the report.
Most start-ups failed. I knew that. The Internet was all hype, I knew that too. I was a banker, good at my job, known for my high standards of work. I could enumerate the risks, spot the downside. This wasn’t the kind of business that a bank like Gurney Kroheim, sorry, Leipziger Gurney Kroheim, should get involved in. My considered opinion should be to politely turn the proposal down.
I put the report to one side and sipped my coffee, watching thickening crowds rushing along the pavements outside. The trouble was, at that moment, I didn’t want to be a banker. Guy was talking about a dream. About a spark of an idea that could become a vision, then a small group of dedicated people, then a real company, and then … who knew?
There was definitely a market opportunity. During the 1990s English football had transformed itself into a money-spinning machine with the conversion of the First Division into the Premier League, the flotation of a number of clubs on the stock market and above all the heavy investment in TV rights by satellite companies. Everyone knew the Internet was going to change everything, even if they didn’t know exactly how. Guy’s plan to capitalize on this opportunity made a lot of sense. Would I, as a diligent Gurney Kroheim banker, have backed Bill Gates? Or Richard Branson? Or any of the billionaires that were springing up all over Silicon Valley? No. Because David Lane, Vice-President, Project Finance, didn’t have that kind of vision or imagination.
At Broadhill I had caught a glimpse of a wide variety of exciting lives. The children of actors, sports stars, millionaireentrepreneurs all suggested that there was much more to be done in life than get a job, a wife and a mortgage. Then at university the world had narrowed. I graduated during a recession, when the best and the brightest competed hard to become chartered accountants. I had competed too, succeeded, qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and then joined a merchant bank. The City had its glamour, I knew, but it was not to be found in the Project Finance Department of Gurney Kroheim. Sure there was travel, and that was interesting, and I found much of the work intellectually challenging, but where was it leading? To a wife, as yet unidentified, and mortgage in Wandsworth? Was that so bad? Isn’t that what I had worked for since leaving school?
Guy was right, it would be fun to work with him. I had admired him at school. We had had difficult times together in France, and then again in London when he was a struggling actor and I a soon-to-be-qualified accountant. More than difficult. But despite these the idea of spending the next few years with him tempted me. Of course he had let me down in the past. And he came from a world totally different from mine. But that was the point. I could give him the stability he needed and he could give me, well, excitement. Although in theory my career was steadily moving upwards, it didn’t feel like that. It felt like it was going nowhere. With Guy, something would happen. Something that would shake up my life. Whether it would be good, or bad, or both, I did not know. But I wanted to find out.
There is a premise that underlies almost all financial theory and it is this: a rational investor will avoid uncertainty. At that moment, I didn’t feel like a rational investor.
I finished my coffee and sauntered towards the office, brushed on either side by workers more eager than me to reach their desks.
When it had built its Gracechurch Street offices in the 1960s, Gurney Kroheim had been a major power in the City. Since then it had become a minnow. As I walked through the lobby, I instinctively searched out Frank, the commissionaire who had guarded this entrance since my first day in the bank and for a few decades before then. His memory for names and faces was legendary and outdid any database in Human Resources or Marketing. But he had been pensioned off the
Most start-ups failed. I knew that. The Internet was all hype, I knew that too. I was a banker, good at my job, known for my high standards of work. I could enumerate the risks, spot the downside. This wasn’t the kind of business that a bank like Gurney Kroheim, sorry, Leipziger Gurney Kroheim, should get involved in. My considered opinion should be to politely turn the proposal down.
I put the report to one side and sipped my coffee, watching thickening crowds rushing along the pavements outside. The trouble was, at that moment, I didn’t want to be a banker. Guy was talking about a dream. About a spark of an idea that could become a vision, then a small group of dedicated people, then a real company, and then … who knew?
There was definitely a market opportunity. During the 1990s English football had transformed itself into a money-spinning machine with the conversion of the First Division into the Premier League, the flotation of a number of clubs on the stock market and above all the heavy investment in TV rights by satellite companies. Everyone knew the Internet was going to change everything, even if they didn’t know exactly how. Guy’s plan to capitalize on this opportunity made a lot of sense. Would I, as a diligent Gurney Kroheim banker, have backed Bill Gates? Or Richard Branson? Or any of the billionaires that were springing up all over Silicon Valley? No. Because David Lane, Vice-President, Project Finance, didn’t have that kind of vision or imagination.
At Broadhill I had caught a glimpse of a wide variety of exciting lives. The children of actors, sports stars, millionaireentrepreneurs all suggested that there was much more to be done in life than get a job, a wife and a mortgage. Then at university the world had narrowed. I graduated during a recession, when the best and the brightest competed hard to become chartered accountants. I had competed too, succeeded, qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and then joined a merchant bank. The City had its glamour, I knew, but it was not to be found in the Project Finance Department of Gurney Kroheim. Sure there was travel, and that was interesting, and I found much of the work intellectually challenging, but where was it leading? To a wife, as yet unidentified, and mortgage in Wandsworth? Was that so bad? Isn’t that what I had worked for since leaving school?
Guy was right, it would be fun to work with him. I had admired him at school. We had had difficult times together in France, and then again in London when he was a struggling actor and I a soon-to-be-qualified accountant. More than difficult. But despite these the idea of spending the next few years with him tempted me. Of course he had let me down in the past. And he came from a world totally different from mine. But that was the point. I could give him the stability he needed and he could give me, well, excitement. Although in theory my career was steadily moving upwards, it didn’t feel like that. It felt like it was going nowhere. With Guy, something would happen. Something that would shake up my life. Whether it would be good, or bad, or both, I did not know. But I wanted to find out.
There is a premise that underlies almost all financial theory and it is this: a rational investor will avoid uncertainty. At that moment, I didn’t feel like a rational investor.
I finished my coffee and sauntered towards the office, brushed on either side by workers more eager than me to reach their desks.
When it had built its Gracechurch Street offices in the 1960s, Gurney Kroheim had been a major power in the City. Since then it had become a minnow. As I walked through the lobby, I instinctively searched out Frank, the commissionaire who had guarded this entrance since my first day in the bank and for a few decades before then. His memory for names and faces was legendary and outdid any database in Human Resources or Marketing. But he had been pensioned off the
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