Straight to Hell

True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals

John LeFevre

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780802192080
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

The hilarious New York Times bestseller "sharply observes the lives of globe-trotting, overindulging investment bankers" ( Entertainment Weekly ). "Some chick asked me what I would do with 10 million bucks. I told her I'd wonder where the rest of my money went." —@GSElevator For three years, the notorious @GSElevator Twitter feed offered a hilarious, shamelessly voyeuristic look into the real world of international finance. Hundreds of thousands followed the account, Goldman Sachs launched an internal investigation, and when the true identity of the man behind it all was revealed, it created a national media sensation—but that's only part of the story. Where @GSElevator captured the essence of the banking elite with curated jokes and submissions overheard by readers, Straight to Hell adds John LeFevre's own story—an unapologetic and darkly funny account of a career as a globe-conquering investment banker spanning New York, London, and Hong Kong. Straight to Hell pulls back the curtain on a world that is both hated and envied, taking readers from the trading floors and roadshows to private planes and after-hours overindulgence. Full of shocking lawlessness, boyish antics, and win-at-all-costs schemes, this is the definitive take on the deviant, dysfunctional, and absolutely excessive world of finance. "Shocking and sordid—and so much fun." — Daily News (New York) "LeFevre's workplace anecdotes include tales of nastiness, sabotage, favoritism, sexism, racism, expense-account padding, and legally questionable collusion." — The New Yorker

The Stakeout

When I first move to Hong Kong in 2004, I’m seated in the middle of the trading floor, across from the credit traders and flanked by salespeople. This proximity is insane; everything I work on all day is the very definition of non-public, market-sensitive information. Everyone around me can see my screens and hear me on the phone; they can even listen in on my calls if they want.

Generally, I’m encouraged to take nonpublic conversations off the desk—either into a conference room or to the other side of the Chinese Wall, which in this case is an actual glass wall separating banking from sales and trading. But that’s simply not practical all the time.

No one seems to really care that it’s illegal, so I don’t worry about it. Besides, salespeople and traders are more fun to be around than investment bankers. Being in the middle of the action allows me to stay in tune with markets in real time, helping me provide more thoughtful and relevant advice to our clients. Traditionally, that’s always been part of the argument for keeping syndicate desks on the trading floor.

Typical scenario, I’m allocating a deal and I sense Jimmy (a sales guy) looking over my shoulder. “Whoa, whoa. You can’t give Roo’s client more bonds than mine.” Or, I hear a sales guy talking to a client: “Hey, I’m hearing that there’s a big Hutch deal coming next week.” He’s obviously heard this from listening to me on the phone, and it is the kind of sensitive information that a client could use to trade on. That’s when I know that I need to change seats.

I move to the very corner of the trading floor, sitting among the IT guys and the business unit managers. The BUMs are the people who are responsible for managing the expenses of the trading floor—from Herman Miller chairs and extra screens to stationery and color ink cartridges, it all runs through them. Most important, they sign off on our T&E, or travel and entertainment.

My new seat gives me an expansive view of the entire trading floor. Across from me is the credit research and strategy row, and then trading and credit derivatives, then credit sales, and then interest rate products and structured credit. There are another ten rows of people beyond that, but I only really care about my direct universe.

Sitting among the BUMs and IT guys feels like being at the lunch table with all the kids I made fun of in high school. I have more interesting conversations with my dentist. However, it does come with a few perks.

I no longer have to worry about expensing my numerous dodgy receipts. My new buddy, the BUM, will handle that. In fact, one of my colleagues, Peter, is so tight with the BUM (they both have and love a certain brand of German automobile) that he’s able to expense his dirty karaoke trips, no questions asked.

Peter’s a hero to the Latin American borrowers and New York coverage bankers who come through on their fake roadshows, under the guise of flogging subordinated perpetual non-call ten-year hybrid Tier 1 notes to Asian retail investors (mom and pop). These coupon-hungry “investors” know about as much about these structures as they do the Lehman minibonds they’ve dumped their retirement savings into.

Many of these issuers don’t really need to do a roadshow, but there’s an entire team of bankers in New York calling them, saying, “Hey, how would you like to go on a one-week tour of Asia? I’ll go with you.”

By day, they meet with private banking sales teams who care more about their own commissions than the underlying credits they’re selling. Invariably, the issuers and bankers carve out ample time for suit fittings and watch shopping. At night, they want Peter to take them for a nice Chinese seafood dinner followed by a visit to an exclusive karaoke bar, where they charge hot-dog-at-Yankee-Stadium prices for hookers.

At the end of the night, Peter receives a bill that says something nonsensical like Kyoto Toro Fuji Sushi Restaurant, which of course is what makes it possible to expense. Being best friends with the office BUM also helps.

Another great benefit of sitting among the guys in short-sleeved dress shirts and square-toed shoes is that we get a heads-up on the fire drills—the actual fire drills, not the circle-jerk bake-off pitches that junior investment bankers refer to as fire drills. This sounds trivial, except for the fact that for many of our fire drills, they shut down the elevators—and we’re up on the forty-eighth fucking floor.

I’ll get a five-minute heads-up, which is just enough time to discreetly and selectively spread the word to my friends. We’ll be on our third beer at the bar in Hong Kong Park by the time everyone else, exhausted and sweating, is spilling out of the ground-floor stairwell.

One day, Ken, the IT guy, spins his chair around. “Oi, geezah. I saw yer mate last night at Fenwick’s. Bloomin’ three o’clock in the morning. He was there. Clear as mud, I saw him. He was by ’imself. Fookin’ big cigar, he ’ad. Talkin’ to some bird. Didn’t leave by ’imself though, did he. Fookin’ Dirty Sanchez.”

It’s taken me almost a year to learn how to understand how Ken speaks. “Ken, are you trying to tell me that you saw Dirty Sanchez at Fenwick’s, by himself, smoking a cigar, and that he left with a hooker?”

“Is wot I said, innit?”

I have to repeat myself. “Ken, are you saying that you saw Dirty Sanchez do a late-night solo Fennie’s smash-’n’-grab at three a.m. on a Tuesday?”

“Are you retarded? Yeah, I saw it wif me own eyes.”

I still don’t really believe him. I believe that he believes it, but I don’t believe it. Fenwick’s is a dark and dingy basement firetrap of a bar in Wan Chai, and is probably the most famous and least discreet stop on every depraved tourist’s Hong Kong whore tour. There is no way that this guy, who has hundreds of subordinates and is known to every major buy-side client in the region, can be so blatantly injudicious, if for no other reason than that his own wife works in the industry—­banking, not whoring.

Dirty Sanchez is our regional head of

. He lives in Singapore but makes very frequent trips to Hong Kong, always opting for the “management flight.” The management flight is when you intentionally pick flight times in the middle of the day, so that you can have a leisurely morning, then lounge, drink, eat, and sleep your way through the meat of the day, finally arriving at your destination just in time for late-afternoon team drinks.

The genesis of his nickname, Dirty Sanchez, or Filthy for short, has nothing to do with any deviant proclivity; it’s simply a reference to the pet ferret he keeps above his upper lip. This nickname, which he is not aware of, was actually given to him by a prominent hedge fund manager.

What makes the Tom Selleck homage even more ridiculous is his pairing of this voluminous womb broom with the worst comb-over any of us have ever seen. It’s so bad that if you ever have to walk with him to a meeting on a windy day, he forces you to keep changing directions as he attempts to prevent his homemade hair hat from flapping up and saying hello.

Of course, no one is really surprised by the idea of infidelity or carnal indiscretion. It’s a fairly standard industry practice and certainly not an aberration exclusive to Asia. One of my bosses in London lived in a palatial home on Holland Park but also owned a flat in Mayfair that his wife didn’t know about. He was well known for arranging an FBT (Fake Business Trip) and staying in Mayfair with one of his side chicks. The issue with Filthy is that he is so sanctimonious that having a solo Fenwick’s game would be off the charts.

A few weeks later, I’m at my desk when Ken strolls in midmorning, looking rough and smelling like stale beer and two-week-old sheets.

“Fookin’ ruff night, it was. Killed two birds wif one stone, if u get me drift. Was leavin’ wif one and ’ere comes walkin’ anovah wif massive tits. ’Ello, luv, right, ur comin’ ’ome wif me. Shagged ’em bof in tha bum. Mate, when I woke up, me bed looked like a butchah’s block. Was afraid I might’ave committ’d a murdah.”

If I spun around every time I heard him say something like that, I’d never get any work done; so I just ignore him. Ken keeps going. “Oi, u ’earin’ me? Saw ur mate again. two o’clock in tha mornin’ this time. I was cunt’d, maybe fif’een lagers in me. But it was definitely ’im olrite. I’d bet me mum’s life on it. And I like me mum very mutch.”

We can settle this right now. It just so happens that Filthy is in the office, standing three rows across from me, talking to a few of his salespeople. “Ken, stand up. Come over here.” I pull him closer to me and point across the floor. “Ken, first of all, he’s not my mate. But I just want to be clear. You saw him, that guy right there, by himself at Fenwick’s again last night?”

“Too right, mate. I’m not a fookin’ id-i-ut.”

I immediately start firing off Bloomberg messages to some syndicate and sales colleagues and friends, as well as to a few clients—all of whom are well aware of the running joke that is Dirty Sanchez. “It’s confirmed. Filthy has a filthy solo Fennie’s game.” The problem is that without definitive proof, there is still this lingering doubt. A close friend and former colleague turned competitor proposes a solution: a stakeout.

The chances of success seem sl...