He was silent for a moment. We both knew this wasn’t a courtesy call.
«What’s that you said? Who’s Burkle?»
«An American billionaire in the supermarket business».
«But I thought you wanted someone who knew asset management. What does this Burkle guy know about that?»
«I don’t know, but you and Safra seem to have lost interest».
After another silence, Beny said, «Hold on, Bill. We haven’t lost interest. Don’t do anything until you hear from me. I’m calling Edmond right now».
I hung up and paced my Hampstead cottage, nervously waiting.
An hour later Beny called back. «Bill, I just spoke to Edmond. He’s ready to do this with you».
«He is? Are you sure? Just like that?»
«Yes, Bill. He’s offered to send his top guy, Sandy Koifman, to London from Geneva the day after tomorrow. I’ll fly over as well. We’ll sit down and get this done right then and there».
This was typical billionaire psychology. If I hadn’t had a competing offer, Safra wouldn’t have done anything. But since another deal was on the table, Safra couldn’t resist.
Two days later at 11:00 a.m. I met Beny and Sandy at Edmond Safra’s elaborate six-story town house on Berkeley Square. Sandy was about forty years old, six feet tall, and had swarthy, Mediterranean features. A former Israeli fighter pilot, he had a reputation for taking bold bets in the financial markets, driving Ferraris, and vigilantly keeping Safra out of trouble. As we settled into the library, I could feel Sandy sizing me up. He liked to put everybody through the wringer before doing any business, but Safra had told him to cut a deal and that’s what he did.
The offer was straightforward and fair: Edmond Safra and Beny Steinmetz would put $25 million in the fund and provide some seed money for the company’s operations. Safra’s bank would settle trades, value the fund, and do all the paperwork. Most importantly, if I did a good job, Safra would introduce me to all of his clients, who were among the richest and most important families in the world. In return, Safra would get half the business and give some of his share to Beny for bringing us together. The offer was a no-brainer and I accepted it on the spot.
What made this deal particularly sweet was that Safra had a reputation for doing business only with people whom he and his family had known for generations. It was unprecedented for him to do business with a stranger like me. It wasn’t clear why he had made this exception, but I wasn’t going to question my good fortune. As if Sandy could read my thoughts, after I accepted he said, «Congratulations, Bill. I know Edmond is excited about this, but I’ll be watching you very closely».
In contrast to Burkle’s contract, the one I received from Safra’s lawyers a week later said exactly what I thought it would say and we signed it shortly thereafter. When I told Burkle I wasn’t doing the deal with him, he lost his temper, swore at me, and threatened to sue. Nothing came of it, but at least I’d finally gotten to see the sharp-elbowed tough guy he was famous for being.
I was now ready to go. I spent the months leading up to Christmas tying up loose ends as I prepared to move to Moscow. Only it wouldn’t just be me moving to Moscow — because I’d met a girl.
Her name was Sabrina and we’d met six months earlier at a loud party in Camden Town. She was a beautiful, dark-haired Jewish girl from North West London, and unlike anyone I’d ever known. Underneath her pleasant appearance was a combination of fiery determination and delicate fragility that I found overpowering. She’d been orphaned at birth and adopted by a poor family from East London, but somehow she’d managed to leave the East End, lose the cockney accent, and become an actress in British soap operas. On the night we met, we left the party together, went straight to her house, and were inseparable from that moment forward. Two weeks later, I gave her the keys to my cottage, and the following day when I returned from a jog, I found two large suitcases in the hallway. Without ever talking about it, we were living together. Under normal circumstances I would have slowed things down, but I was so charmed by her that she could have done anything and I wouldn’t have minded.
After signing the deal with Safra, I called her from the law firm’s office and asked her to meet me that evening at Ken Lo’s, our favorite Chinese restaurant, near Victoria Station, to celebrate. She was strangely sad at the meal and I didn’t understand what was going on. But then, over dessert, she leaned forward and said, «Bill, I’m really happy for you, but I don’t want to lose you».
«You’re not losing me. You’re coming with me!» I said passionately.
«Bill, if you’re asking me to give up everything and move to Moscow, you have to commit and marry me. I’m thirty-five years old and I want to have kids before it’s too late. I can’t just go gallivanting around the world with you for fun». Underneath that happy-go-lucky, sexy, crazy woman was a regular Jewish girl who just wanted to start a family, and it all came out that night at Ken Lo’s. I didn’t want to break up, but marrying her after having known her less than a year seemed rash. I didn’t respond, and when we went home she started packing her suitcases.
Her taxi arrived, and without saying a word, she opened the door and awkwardly dragged her suitcases down the gravel path toward the street.
I was so overcome with the thought of her leaving me that I decided, What the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound, and chased after her. I swung around in front of her, blocking her way. «Sabrina, I don’t want to lose you, either. Let’s get married, move to Moscow, and start a life together». Tears welled in her eyes. She let go of her suitcases, fell into my arms, and kissed me.
«Yes, Bill. I want to go everywhere and do everything with you. I love you. Yes. Yes. Yes».
9. Sleeping on the floor in Davos
Everything was falling into place. I had a $25 million commitment from Safra, I had great investment ideas, and I was about to start an amazing adventure in Moscow with the girl I loved. But one big fly in the ointment had the potential to ruin everything: the upcoming Russian presidential elections in June 1996.
Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected president, was running for reelection, but things did not look good for him. His plan to take the country from communism to capitalism had failed spectacularly. Instead of 150 million Russians sharing the spoils of mass privatization, Russia wound up with twenty-two oligarchs owning 39 percent of the economy and everyone else living in poverty. To make ends meet, professors had to become taxi drivers, nurses became prostitutes, and art museums sold paintings right off their walls. Nearly every Russian was cowed and humiliated, and they hated Yeltsin for it. When I was getting ready to move to Moscow in December 1995, Yeltsin had an approval rating of only 5.6 percent. At the same time, Gennady Zyuganov, his communist opponent, had been rising in the polls and enjoyed the highest approval rating of any of the candidates.
If Zyuganov became president, many people feared that he would expropriate everything that had been privatized. I could stomach a lot of bad things in Russia such as hyperinflation, strikes, food shortages, even street crime. But it would be an entirely different story if the government just seized everything and declared capitalism over.
What was I supposed to do? There was still a chance Yeltsin would win, so I wasn’t going to back out of Safra’s deal. But I also couldn’t pour Safra’s money into a country that could literally take it away overnight. I decided that the best course of action was to go through with the move to Moscow and wait. The fund could keep all the money in cash until it became clear who would win the election. In the worst case, I could pack it all in, the fund could return the money to Safra, and I could return to London and start over.