension as they prepared for the week's action. As Ricardo had promised, they came in all shapes and sizes, although the majority had a well-groomed

Latin look to them. Many of them were smoking. I recognized most of the people who had interviewed me, including Pedro who, like a number of other men in the room, was wearing a cardigan. Apart from me, they were all jacketless. I tried to take my own off with as little movement as possible.

''Morning, everyone," Ricardo began. I could just make out the initials RMR embroidered in red on his crisply ironed blue-striped shirt. "I trust you all had a good weekend. Fd like to start by welcoming a new member to our team. Nick Elliot.''

Everyone turned toward me. Fortunately, I had just wriggled out of my jacket. I smiled nervously. "Hallo," I said. There were smiles back, and murmurs of "good to have you on board." It was friendly. I appreciated it.

"Nick speaks Russian and understands economics, and I know he's going to be a valuable member of our group," Ricardo continued. "He^s never worked for a financial firm before, so he hasn't had a chance to pick up any bad habits. I want you all to show him how Dekker does things.

"Now, what's happening out there? Pedro?"

Pedro Hattori spoke some gobbledygook about Bradys, euros, squeezes, Argy discos, and Flirbs. I tried to follow but floundered. Then an American called Harvey talked about the U.S. Federal Reserve policy on interest rates. This was more familiar territory, but then I lost it again when he started on Wis and five years on special. Charlotte Baxter, head of Research, was next. A tall American woman with long mousy-brown hair in her late thirties, she talked about the likelihood of discussions between the Venezuelan government and the International Monetary Fund breaking down again, and the implications this would have. I noticed Jamie was taking careful notes.

Then Ricardo went around to each individual in the group. They exchanged gossip, information, impressions, hunches. Everyone was clear emd concise. And well informed. People didn't seem to me to be making political points or grabbing glory, presumably because Ricardo discouraged it. But they all watched closely for his reaction, and his occasional words of encouragement were lapped up.

He came to the last of the group. "Isabel? How's the favela deal coming on?"

Isabel was a slight, dark-haired woman of about thirty. She was half sitting on a desk, sipping a cup of coffee. "Jesus, I don't know. My guy in the housing authority really wants to do it. And I think his boss wants to do it too. But his boss's boss?" Her voice was low and husky, and she spoke with a slow, relaxed drawl. Her English was good, with a slightly nasal accent, which I would recognize later as Brazilian.

"Can you fix it?"

"I'm a carioca. Rio's my hometown. Of course I can fix it." The comers of her mouth twitched. "I just don't know if I can fix it this century, that's all."

Ricardo smiled. "I'm sure you can, Isabel. But I'm happy to go down there with you if you need me. I could talk to Oswaldo Bocci. Get him to run a few favorable stories. Maybe a piece about how this is the best chance Rio has to begin to do something about the favelas. He owes us after that deal we did for him last year."

"The local press are positive already," said Isabel, flicking a strand of dark hair out of her eyes. "And I'd like to leave Oswaldo out of it unless we're really desperate. I'm flying down there on Wednesday night. I hope I can sort things out then. If that doesn't work, maybe you should call him."

"Well, good luck/' said Ricardo. ''Presumably, we can apply this model to other cities?"

"Oh, yes. We should be able to use it everywhere. Certainly in Brazil. As soon as we've closed the Rio deal, I'm going to talk to Sao Paulo and Salvador. But this structure should work anywhere in Latin America where there are people living in shantytowns, which is everywhere. We need World Development Fund support for each deal, but they seem to think it's a good use of their funds."

"Would it work in Romford?" It was Miguel, the tall Argentine aristocrat.

"Oi, you leave Romford alone!" protested a burly young man with a loud tie and very short hair. His name was Dave, I remembered.

"Perhaps you're right. It's a lost cause."

"Thank you for that suggestion, Miguel," said Ricardo. "In fact you'd be a good choice to open our Essex rep office. But seriously. This is a flagship deal. Once we've closed it, I want the rest of you on the road looking for more. Now, Carlos?"

Carlos's rumblings about a possible deal for the United Mexican States passed me by. My eyes were still on Isabel. She wasn't exactly good-looking. Her nose was a bit too long, her mouth a bit too wide. Her clothes were nothing special, blue shortish skirt, cream blouse, black shoes, and her hair hung, untamed, around her face. But there was something about her that was very feminine, sexy. Maybe it was her voice, or the way she held herself. Or it could have been her eyes, large, deep brown, almost liquid, half-hidden under long lashes. Just then they darted toward me and caught my stare. The comers of her mouth twitched again, and I hastily switched my gaze to Carlos.

24 Michael Ridpath

''Did you understand all that?" asked Jamie when it was over.

"Some of it. I have a lot of questions. There's a lot to learn."

"Like how to stare at Isabel and stop your mouth from dropping open at the same time," said Jamie.

"Was it that obvious?"

"Don't worry, we've all done it. You get used to her after a while."

"There's something about her. I don't know what

is.

"She's as sexy as hell, that's what it is. But I wouldn't make it too obvious. She bites."

"Really? She looks friendly enough to me."

"Well, don't touch. Don't even look. Trust me."

I shrugged, and sat at Jamie's desk. I had never seen a fully equipped dealing desk before, and Dekker's were state-of-the-art. Jamie explained it all to me. There were five screens, which provided news, prices, and analysis in a range of different colors. Jamie seemed to have an unpleasant predilection for pink. To add to the clutter was a phone board with thirty lines, a fan, a Spanish-English dictionary, two volumes of the Bankers' Almanac, and a small silver rugby ball commemorating an Argentine sevens tournament. The whole was framed in a collage of yellow Post-it stickers and topped with a haphazard scattering of paper.

"OK, let me tell you the basics," said Jamie, after he had shown me how to get the rugby commentary up on the Bloomberg information service. "All the guys on this half of the square"—he gestured with his arm— "are salespeople. Our job is to talk to customers, give them information, find out what they want to do, and then buy and sell bonds from them. These people"— he pointed to the other half of the square of dealing

desks—"are the traders. They make markets in hundreds of different bonds. So when one of our customers want to buy or sell something, we ask one of the traders for a price. He gives us a bid and offer. We reflect that to the customer, who will either sell at the bid price or buy at the offer price. In theory, the bid/offer spread should be profit for us."

I nodded. So far, so clear.

"The other way we make money is through new issues. See those people there?" He pointed to some of the desks outside the square. I noticed that Isabel was at one of them, reading through a sheaf of documents. Jamie followed my eyes and coughed. "Of course you do. They're known as Capital Markets. Their job is to talk to potential borrowers and put together a bond issue that raises money for them at the lowest rate. Which by the way is usually pretty high. Investors aren't going to take on the risk that one of these countries defaults again without demanding a decent return."

Jamie spent the next couple of hours explaining how Dekker functioned. I listened closely, turning over each new piece of information in my mind, seeing how it fit in with what I had heard before.

I listened in to his calls as he spoke to his customers. These turned out to be a wide range of different types of institutions: a small French bank, a British merchant bank, a Dutch insurance company, an American hedge fund.

He talked about Venezuela and the IMF negotiations. He exchanged rumors on a future Mexican deal. He talked about soccer and what was on television the night before. He bought and sold millions of dollars of bonds, always selling at a price slightly higher than he was buying. Many of these trades were recorded as "DT" and then a number. Jamie explained that these

were numbered accounts at the firm's Dekker Trust affiliate in the Cayman Islands.

Lunch was an exotic goat's cheese and salad sandwich, and a Coke brought around by a kid in overalls carrying a big tray. There was no need to leave the desk. No time, either.

Conversations moved with the time zones, picking up Brazil late morning, the rest of the continent and New York in the afternoon, California in the evening. In fact, the pace quickened as the day wore on; many of the other players in the market operated out of New York or Miami. Our day lengthened to incorporate theirs. Much of this was in Spanish, and I couldn't understand it. I could see I would have to learn Spanish.

At six o'clock 1 went to see Charlotte and her team in Research, and returned to my desk with an armful of reports. The political and economic analysis was excellent. I was particularly impressed with the quick and dirty notes marked "For Internal Distribution Only." These made heavy use of informal sources: local bankers, government officials, traders in New York.

Isabel's desk was next to mine. She seemed to be constantly busy, reading through the piles of papers next to her, tapping out notes on her computer, or going over documents on the phone in what I assumed was Portuguese. I tried not to stare, but I couldn't help my eyes drifting over toward her every now and then. Her face was half-hidden by strands of dark hair as she worked. Occasionally she would pause, bite her lower lip, and stare ahead into space. She was delectable. Even when I wasn't looking at her, I could just catch the scent of her perfume in the air or hear her voice on the phone. Concentrate!

Once, as my eyes flicked up toward her, 1 saw her looking back at me.

"You're enthusiastic/' she said, smiling.

"I've got a lot to leam."

''It gets easier once you start actually doing it. Where did you come from? Before here?"

"Until last week I taught Russian."

She raised her eyebrows. "Really And what brings youtoDekker?"

"I needed the job. And Jamie was good enough to introduce me. Why they took me on, I'm not quite sure."

"Are you a good friend of Jamie's?"

"Yes. Very good friends. I've known him for ten

years."

There the conversation ended. She turned back to her phone and picked it up. 1 wasn't sure if 1 had said something wrong.

And then my own phone rang.

It was the two consecutive rings of an external call. That was funny. I didn't think I had given anyone my number yet.

I picked it up. "Dekker," I said in my best imitation of the clipped tones I had heard around me all day.