It was six in the morning when Kennedy jogged down to the river bank and under Chelsea Bridge towards the park. He kept himself fit, ate no more than was necessary, drank little or no alcohol, and whenever he could ran three or four miles in the morning before setting off for the City. Battersea Park, bordering the Thames, had over the years become bourgeoisified, invaded by young, upper-middle-class professionals, or as George Pike like to call them, Hooray Henrys and Sloanies.
Unlike Fitzwilliams, Kennedy’s tastes were for all that was modern, to his eyes. It was why he chose to live in the modernistic spacious fifth floor Chelsea Bridge Road Warf apartment overlooking the Thames. To one side he had a panoramic view of the river and to the other the park offered a carpet of greenery. The unsightly ruin of Battersea Power Station, in a state of suspended animation, was hidden from view on the other of the luxurious apartment complex.
Surrounded by the springtime exuberance of the park, his early morning sortie was a moment of tranquillity before plunging into the challenging world of City banking. At moments the park vaguely reminding him of his home in Limerick, that is before traffic, and noise, built up on the opposite bank of the river. Kennedy’s choice of apartment offered him another non-negligible advantage, it was within walking distance of the Chelsea Kings Road area, whenever he felt inclined to make the effort, with its pubs and restaurants where he could meet his friends, and equally important an easy taxi ride to and from the West End and City when traffic permitted.
Central London with the wealthy areas fringing its parks had become an international melting pot, in much the same way — but in opposite senses — as the poorer areas beyond, a global city. Chelsea, Kensington, Belgravia and parts of Nottinghill Gate were reserved for the truly rich: Russian oligarchs, American bankers, Asian billionaires, petro-dollar princes and a mixture of very wealthy Europeans. The rest was abandoned to a multitude of Third World immigrants struggling to make a living. As for the grassroots English middle and upper middle classes they had become misfits, forced to flee to the wilderness of Cheam and beyond.
Kennedy’s apartment was as clean as a new pin not only because he had a very efficient housekeeper, but because he led a Spartan life and in fact spent as little time there as possible. It was almost without character, a place to sleep, shower, keep his clothes, in short a landing place where he could make a quick stopover before moving to where the action was. He was meticulous, opting for an uncluttered decor, almost sparsely furnished, with clean lines and decorated with a few well placed but unobtrusive modern paintings by recognised avant-garde artists. Of course there was everything that was the very latest in home theatre and sound systems to keep his mind occupied whenever he found himself alone. There were few personal belongings such as memorabilia; his material needs and comforts were few. What turned him on were people, he like to be surrounded by people and not necessarily friends, in fact almost anybody would do, not as an audience, but those who lived in the world that was moving, where there was action.
Kennedy was immensely curious, anything that was new and foreign interested him, Russia, Eastern Europe, Japan, China, he kept misery at a safe distance and was thus very selective when it came to things Indian or African, perceived by him as underdeveloped, putting a solid sanitary cordon around disease, misery and mysticism.
Pat Kennedy, like Fitzwilliams, though to a somewhat lesser degree, had little to worry as far as his world was concerned. Even if the unimaginable were to happen and bank went belly up I’d come up smelling of roses Pat thought, reassured, rubbing his hands together with self-satisfaction. It would take an event of catastrophic scale to separate the two men from the world of power and luxury they had become used to.
The moment Fitzwilliams became uncontested head of the family bank in 2000; he unwittingly joined a new and rapidly growing class of what some described as modern robber barons. He was then paid a relatively more modest salary, but within a short period of time this had rocket to £750,000 — then well over one million pounds a year in early 2007, to which were added a profits linked bonus and various share options. As if this was not enough the bank paid for a fleet of Mercedes and drivers, at his and his close cohorts’ disposal, the leasing of private jets and helicopters, in addition the bank paid for just about every other of Fitzwilliams’ day to day living needs: from flowers to telephone bills, from restaurants to theatres, from clothes to his luxurious second homes in Poole and Biarritz, where he could, according to his contract, enjoy a seven weeks of annual vacation to recuperate from the effort of jetting around the world first class.
Kennedy was not far behind in the gravy train. In addition to salaries, bonuses and perks, were directors’ pension funds, guaranteed to ensure them the equivalent of fifty percent of their annual compensation based on their final working year’s pay cheque, plus a retirement bonus of one year’s salary.
But it was not the salary or the bonuses that motivated bankers such as Fitzwilliams and Kennedy; they were also driven by a pure lust for power, the freedom of being able to do whatever they wanted, the power of life and death over the bank’s employees and suppliers of services. They wielded the power of medieval princes. Domination, ambition and control were the forces that drove them. To call them masters of the universe was no hackneyed phrase, in their universe they were the masters, answerable to neither God nor man — and especially not the bank’s hapless shareholders.
With each day profits accumulated as deals were struck and as the value of the investments and assets they controlled, or their clients had in hock to them, climbed. They were on a roll as had never before been seen. They could do no wrong and they revelled in their power and wealth, jetting out of London to Dublin and Amsterdam, visiting the bank’s European, Caribbean and Indonesian interests, punctuated by weekends in Poole, Biarritz and other watering holes for the rich. The only thing that held them back in their reckless scramble for more power was an unalterable obstacle: each day had only twenty four hours.
In less than a decade the Irish Netherlands Bank had become a financial force in the City, with its links to the Continent, the Baltic, Central Europe and beyond. Fitzwilliams had gambled on expanding the bank’s business by creating Nassau Asset Management and its investment funds. His success was undeniable. He had become the personification of the bank’s emblem: a seated lion with one paw firmly posed on a globe and a sceptre in its jaws.
Robber barons was no exaggerated term, men of Fitzwilliams’ breed became despots, manoeuvring reluctant shareholders and governing boards into surrendering their authority, leaving their appointed executives the liberty of expanding their empires, producing ever growing profits. In compensation share prices rose vertiginously bringing bliss to their disenfranchised owners.
Who would have been so rash as to criticize Fitzwilliams’ success? He transformed the bank into his own personal empire, accepting no truck from middle management whose sole duty was to execute his orders, as for lesser mortals in the bank they were all but invisible, well paid providing they toed the line, implementing the policies, good or bad, determined by Fitzwilliams and his unshakably loyal lieutenant Pat Kennedy.
INB Holdings Plc was part of what economist declared was a new financial order. Propelled by their own momentum, banks went from success to success, growth begat growth and profits begat profits, flooding the economy with seemingly never ending flow of money. Few cared to pause and ask where that torrent of money came from? The answer was credit. Growth and prosperity had been created by a vast expansion of consumer credit. INB, like every other bank had opened the flood gates to a wall of new money. Businesses and individuals were encouraged into embarking on a wildly unprecedented spree of leveraging, creating a mountain of debt to be reimbursed at some indeterminate date, on the expectancy of ever rising asset values and revenues. In short the Fitzwilliams’ and the Kennedys of the financial world had foisted the greatest Ponzi scheme ever invented on their unsuspecting and naïve customers.
July
; Santorini Greece