Lyons The Shell Collector

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-912850-91-4
Verlag: Clink Street Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 340 Seiten

1973: the year of the oil crisis, the secondary banking collapse, the three day working week and the collapse of the stock market. In a riotous ride through the City of London we meet the characters and events that filled the social and City pages of the press in that roller-coaster year. Guy Magnus, an ambitious young share dealer, makes a daring takeover bid in the face of opposition from the City Establishment. Will he follow their rules, or his own: never to fall in love with a deal? Will he come to repent his challenge to the powers-that-be? Is Guy's story fiction or fact? Was a Norfolk Broads canal boat really moored in the marina of Monte Carlo? Did a Henry Moore sculpture really become the most expensive work of art in the world? And did a bet for a lunch at Maxim's for the first to make a million, Guy or his friend and rival Harry Griffin, bring a merchant bank to the verge of collapse? THE SHELL COLLECTOR tells a cautionary tale of the City when its buccaneering spirit was at a peak. Whether true or false, it is never less than entertaining.

This is the first novel by Robert Lyons.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lyons, Robert

Leseproben

1

The way Harry Griffin recalled it the first time the Inspectors asked him, he might possibly have been in the south of France back in the summer of 1973; but even if he had perchance happened to be there, to the best of his knowledge he certainly hadn’t met Guy Magnus. When the Inspectors pressed him further, Harry gave his solemn assurance that even if their paths had happened to cross briefly – and this wasn’t to be taken as an admission that they had – they definitely hadn’t discussed Britton Trust.

His interrogators then put to him that Guy Magnus had told his own lawyer he had bought shares in Britton Trust that July on the recommendation of his old chum Harry Griffin.

Not so, Harry protested. Their relationship was by no means as friendly as Magnus implied. Guy had most likely been motivated by envy that a company in which Harry was a major shareholder was doing so well. He probably wanted to teach him a lesson.

How so? asked Harry’s interrogators.

By taking Britton Trust over, of course, Harry replied, as if to ask, how else?

If Harry’s replies seemed less than candid, he thought it only fair to take into account that he was being put at a considerable disadvantage, being unfairly outnumbered as well as unreasonably victimised. For the Board of Trade had seen fit to appoint a distinguished Queen’s Counsel and a leading City accountant to carry out an investigation into the affairs of Britton Trust, and these members of the great and the good seemed to think that Harry Griffin could and should assist them in their task. It ran counter to the principles of natural justice, Harry told himself, to have to score his runs without first being told where the opposition had placed its fielders. Obliged to respond to a pretty unsporting line of questioning, in which the more detailed his reply the more penetrating the next question turned out to be, his eyes had sought inspiration from the mahogany bookshelves of the QC’s Inner Temple chambers, only to find them ominously lined with ranks of leather-bound volumes of the Statutes of the Realm. In the clammy air of an Indian summer heatwave, rivulets of perspiration trickled down his well-fed cheeks, making it increasingly difficult for him to sustain his habitual ‘would-I-ever-do-such-a-thing?’ expression. Under such adverse conditions the memory was apt to play one awful tricks, he excused himself.

Perhaps due to the cooler weather, by the time he next met the Inspectors, Harry’s powers of recall had made a miraculous recovery. He realised he had been in the south of France that July after all, and though more than two years had gone by, he did seem to recollect a chance meeting with Guy Magnus. But of one thing he remained sure: the subject of Britton Trust had never come up; and even if it had, Magnus had been the last person he would have wished to own shares in so prestigious a company.

The Inspectors’ next informant, though generally not the most reliable of sources, may have come closer to the truth. By now an unemployed stockbroker, his firm having had the misfortune to be hammered by the stock exchange, Ray Munster told them Harry Griffin had lost money all across the board and was heavily in hock. He owed money in Jersey, he owed money in London, his last firm but one was after him for a load of dosh; so he disappeared into Paris and wouldn’t come home. That summer Harry and Guy had dined together regularly to compare notes on the celebrated chefs of the Côte d’Azur. Munster reckoned Harry would still have been smarting from the sale Guy had negotiated the previous autumn for Mallard, the company they’d taken control of together back in 1969. Harry had taken his profit on half of his stake too soon, shortly before Guy agreed the deal with Universal Credit that valued Mallard’s shares at ten times their original cost. Guy hadn’t stayed with his shares in Universal Credit, of course; he had this thing about cashing in his chips so he could put his winnings back on the table. Whereas Harry had accepted the share swap for the rest of his stake and had lost the lot when Universal Credit went belly-up, reported Munster with the memory for detail of a born dealer. After that, Harry had bombed on pretty much everything – except Britton Trust, of course. But as that company issued more stock for each of its acquisitions, his share stake had been watered down. Having started with a lot of bugger-all, Harry had wound up with bugger-all of a lot; and, added Munster sagely, he must have had a pretty good idea that this particular lot was a load of crap. So he probably wanted to get his own back on Guy – they were that kind of friend. Moreover, Harry was a pretty damn good salesman; he may even have slightly conned Guy into buying the shares in Britton Trust.

Slightly conned? Guy Magnus? The image was not one the Inspectors recognised from their researches in the City of London. If you were wise, you wouldn’t try to outsmart the sharpest, least scrupulous of the whizz-kids of the early seventies. However, they did know from another of their victims that when Magnus had called his office from the south of France that July, he was in a flap. It was pretty obvious something was up, Danny Gilbert told them. Magnus hadn’t just seen a mention in the papers and told him to check it out on a whim. He knew something. You could hear it in his voice. It was a pitch higher than usual, and his order was clear-cut: ‘Buy Britton Trust!’

Danny Gilbert, whom the Inspectors judged to be a truthful if rather naïve young man, ran one of Magnus’s many corporate vehicles. Though barely twenty years of age, he was well trained. So even when his boss had already made up his mind, he still went through the same drill: get out the Extel card, send for the company’s last three years’ reports and accounts, find out if there was anything more up-to-date at Companies House, check for directors’ dealings. Next, analyse the balance sheet. This was an art form: for however thorough Danny Gilbert thought he’d been, Guy Magnus would always be several steps ahead of him. One day, Gilbert guessed, he’d put his finger on a business with under-utilised assets by dividing the sales per employee by the rate of depreciation on plant and machinery. Rephrase that: he probably already did.

Finally, Gilbert told the Inspectors, he’d look up the chart. The chart tracked movements in a company’s share price. It told him all he needed to know about trading in its stock: its highs and lows, trends and support levels. Britton Trust’s chart showed no discernible support. Whenever the shares crept over 200p, sellers came out of the woodwork. He had called Guy back.

‘It’s the worst chart I’ve ever seen,’ he had protested. ‘I don’t think Westchurch should touch it.’ Westchurch, Gilbert explained to the Inspectors, was the name of the company he was running for Guy. At the time it had been in the market for stakes in investment trusts, not run-down industrial conglomerates.

‘Well, I’m telling you to buy,’ Guy’s voice crackled down the line.

‘Listen, Guy, why don’t you just enjoy your holiday? We’ll talk when you get back. The shares won’t run away.’

‘I told you to buy them now,’ Guy had insisted. ‘Do as you’re told, damn you, Danny.’

‘I’d really rather not,’ Gilbert had replied as firmly as he dared. From time to time Guy Magnus would treat him like a messenger boy; but he wasn’t a boy any longer. After all, he would soon be twenty-one. And he had his twenty per cent stake in the company to protect. That should give him some say in the matter.

‘Right, you little bugger!’ Guy had slammed down the phone without further elaboration.

What, the Inspectors wanted to know, had happened next?

For a moment, said Gilbert, he had sat in thought, doubtless pulling at his sideburns as he did now in his attempt at accurate recollection. Then he had taken the chart up to the next floor where Nigel Holmes, who managed Guy’s back office, was staring at an empty minute book.

‘You wouldn’t buy shares on a chart like this, would you?’ he had asked half-heartedly, knowing Holmes to be an instruction-taker not a decision-maker.

‘Guy wants you to?’ asked the latter without looking up. ‘I’d buy,’ he said with uncharacteristic certainty.

Next Gilbert had tried Brian Proctor. ‘What would you say to this chart, Brian?’ he had asked with a touch more hope, on the grounds that Proctor was a giver, rather than a taker, of instructions. His loyalty had recently been rewarded with promotion to the board of St Paul’s Property, another of Guy’s corporate vehicles.

‘Guy likes it, doesn’t he?’

‘He hasn’t seen it.’

‘I’d buy,’ said Proctor, with characteristic obedience.

Gilbert hadn’t bothered to show the chart to Larry Callaghan, as he had no days to spare waiting for Guy’s father-figure to come to town from his accountancy practice in Norwich, let alone for him to offer an opinion. Callaghan’s contribution to Guy’s share dealings wisely excluded decision-taking, for the closest he ever approached to a clear choice was between minestrone and paté maison, a dilemma he would resolve after an interminable crisis of conscience by finally accepting the head waiter’s recommendation of the prawn cocktail, but only...