Death of a Financier Read online

  The horror stories filled the press, but Barton had carefully chosen his projects, the problem was they were now dragged down by the inevitable consequences of fly by night promoters and politicians, and the extraordinary never before seen property construction boom, when many Brits were tempted by a place in the sun with low interest rates and one hundred percent loans.

  Unlike those who failed to hire an independent solicitor, Nicole was one of the few who refused the one offered by the promoter, which however only seemed to complicate her problems.

  She like many of her compatriots had been seduced by the dream of living in Spain. The idea that holidays under the Costas sun with Flamenco and Sangria could be transformed into a permanent feature of their lives with a home by a golf course, a swimming pool, palm trees and everlasting sunshine. It was part of a myth projected by Hollywood soaps such as Santa Barbara and Bay Watch, suddenly available to the average Brit with a minimum down payment and the rest on the never-never, guaranteed in the case of difficulty by the nice profit that could be made from rising property prices if ever they were forced to sell.

  Little did they understand the complexities of real life in Spain, compounded by endless legal procedures and the country's slow moving bureaucracy, difficult for those who chose to live under the Mediterranean sun and who did not speak the language.

  It was like in Kovalam, once they got used to the palm trees the reality was not so bright Francis had explained to Ryan. In the past those who lived overseas had been mainly middle-class with better education and more worldliness, but now everybody was getting in on the act.

  'Travel has become democratic,' he told Ryan, 'even the unemployed seem to be able come and enjoy the sun in Kovalam and feel rich. The romantic days when writers, artists and intellectuals formed a community, like in the Tangiers described by William Burroughs, are as dead as the British Empire.'

  'I know what you mean,' said Barton. 'You just have to spend five minutes watching the passers-by on the beach front.'

  'Funny you say that, it's just what I thought the other day,' Ryan said.

  'A peculiar mixture of working-class holiday makers, retired middle managers and professionals,' continued Francis. 'A mixed bag if ever there was one, so you can imagine the difficulties of overseas communities trying to get along with each other. I lived for a few years in the south of Spain and saw the changes. I'm not being a snob, but finally I decided to move to France.'

  'I've read about that in the press? East End villains hiding out in Spain.'

  'Quite so, you end up by realising you don't want to be part of that kind of expatriate community?not the kind of people you like to associate with.'

  Following Spain's entry into the European Union the country had experienced an astonishing period of growth that that had transformed it into one of Europe's most dynamic economies. But all good things must come to an end, investors had moved on to Croatia and to Slovenia as the Spanish market reached saturation point and inflation started to creep up.

  Over supply and debt were having their effect on house prices in Spain, like in the UK where economic prospects had started to fade and people were tightening their belts.

  Heathrow had reminded Barton of how the ambitions of Spanish property and construction businesses were being put to the test, especially those of Ferrovial, the Spanish investor who was now operator of the airport. They had acquired British Airport Authority after forking out an astronomical ten billion pounds a couple of years previously and after much public debate. The wind had changed and they were now caught in the credit crisis and could barely manage to service their own debts.

  Spain was also facing another crisis as its economy slowed. During the boom years immigrants had flooded in providing the cheap labour necessary to fuel it. As sales fell off and construction firms fell into difficult times they started to lay off workers, but those immigrant workers had no intention of returning home to North Africa or Latin America and threatened to weigh heavily on the country's slowing economy and its social services.

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  Chapter 30

  Parkly was a creature of habit almost every working day he took lunch with his business friends at either the Taberna Etrusca or the Coq d'Argent, restaurants that reminded him of the happy moments he spent each summer on his invariable holidays, either at friends in Tuscany or more recently Ramatuelle, where he had bought a superb villa.

  Though money had bought him an enviable life style he was not into yachts, planes or fast cars; he disliked the jet set style, preferring quieter easy going leisure with close friends and a good game of tennis, which kept him in moderately good form. He liked art and antiques, two of the points he had in common with Emma.

  Parkly liked to describe himself as a 'manager of managers', which he was, but more because he disliked making decisions, approving with a Solomon like wisdom the ideas of others, a technique he had developed over the years, which avoided amongst other things exercising his personal responsibility.

  He was well suited to an industry peopled by grey men, so cautious they were wary of giving the time of day without consulting with their legal department. Parkly was the opposite of his predecessor, who had been a man who knew his own mind, used to running the show, constantly testing his managers. Parkly believed in letting the business run itself.

  West Mercian had extended its business into fund management, commercial property funds, where it developed a solid reputation, its funds prospering as Britain under Tony Blair became the financial world's leading pole of attraction. Parkly's key staff were those who had risen with him over the years, he wanted no mavericks in his team, though he was against the rigid rules practised by larger fund managers, giving his team a greater degree of freedom in their investment choices.

  West Mercian's remunerations were generous, he counted on his directors and disapproved of traitors, that is anyone who left for a rival. His predecessor had resisted the approaches of larger financial institutions and Parkly pursued the same vision, that of an independent firm, its faithful managers rewarded for their loyalty, their positions practically guaranteed to retirement. However, there still remained a streak of the deeply ingrained culture of the old West Mercian Building Society, which had been founded in 1889.

  At fifty-four Parkly still had a long and what looked like sure career ahead of him, holding a large block of the firm's shares.

  After West Mercian had gone public, Cameron and the board held the controlling shares, the rest were spread amongst many thousands of small investors. Following the founder's untimely death, Parkly had exercised his options when Cameron's shares were bought back by the firm.

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  Chapter 31

  We can sit in the garden,' said Francis pointing to a table, then disappearing into the house. A few moments later he returned holding a couple of cold beers with a paper file tucked under his arm.

  'Look, here's an example that was in the paper the other day,' he said placing the beers on the table and opening the file filled with news paper cuttings. 'It says that a 58-year-old patient died from dengue fever at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital a few days ago.'

  Ryan took the cutting, it contained little much more information other than the fact that four other suspected cases had been admitted to the hospital.

  'What is dengue fever?' asked Francis.

  'Basically it's a haemorrhagic fever.'

  'Which is?'

  'Internal bleeding, like Ebola.'

  'Ebola!'

  'Yes, not as bad, but the same type of symptoms.'

  'Here in Kerala?'

  'It looks like it, remember we're in a tropical region, there's all kinds of bad things hiding out there,' he said waving his hand towards the Bougainvillea behind them.

  'Your right there.'

  'These kinds of diseases are carried by mosquitoes and caused by a lack of environmental hygiene, this is the perfect place such diseases to prosper.'

  'Keral
a boasts about its medical tourism facilities, but it's strange that diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, leptospirosis, malaria and other vector borne infections have reached epidemic proportions here.'

  'The state probably doesn't have the resources.'

  'I suppose you're right,' he said digging into the file for another cutting. 'Look at this, it says that there were 16,577 viral fever admissions, 36 confirmed as dengue, four rat fever and three cases of malaria. One leptospirosis death was reported - what's that?'

  'A bacterial disease, it affects people and animals. Its symptoms include high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, diarrhoea and vomiting. It's usually due to water contaminated with the urine of infected animals.'

  'What kind of animals?'

  'Oh, lots, you know, cattle, pigs, horses, dogs, rodents, and wild animals.'

  'Great.'

  Ryan shrugged, he had seen it all in Africa and from what he had seen of rural India the difference was not that great.

  'It says they made house to house checks near to where someone had died of dengue.'

  'That's the only way they can find out if people are ill, many are afraid to go to the dispensary, they can't afford it.'

  He told Ryan of how Indians became caught in the poverty trap, a case that concerned one of the women hawkers on the Kovalam beach. Chanda was a widow of about thirty, who earned her living by selling fruit on the beach at Kovalam. Her husband, a poor fisherman had fallen ill and died, leaving her with huge debts for doctors' bills and medicines, forcing her to sell her jewellery and borrow from relatives.

  With three children and desperate for money Chanda had listened to an acquaintance who ran a tea stall on the main road between Kovalam and the fishing village of Vizhinjam where she lived.

  Chanda was told that selling a kidney could earn her 75,000 rupees, a fortune. She barely knew what a kidney was, but agreed to visit a clinic in Trivandrum, where a medical assistant explained it was a little like selling blood.

  After blood and urine compatibility tests a receiver was found, a wealthy woman from Trivandrum, to whom Chanda was declared to be related. Everything was carried out legally through a committee attached to the Trivandrum general hospital that vetted all transplants with the go-between arranging for the necessary papers and declarations not forgetting the payment of the inevitable baksheesh.

  Chanda declared she was willing to donate a kidney and signed a paper then a couple of days later was checked into the clinic for the operation.

  The surgery was successful and a few of days later she returned home, however, no post-operation treatment was provided and when complications developed she was forced to return to the clinic - where the personnel refused to recognize her.

  The tea stall owner disappeared and Chanda finally recovered, though little better off for the loss of a kidney.

  'There's no reliable data on organ trafficking,' Francis told Ryan and went on to explain how it was on the increase. 'In the USA a kidney transplant could cost from one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars, it's no wonder people who don't have that kind of money come here.'

  'Of course, the root cause of the problem is diabetes,' said Ryan.

  'Yes, it's rocketing in the USA, more than twenty million are suffering from it.'

  'Which can lead to kidney failure.'

  'Right, and an ever increasing demand for dialysis. At present there are more than a hundred thousand dialysis patients in Europe alone, and can you imagine about forty thousand waiting for a kidney!'

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  Chapter 32

  The Rymans were pleased with the Jasmine Palace, their room was large, comfortable and cool. It was perhaps a little spartan, but at least it was airconditioned though Mike regretted the lack of a television. Kate on the other hand was pleased by the absence of a television and was delighted with the view from their first floor balcony overlooking the lush tropical garden and its array of brilliantly coloured flowering shrubs.

  It was their fourth day and Kate, who was not much travelled, was enjoying the exoticism of India. The previous evening, on a small floodlit stage set up under the coconut palms at the end of the hotel garden, they had watched a performance of Kathakali, a traditional Kerala dance performance, based on the Mahabharata epic and local folklore, which was said to date back to the 17th century, after having during the late afternoon watched the dancers' long and painstaking preparation, painting their faces and donning their brightly coloured costumes.

  The former fishing village had an exotic charm in spite of its hodgepodge collection of hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, souvenir shops, Internet caf?s and everything a tourist could need. They had explored Kovalam beach and its maze of small back alleys, which separated the many abandoned rice paddies and coconut groves. Several of the alleys were lined with small shops, tailors, stone carvers, moneychangers and restaurants.

  The Rymans were hardly aware that the town was almost entirely populated by foreign tourists like themselves, a holiday makers' playground, where the Indians played out their supporting roles as small shop owners, street vendors, lifeguards, waiters and hotel staff. The real Indians, as could be found in the fishing port that lay just two or three kilometres to the south, could have been light years away.

  However, it was not exactly the pristine beauty the Indian tourist brochures boasted and described with gushing superlatives. At first the couple did not notice the filth of the abandoned rice paddies, filled with garbage of all kinds, the narrow water ways that had been transformed into open sewers and the rubble strewn beach with its ill repaired, uneven, narrow shopfront promenade.

  The Rymans were early risers, up with the sun every day. That morning after a long walk and watching the fishermen at work, Mike persuaded Kate to try the Lonely Planet vegetarian restaurant for an early lunch. The restaurant lay amongst the rice paddies behind the main sea front area, it overlooked a small pond where a couple of swans gracefully glided to and fro over its smooth surface.

  Mike decided on a Masala Dosai for them both accompanied by fresh orange juices. Kate's curiosity as to exactly what was a Masala Dosai was satisfied, but only after a wait that seemed like an eternity. They had read in the guide book that patience was a virtue in Indian restaurants, something a grey haired woman at a neighbouring table overlooking the pond did not appreciate, loudly protesting: 'I came here for lunch not for diner,' in what seemed like a French accent.

  The dish consisted of a very large and thin rice flour crepe filled with potato, onion and curry flavourings, garnished with four small pots of different sauces composed of: dal - a kind of lentil, a coconut onion flavoured white paste, a spicy red sauce and an indefinable yellow-green sauce.

  Luckily for them the Lonely Planet presented it on a metal tray with knives and forks, since outside of tourist restaurants Indians would have eaten it with their fingers and their right hand only.

  It was an enjoyable meal and to digest it they returned to the hotel and spent the afternoon sunning themselves by the pleasant pool at the Rainbow restaurant that adjoined the Jasmine Palace.

  It was about four thirty when Mike complained of a sudden nausea and they hurriedly returned to their room where he immediately rushed to the bathroom and threw up violently spraying the floor with a watery yellow green vomit.

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  Chapter 33

  The following day West Mercian's shares fell by another third in morning trade as fear grew that more savers, alarmed by the collapse of the firms shares and the poor performance of property funds, would be tempted to withdraw their cash.

  From the very outset of the crises market analyst's recommendations for West Mercian shares switched to sell, as they saw the firm as ripe for takeover. In the first couple of working days of the New Year, West Mercian suffered a net outflow from it property funds of more than one billion pounds.

  Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, who had invested in property funds such as West Mercian, had lost
already lost up to twenty percent of their money over the previous months as the market turned down. However, up until the New Year it had been business as usual with all those wishing to withdraw their cash being free to do so.

  Such property funds were designated by the market as retail investment products, open to the general public, that is to say funds designed to accept investments from individuals, pooled and managed by a fund manager such as West Mercian. On the other hand wholesale investment products were structured for professional investors, the likes of company pension funds and corporate investors.

  It was a disastrous start to the year as retail property funds struggled to meet investors' withdrawals, and many had frozen the savings of several hundred thousand small investors for six months or more.

  Commercial property prices had slumped in December, bringing the total decline in the last quarter to ten percent, the sharpest decline since the previous recession more than a decade earlier.

  Many of those small investors who had jumped on the bandwagon three or four years earlier now wanted out while the going was still good and they still had substantial gains on their initial investment, especially those approaching retirement or who had already retired.

  The worse was yet to come for many small investors. Dozens of property funds that had been launched over the previous year or two were facing the same difficulties, trying to find cash to meet withdrawals as bad news from the commercial property sector ballooned.

  Parkly, if he had been up and about, would have noted that the pound was in free fall as the money changers in Kovalam marked it down against the rupee and the euro.

  In London and New York alarm bells were ringing with company profits warnings reaching their highest level since the dotcom collapse. Investors rushed to withdraw their money from collapsing commercial property funds and worse the latest bad news announced the possible downgrading of credit insurers with the risk of multiple defaults in debt markets.