79Promises, promises
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe’s Dickensian tale centres on Sherman McCoy. He’s
one of the Masters of the Universe, a select band who control
the financial markets. Upset at his measly $999,997 salary,
McCoy finds solace in the arms of his gold-digging mistress. Wolfe
brilliantly captures the decisive nature of wealth as the different
worlds of New York collide.
There’s a moral dimension to The Bonfire of the Vanities which
many of today’s financial thrillers lack. Wall Street, Tokyo and the
City are not run by cocaine-snorting, wise-cracking hipsters. People
working in banks are under enormous pressure to perform. Fear
and greed may blind them to the consequences of their decisions.
Sherman McCoy realises that his privileged WASP world is many
more times dishonest than the rough streets of New York where
he pays for his crimes. He experiences a moment of clarity at the
end of the book when he understands that even a Master of the
Universe is not exempt from judgement. Everybody, no matter how
rich or how poor, must take responsibility for their actions.
This absolute clunker of a movie is now mostly remembered for
Melanie Griffith’s real-life breast augmentation surgery midway
through shooting. Tom Hanks plays the aggressive WASP bond
trader McCoy as a lovable family man with a low-level mid-life
crisis. Bruce Willis is hideously miscast as an alcoholic investigative
journalist with a transatlantic accent which suggests an upbringing
in London, New York, Los Angeles and, quite possibly, Cardiff.
Film fact – Wolfe (who didn’t pen the screenplay) was paid
$750,000 for the film rights. Which is more than some of the
book’s Masters of the Universe were pulling in.
case study
Wall Street Blues
Perrine and I went to see an Oliver Stone double bill, with
Jonathan Spurrier tagging along like a great big gooseberry. Wall
Street was as far removed from our jobs as was humanely possible.
Welcome to the jungle80
There was no jumping out of helicopters and into jacuzzis for me.
Mostly it was copying spreadsheets and trying to plug a memory
card into my computers. Sometimes I envied the post room boys
I so nearly joined.
But Wall Street was really good on the details of insider trading.
Bud Fox, played by the sane and reasonable Charlie Sheen, is
tempted by money supremo Gordon Gekko to come up with
insider information. He sacrices the company where his father
works in a deal with the devilish nancier. The avaricious yet
naive Fox loses his soul in his quest for big bucks. But the rewards
are certainly enticing. From my seat in the Odeon Panton Street I
was entranced by the speed of Bud’s transformation. One minute
he’s cold-calling stroppy clients with a weak sales pitch, the next
he’s suggestively making sushi with his trophy girlfriend in a
massive penthouse overlooking Manhattan.
The second lm was Platoon, which became something of an in
joke for Perrine and me. The poster screamed The First Casualty
of War is Truth! But, as we were slowly beginning to realise, truth
was actually under serious attack from Jerry’s drug use.
You’re probably now expecting a big section about wild City boys
out of their skulls on cocaine. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I saw
very little use of recreational drugs while I worked in nance,
especially not on school nights. And Jerry most certainly wasn’t
snorting gak from his desktop. No, his choice of poison was
much more prosaic but ultimately just as dangerous.
Jerry was hooked on prescription drugs, washed down with
vodka. He claimed to have hurt his back playing rugby years
ago and often groaned when he stood up. It sounds stupid but
no one had any idea about how dangerous a diet of aspirin,
paracetamol and codeine could be. His desk drawer rattled every
time he pulled it open. I began to notice airline miniatures of
Smirnoff, wrapped up in research reports and tossed into the
wastepaper basket. Like all true alkies, he was never seen with a
glass in his hand. Once, late at night, I found a couple of bottles
of the super-strength sleeping pill, temazepam, in his ofce.
81Promises, promises
But how I got into his ofce is a story for later. As are some more
details on insider trading.
Day 2, 4.15pm – My offices, Covent Garden, London
I have one longstanding client, a rm of Magic Circle lawyers,
which I use as a barometer of where investor sentiment is
heading. During the boom times their litigators want to know
about mergers and acquisitions, private equity and hedge funds.
In the years after a crash they focus on bad debt and company
collapses. And now, suddenly, they needed to know everything
about bonds.
The head of training, a harassed woman called Donna, called.
Could I do a session on xed income ASAP? My mind, obviously,
was occupied with other concerns and I had to rehearse for
the big presentation in New York. But, given the problems I
was facing, it might well be advantageous to have a roomful of
lawyers in my contacts list.
‘When do you want me to speak?’ I asked her.
‘Can you be here in twenty minutes?’
‘Of course.’
Day 2, 4.45pm – Broadgate, London
When I got to their ofces Donna met me by the lift. She told me
why the demand was so urgent.
‘The senior partner’s been called by a fund which buys new issues
of corporate bonds. Apparently the fund is unhappy with the
market knowledge of their present lawyers. They want to see us
ASAP. But we aren’t exactly experts in this eld, either.’
‘When are your guys meeting the fund?’ I looked down on to
Liverpool Street Station.
‘As soon as you’ve nished training them!’
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