The Redbury Extension

THE REDBURY EXTENSION

Jenkins Adlard presented well. You could stand outside their solid
white painted Georgian building with its brass name plate polished to
the point of illegibility, and think that they were an outfit which had
stood the test of time, that they had been through years of scrutiny by
those in the know and had lasted. Everything behind that door would be
orderly and professional, everyone in there efficient, knowing all the
answers and rejoicing in jobs well done; if you needed help on
commercial property, you could employ them with confidence, and to an
extent you would be right.

To the extent that you were wrong, it would not immediately concern
you. There was no need to think of the wheels which turned within to
give the service or the friction the wheels generated; only the service
was important and if it was seen not to be good enough, then those
inside the door had as much to lose as you had. And they knew it too
and it worried them, for the name of the game was to win and make money
and never to lose; and yet they knew they might lose out to any one of
a hundred firms who could step in and take business if they weren't
sharp enough. They were haunted by the fear of losing while others
gained and there was no fatalism in defeat; big numbers were at stake
and it was not possible to lose graciously; gracious losers were not
competitive, they did not have the necessary killer instinct hidden
beneath their necessary pleasantness.

From inside the building, from behind the door among the uplighters
and downlighters and such trimmings of minor opulence as befitted a
group of people pursuing an ambition they wanted recognised, the
partnership carried the fight to the market. Partners ruled indeed like
medieval barons, benevolent and otherwise, each specialised in one
arena in which they and their troops battled to make money. Between
them, they covered the full width of the property spectrum, from the
professional end where they offered services within rules of combat
sufficiently strict to allow everyone to maintain an image of
professionalism, to the sharp end where the selling and buying and
leasing of commercial property were subject only to the laws of jungle
warfare.

A battle it was too for Jenkins Adlard for they had been through bad
times. They had been part of the old school for whom gentlemanly
conduct had been the rule and where the clients' interests would
always, but always, be put first to the benefit of client and adviser.
They had thus lost ground for a generation by failing to see that the
game was changing and they had only just survived. The very fact of
their longevity had been their undoing; it had cushioned them with long
standing clients and a steady stream of work and left them complacent
in the sixties and seventies during the all-important development and
investment revolution. The partners at the time, near to retirement,
had already lined their nests and were comfortable. They had not then
joined with dozens of new hungry firms who appeared from nowhere with
new ideas to orchestrate the tearing down and rebuilding of the
commercial centres of Britain and make huge fees and commissions in the
process. Most importantly they had failed to cash in on the arrival in
the property market of new pension funds created by the big employers
of the nation. Pension contributions, like insurance premiums, had to
be invested if future commitments were to be met; and when the pension
funds joined the insurance companies in investing in property, the
numbers became very big indeed. There were then deals in the investment
arena which carried fees many times those to be made from the mere
leasing of an office or factory. That part of the market also held the
key to future business. Investors in real estate not only needed their
properties bought and sold for them; they needed to have them managed,
valued, let, re-let, refurbished, redeveloped. Many different types of
work would spring from the investment arena, but the old guard at
Jenkins Adlard hadn't seen that. Then, in the years that followed, as
the firm remained stricken with middle-aged inertia, its steady supply
of business began to fade as clients drifted away with management
changes, takeovers, bankruptcies, deaths; and little came in to replace
it because no-one entrusts their biggest transactions of the year to an
outfit going nowhere. It had taken the new generation of partners in
the eighties to see that like any shark, the firm had to keep moving to
stay alive.

At that stage, they had decided on a belated attempt to forge an
investment presence, but the legacy of the old guard still prevailed
and it would be a long climb back. So the partnership had brought in
new blood; they had gone for a hard driver called Jason Jay and left
him to assemble a team. He in turn had pulled in Robin Cator, a
compliant and therefore unchallenging assistant, and between them, they
had enlisted a few open market negotiators who were all young and
didn't have to be paid much until they started to do deals and prove
themselves; they needed only a combination of quick wits, aggression
and plenty of raw meat for breakfast.

For the first two years, Jay's team was driven hard; failure by any of
them to do deals created a vacancy. The team changed personnel rapidly
before reaching some stability with a combination of dynamic dealers
and fortuitously effective muddlers. They operated in the lower parts
of the investment market where the fighting was dirtiest. Right up at
the top of the league, there were the big four or five firms who had
led the revolution and drawn away from the pack, showing the way with
new ideas and then consolidating their lead by attracting the brightest
recruits. Those big firms between them now had many clients and advised
on huge institutional investment in property, and the more they did,
the more their credibility was consolidated.

Behind them were the second division outfits, a couple of dozen or
more, each with fewer clients but nevertheless a direct line to
institutional spending power.

But following on came the runners, a motley bunch working hard to stay
in touch in the open market, fighting among themselves to be first to
find an investment and then run, cap perhaps grudgingly in hand, to the
institutional investors or their retained advisers to try to get a fee
for introducing it. That's what the investment team at Jenkins Adlard
did; in their short history, they had only ever been third division;
they were open market agents; they were runners. To compete in that
game, they could have no charity in their make-up, only the desire to
make a lot of money. Any firm in that arena might try to raise its role
from mere broker to professional advisor in an attempt to gather
clients and join the higher divisions, but many didn't bother. Jenkins
Adlard's investment department hadn't bothered. They were dealers pure
and simple. Get the deal done and get on to the next, that was the
policy. Never mind the extra few hundred thousand pounds that the
property was worth or was not worth; if someone could be persuaded to
sign a contract, no matter that they had to be told that black was
white to get them to do it, a deal got done. It might be a good deal or
it might be the lousiest deal it was possible to imagine but they would
still go for it because it would bring a fee, and a lousy deal was
better than no deal. And in the time it took a bad deal to be seen to
be so, they could claim the market had changed. And they had still
earned a fee, and fees were the name of the game.

Yet for the individual in the firm, earning fees for the firm was only
part of the game; the real fight for those inside that door was to make
sure they got their own slice of the action, which meant getting up the
partnership ladder in order to gain some control over distribution of
profits. Progress in that direction depended on patronage. A
partnership was a much more self-justifying entity than a company where
directors had to answer to other shareholders. Potential partners
needed to be more committed than potential company directors. They
needed to endear themselves to those who would finally invite them to
become partners and share the profits; and among ploys of endearment,
from social courting upwards, spectacular results with lots of fees
were the most endearing of all.

It was that factor which really put the heat on Jay's team because it
was they of all the firm's operatives who had the best chances of
spectacular results. For sometimes an investment deal would be done
with ridiculous ease, and if the trick could be repeated over and
again, the individual brought in big money, and he or she was noticed.
Thus there was a little death or glory in each deal; success was a
point scored, failure was time lost, and more importantly, lost while
someone else gained. A deal either stuck or it didn't. The agent's job
was not like the valuer's or that of the property manager who could set
out to tackle some work and would know that the work would get finished
and bring a fee. When an agent set out to negotiate a deal, he would
not know whether it would get done until other people agreed to sign a
contract. He could only take all measures to increase his chances. That
came down to knowing the market, knowing the investors and their
advisers, knowing, more importantly, what line those advisers would
take on a purchase, how easily they would recommend their clients to
agree terms -whether indeed those advisers would "go for the
deal".

There were a quite few like that about, quite a few advisers who would
go for the deal, who would make a purchase recommendation to their
clients which few others in their position would make, just to get a
deal done. They played a dangerous game of course because their own
credibility was on the line; but they operated in a grey area of
opinion where no-one could say there and then that they were wrong,
positively and irrefutably wrong; things were rarely that clear cut. It
would happen in marginal situations where perhaps a property was priced
close to the levels of prime investments but was considerably less than
prime in quality. It might be seen by the market to be overpriced but
some people would still pile in and recommend their clients to buy
because they needed to do deals. It was understandable if not
forgivable; after all, advisers were in the same boat as runners when
it came to fees - they only got paid and noticed if things got bought,
and anyway, who was to say they weren't leading the market, taking a
step in a direction which the whole market would soon follow? The fund
manager would usually listen to the agent advising him, especially if
he was not sure of the market or himself, and preferred to hide behind
advice on the basis that you don't keep a dog and bark yourself. Then
the fund was said to be "agent-led"; and the combination which a runner
wanted to know about was a fee-hungry adviser and an agent-led fund,
and then "caveat emptor" - let the buyer beware; the principle was long
established.

Jenkins Adlard applied that principle well. It was probably the only
rule that Jay's team lived by. But the Arkon instruction changed the
game a bit. With that, Jenkins Adlard would move up half a division at
least. Rather late in the day and despite itself, the investment
department had netted a big investment client. Suddenly, instead of
only wheeling and dealing with the rest of them, rushing around trying
to get deals to stick, "throwing shit at the wall" as it was known, the
investment side of Jenkins Adlard could - indeed would now have to -
assume an air of respectability. The new work would put them under
scrutiny. It would demand new personnel, people to concentrate on the
detail of advising a major pension fund rather than just going for the
deal. For the partnership to leave Arkon's fortune in the hands of
Jay's raw meat eaters would be inviting disaster. Having deals rammed
down the throat of a new client by dealers whose prime consideration
was personal gain could quickly kill the goose. So although Jay and
Cator had petitioned strongly for the Arkon work and its additional
kudos, Whitworth had given it to Albert Abrahams, a details man, and
anyway, it suited Whitworth's purpose to have two sections doing two
jobs rather than one department doing both with a conflict of
allegiances. It would give him a bigger spread; indeed the Arkon
instruction would just about seal his election to senior partner when
Ernest Adlard retired.

Thus it was that Abrahams and Cressey worked alongside Jay and his
team. The two of them were viewed with a little contempt. They had an
easy job; a pile of client's money to spend, and there would be
hundreds of things to spend it on. Spending in-house clients' money was
easy; getting other buyers to spend theirs was much harder. Were they
hungry? Would they go for the deal? There would be much early probing
to find out. Jay's team would dig up all sorts of shit and throw it at
their wall. "Get it bought" they would say, wanting the kudos of having
lined it up without the responsibility of the long term results. Only
the fees mattered, especially for Jay. The more fees that had his name
associated with them, the greater his share of the profits.

Jay's team sat in an open area on the top floor of the building -
which they called the Dealing Floor in an attempt to keep up with their
stockbroking mates - generating noise and bustle, on the phone all day
every day scribbling in note books, gesticulating to emphasise what
they were saying, broadcasting any hint of success just to keep their
names in lights. Jay sat in regal privacy in his office off to one side
while Cator was jammed in a small room on the other with Abrahams.
Cressey sat out in the general office with Jay's team who were
supposedly overseen by Cator who took his role of second in command
very seriously. He would stick his head out to make sure the team were
all chasing business hard. But the team didn't need watching; there
were too many deals to do.

For there was a machismo in living it, an arrogance in being at the
sharp end. The role attracted prima donnas, as the forward line of a
soccer team attracts prima donnas. Do deals at all costs, that was the
policy, concentrate on nothing but business.

If any other matters arose, they could be dealt with by a curious
autospeak of which Roger Arnott was an exponent - the "did you have a
good weekend?" routine; "Were you in London or in the country?" he
would say when everyone knew that he still lived in a semi in
Cricklewood. He would come in on a Monday morning and, as he tore
himself out of his overcoat, say "Good Morning Ray. Good Weekend?"
Cressey would reply "Fine thanks, and you?" But before the "and you"
had reached him, Arnott would say "What did you do?" and, early on,
Cressey, not spotting the patronage, would usually start telling him
about something very ordinary like going for a ride in the car or going
to the fliks, but before he had even finished, Arnott would be saying
"Oh wonderful! How marvellous!..." turning to his desk. Cressey could
have said that he had had good shit and Arnott would have said it was
wonderful or marvellous.

Grace Irvine didn't even bother with conversation half the time. Her
first words to Cressey were civil enough - "Hello Ray. I'm Grace" but
there was a strained formality about her and her introduction was to go
into the log book as the nearest thing to affability she would utter
within his earshot for a while. She just worked and worked, like an
engine that wouldn't idle, full throttle or nothing. Like any good open
market agent, she never let facts and details stand in the way of a
deal - caveat emptor - and in full cry, she oozed aggression, a very
ungracious Grace, self-opinionated to the point where another view got
vitriol and scorn. But she did deals; she did a lot of deals.

The Honourable and anachronistic Sebastian Winn, tall, gaunt, blond
haired and serious, twenty eight but old before his time, wore trousers
which fell away from his torso like waders. He had recently married but
until then, Abrahams said, he would often come to work in a torn shirt
or odd rugby socks, oblivious or uncaring of either fact. In
conversation he would adopt an air of intrigue when talking of the most
banal things in order to make them sound interesting. On the phone, his
rich baritone would rise to prominence when he was talking to his wine
merchant, and fall when he was speaking to his broker. When it was
somewhere in between, he was trying to do deals.

James Penney, twenty four years old, five foot two with short, close
cropped fair hair and very stern expression, had a telephone voice
which penetrated even the cast iron concentration of Arnott and Irvine,
especially if he had been to the pub. They would pause in their
discussions, put hands over their phones and ask him to keep quiet but
it only brought a smile of satisfaction to his face.

Richards was more in the way of light entertainment. He didn't really
give a toss because his old man was loaded and ran him an allowance
which far exceeded his salary. He flashed around town in an immaculate
red Morgan which the old man had bought him for getting a degree and in
an attempt to keep him off the Kawasaki which had he bought himself
when Grandfather had kicked off and he had got his divvy. He was two
years out of college, a bit hooray and still went to the college
reunions every Tuesday night at the pub to talk about all the deals
everyone was, or more likely, was not doing. His conversation was laced
with laughter, - ironic, hearty or lusty depending on whether he was
talking to an agent, his old school friends or some woman. He tended to
wear striped shirts with white collars while others, notably Arnott
despite his airs and graces, still turned out in ageing Marks and
Sparks bog-standards.

The only real dead wood was Robin Cator. He survived on the fact that
he had been there almost from the beginning, Jay's first recruit and
Jay had to live with it. His appearance didn't help, - rotund,
bespectacled with frames like blinkers and lenses which gave him pig
eyes and an inbuilt expression of disdain whenever he was required to
listen to anything not connected with business or himself. Most of his
few deals had been done with Jay's assistance and at thirty one, he
held no remaining promise or mystery. He was just Jay's sidekick; he
simply did what Jay said and he tried to make the others do it too. He
wore braces, mainly because Jay did, according to Abrahams. At school
he would have been the sort of boy who got his head punched behind the
bike sheds and nobody cared. He introduced himself to Cressey with some
formality.

"How do you do. I'm Robin Cator" without any acknowledgment of the
possibility that Cressey might not have heard the name. "Welcome
aboard."

Abrahams had already forecast that Cator would say welcome aboard; it
was a phrase that Jay used and Cator always used Jay's phrases. He told
Cressey that he had been with the firm for only a year when they had
made him up to Associate Partner. In some firms, said Abrahams, that
might have amounted to something but at Jenkins Adlard, it wasn't worth
much more than a mention on the letter head. He was married with a baby
daughter and they lived in Chesham. He pronounced Chesham in a way
which seemed intended to make it desirable; it was Chesshhmm, a
purposeful utterance delivered with teeth stuck together and an
emphasis on the first syllable so that it sounded like rustled leaves;
the second syllable was truncated to leave his face in a smug grimace
which said "Get out of that" or a desirable middle class equivalent
thereof. Abraham's had mentioned that too.

Jane's role in matters on the other hand had long been a point of
mystery, indeed speculation. Jane was Jay's secretary. She would sit
beside him at the Post Meetings, giving the impression that she was
privy to whatever hatchet job Jay was planning on each of the people
who sat or stood around the room; she would look at them in turn, a
cryptic smile on her face which would not need much adjustment to
convert into the obligatory sneer when anyone said something which did
not meet with Jay's approval. She was married to an Army officer down
in Alder shot but nobody had met him. The speculation had centred on
the rumour that she and Jay might have been having a scene, but when
the rumour developed, the other girls had put them under scrutiny and
had failed to come up with any hard evidence, and the rumour had died
in something of an anti-climax. It had been replaced briefly by the
theory that it was perhaps Robin Cator who was doing the bizz with her,
but the very thought of him having an affair with anyone was too
hilarious to contemplate. The only thing to come out of that was that
James Penney, under the influence in the pub one night, had asked Cator
outright in a very loud voice whether it was true. Cator coughed and
spluttered in a way which said quite clearly that he would rather die
than make waves in Chesshhmm, and then he went very red, put down his
beer and went home. As he left, Richards had started singing "When the
Red Red Robin Goes Bonk Bonk Bonkin Along". Thereafter, people would
hum the tune whenever Cator appeared at the pub. The choruses became so
loud in the end that they were the main factor in him ceasing to drink
there at all.

As for Jay, he had started out as the prime mover and he was still the
major force; he did a lot of deals. The fact that there were thousands
of deals done every year and they were not all good ones, and many of
his were bad ones was neither here nor there. He brought in fees and
that was the name of the game. He conducted the affairs of the open
market team. Nothing was supposed to happen without his knowledge, but
he never said much about his own dealings until the deals were done; he
only publicised his own successes. He could smell a deal as a ferret
smells a frightened rabbit, and though physically a small man, he was a
master of psychological intimidation if it was going to get the deal
done. Making an indecisive client think that because he had taken so
long to consider what Jay was recommending to him, to decide finally
against a purchase at such a late stage would damage his credibility in
the market had resulted in a deal on more than one occasion. Deals
counted and because of them, he was odds-on to fill the
soon-to-be-vacant equity partner slot. His only problem if he had one
at all was that, apart from Cator, his recruitment efforts had been
almost too successful, for in Irvine and Arnott at least, he had two
subordinates whom he could hardly control; they were doing as many
deals as he was and chirping about not getting an equal slice of the
action. He had to treat them with care; no bullying tactics with them
for fear of the dismissive logic of Arnott or the head-severing
aggression of Grace Irvine giving him the worst of a skirmish in front
of the others.

They were all of a kind; they went for the deal before all other
considerations; and it was that factor most of all which would not be
apparent to innocents like Nigel Ledenham who stood outside the Jenkins
Adlard building seeking advice. Somewhere in the Smoke, there was
service and advice of the highest quality for sale, but each buyer had
to do his homework. Caveat emptor; the principle was long
established.