Something in the Water(63)

I’ll tell him once this is done. When we sell the diamonds today, all traces of the bag will be gone, all traces of the plane gone. The diamonds are the last loose end.

Mark’s contact has come through a girl called Victoria—she was in the same training program as Mark at J.P. Morgan. She dropped out pretty early, specialized, and now she’s a quant trader in the Equity Algorithmic Trading team at HSBC. She’s Persian and has a half brother who advises and trades in tangible assets: that’s art and luxury goods, jewelry, Ming vases, Napoleon’s hat, that kind of stuff. Only joking, not Napoleon’s hat. Well, actually, yeah, maybe Napoleon’s hat, who knows? The liquid assets of the super-rich, whatever form they may take.

Victoria’s half brother has a website.

Naiman Sardy Art & Asset Advisors. My favorite page on the website is titled “Art as Collateral.” I wonder what Monet, de Kooning, Pollock, Bacon, and Cézanne, being the most liquid of all the assets, would have thought about being collateral.

According to the website:

    In the wake of the international financial crisis, investors have begun to see the benefits of allowing nonmonetary assets such as art, yachts, jewelry, and other collectibles into their overall investment portfolios. These tangible assets, however, need expert care and delicate management, not just in the areas of storage, display, preservation, and insurance, but primarily as tradable assets of substantial value. They require the same level of oversight needed by solely financial investment portfolios. Here at Naiman Sardy we will ensure you achieve and maintain a balanced portfolio, by advising and making you, the investor, aware of current market values and advising on when to buy, to sell, or to hold while assisting at every stage with procurements and sales.



Well, there you go. A protective shell of art. Art being used like cigarettes in prison.

I suddenly realize the double meaning of “oversight.” “They require the same level of oversight needed by solely financial investment portfolios.” One of life’s ironies, I suppose.

I fear the clients of Naiman Sardy Art & Asset Advisors will be first against the wall when the revolution comes, collateral or no.

Anyway, Mark has asked Victoria to contact her brother Charles for “a client” of his. They’re LinkedIn friends, Mark and Victoria, and after a brief catch-up over coffee Mark brought it up. Would her brother be interested in meeting a potential new client who is looking to dissolve some assets over the next few months? The idea seemed to go down well. Mark said she sat up a little taller in the café and very much enjoyed playing the role of middleman. Her brother’s business had been hit quite hard by the current climate, apparently, and Charles could really use the commission right now. Victoria handed over one of Charles’s business cards and told Mark to pass it on to his “client.” She even thanked Mark for thinking of Charles for it.

Mark made the call, set up the meeting. I was to go, not as the client but as the client’s PA, Sara. So far so standard; I knew from Caro’s stories that most of her gallery sales came over the phone or through personal assistants buying at openings. Why go to buy your own collateral if you can send someone else?

I’m meeting Charles this morning. I leave Mark in the Patisserie Valerie at Green Park and make my way, alone, down onto Pall Mall.

The showroom in Pall Mall is discreet. As you enter, it looks more like a high-end private auction house than anything else. Self-contained display plinths pepper the room, housing treasures that I’m guessing probably aren’t for sale. Just totems placed to reassure clients that this is the right place for them, class-related dog whistles, trophies, emblems. But, to be fair, I’d imagine everything in there can be bought for the right price.

In one case, an Incan death mask glimmers warm in the glow of spotlights behind a good inch of thick glass.

In another case a Japanese suit of armor.

In another a necklace with one glistening briolette diamond hanging as thick and as fat as a sherbet lemon from a string of lesser diamonds twinkling in the showroom lights.

Charles greets me. He’s a healthy, ruddy, well-haired red-trouser-wearer, with the hint of a South of France tan.

He appears to be the only one around. Perhaps they only open the shop for meetings. I can’t believe there’s much foot traffic, even in Pall Mall.

We sit nestled at the back of the room at an oversized mahogany partners desk. If it’s not a Chippendale, it’s definitely in the manner of Thomas Chippendale. I guess you’re meant to notice these things. I guess that’s the point of them; that’s probably why they’re chosen.

We sit and make light small talk deep inside the thickly carpeted showroom, Charles makes me a pod coffee, and I figure the business conversation ball is in my court. I’m sure Charles could keep the small talk going and divert me all day if I don’t cut to the chase. He’s definitely not the sort to bring up business first—it wouldn’t be the done thing in his trade, I’d imagine, cutting to the chase.

Even East End market-stall traders love the patter, don’t they? Of course, Charles is no market-stall trader, let’s be clear. He’s Oxbridge through and through: precise, sharp, but riddled with the self-imposed shame of underperforming his own potential. It seems that the one drawback of having every opportunity in life is that you can never fulfill that level of expectation. You’ll always fall short of your own potential. Any achievement will be the minimum expected of you, considering the circumstances, and any failure will be purely due to character weakness.