Day Tripping
In 1998 when I was at the apex of my banking career, I met Terry. I was on the Management Committee of Bankers Trust Company, where I ran both the Global Private Banking and was Vice Chairman of BT Alex. Brown, responsible for their Private Client Services business. It was a big job with loads of perks, easily the most I ever received. The biggest perk was a car and driver, which was pretty silly for someone who lived in Manhattan. My commute was from 15th Street to 48th Street, so 33 blocks or just over one mile. Now, I did have a few trips per week to our downtown offices, where our CEO was in residence and where the global Management Committee meetings were held in a video conference room that looped in Executives in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney. And every once in a while there was a trip to Greenwich or an evening social function. While I was playing Billy Big Deal from the back seat of a black Lincoln Continental, Terry was trying to run a new media start-up on a shoestring down on 12th Street.
I was part of a group of banking pals that were earning way too much discretionary income and had a general view of the world that trees grew to the sky and we were the kind of savvy investors that knew how to spot winners in the private equity realm. Even if we were capable bankers (I refuse to challenge that highly debatable possibility), the chances that private equity investing was as easy as we thought it, was unlikely. One day, one our most competent bankers, a guy named Bruce, who was one of the original leveraged buyout deal guys on the Street, brought us a deal. It was a new media business that aggregated data about doing business online and sold reports on that topic. Their gimmick was that they found a way to gather all the best outlooks of the big internet primary research shops, and put them into one report that showed interested parties all the best thinking on the topic. This information was in the public domain, so the theory was that you didn’t need permission to use it, repackage it and sell it. The two guys who had built the business were long-time Madison Avenue advertising guys who knew the value of market research and knew how to package things in a very appealing way. Sam was the CEO and Cleary the big-picture idea guy who was Mr. Madison Avenue. The other, guy, Terry, was the COO/CFO and Chief Cook and Bottle-washer. Sam laid out the vision, Terry explained the financial projections. Terry is the one who told us the company was worth $75 million with a perfectly straight face.
We all ended up investing a total of $2 million at a valuation near $20 million, which was still a pretty rich deal even for those heady internet-boom days. For me that sat in a portfolio of private equity deals that grew ridiculously larger than good sense should have allowed. Our problem, besides being too flush, was that one of our members had hit a grand slam internet homerun (it just so happens it was in the internet research space) that made us all imagine how possible the upside was in the era of easy money and internet riches. We might have found financial religion during the turn of the Millennium, except that Bankers Trust Company, my mother ship for twenty-three years, got sold to Deutsche Bank in 1999. While many of my brethren love to bemoan that reality and denigrate the invading Germans, it would be hard for me to do likewise since as a Management Committee member, I had a vote and went along with the $93/share transaction despite the loftier levels the stock had enjoyed the prior year. With hindsight, it was a damn fine deal for us and we were lucky to get it done.
For reasons too complicated for this story, I stayed on at Deutsche Bank as CEO of Deutsche Asset Management, Inc. and spent a year integrating the asset management businesses of Bankers Trust, Alex. Brown, Morgan Grenfell and Deutsche Bank into a $325 billion business that was the 4th largest of its kind in the world at that moment. Life was too good. I had been paid a bundle from the sale and my golden parachute. I had an exalted new position that paid me more than I probably deserved with all the old perks including that car and driver. I had to cow-tow to Brits in London and Germans in Frankfurt, but I was the King of New York for that year. Meanwhile, Terry was toiling away on 12rh Street trying to build that new media business while riding the subway and eating lunch at The Bon Vivant diner next to The Strand used-book store.
In late 1999, Bruce organized a dinner at a small Italian restaurant for the two of us to meet with Sam and Terry. The topic was the idea of launching an internet incubator (the private equity idea du jour). The elevator pitch was quite compelling; two Wall Street guys meet two Madison Avenue guys and help young internet companies grow to their full potential. Bruce and I would invest some of our questionably-gotten banking gains alongside an equivalently-valued pile of shares in the research aggregator company which Sam and Terry ran and into which we were all four then invested. That would seed a fund into which we would gather up a bunch of money from our collective well-heeled friends and colleagues. We set to launch the fund, which we cutely called B2B-Hive, during the same month (March, 2000) that the NASDAQ technology-loaded index started its massive decline of over 50% (it took 15 years for that to be reclaimed). We joked about it as we banked the almost $40 million we raised for the fund ($20 million of which came from my old friends at Deutsche Bank), saying that wizened veterans like us would surely prevail in any market environment.
So, off we went into the teeth of the dot.bomb of 2000 and 2001, making ten incubator investments beyond our core investment in Sam and Terry’s research aggregator. My story is less about what happened to the investments (B2B-Hive had its ups and downs and ended very strongly due to that core investment). What really happened was that four decent people came together and formed a strong partnership bond that succeeded in its mission. It is also the story of friendships for life that were forged in those twenty years.
Today was a summer Saturday in Lower Manhattan for Kim and me. On the spur of the moment, we decided to drive up to Croton-on-Hudson to visit with our dear friends Terry and his wife Paula. We have a hard time thinking of two finer friends with whom to spend a hot afternoon. We looked out over the river and drank lemonade from the lovely modern home Terry and a Paula have built with the proceeds from our collective investment success. Terry has been my hero for many years for his calm and unflappable demeanor. Here we were, sitting on the porch talking of travels to Amalfi and Mongolia. We had come quite a distance already. His initial valuation for his company understated its ultimate worth by 4X. That is a fraction of the value Terry and a Paula have created in our lives and the lives of all who know them. We decided on the way home that we have to do more day tripping like this as we move towards retirement.