Other People’s Money — and How the Bankers Use It by Louis D. Brandeis was a collection of articles about the predatory practices of big banks, published in book form in 1914. Nearly a century later, it remains in print. In 1991 Danny de Vito starred as ‘Larry the Liquidator’ in the film Other People’s Money. The wanton boys of banking sport with us in life and art and in Justin Cartwright’s latest novel.
Opening with a record of the service of thanksgiving for the life of Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal, CBE, Bt, at St Paul’s cathedral, listing attendees both fictional and real — Alfred Brendel played Chopin — it moves to a villa in Antibes where the fading Sir Harry, his voice ‘thin and distorted, like a wartime radio broadcast’, is attended by the loyal and lovelorn Estelle Welz,who has been ‘the pilot fish to his whale’ for the last 32 years. The private bank Tubal and Co., founded by Moses Tubal (sly reference to Shylock’s friend in The Merchant of Venice) in 1671, is now led by younger son Julian, alumnus of the Dragon school and Eton and heir to a double-barrelled name achieved by marriages to ever ‘fairer’ consorts.
Sir Harry’s tenet of ‘loans one third, assets two thirds’ has been fatally ditched on the hedge fund and derivatives rollercoaster (supposedly vindicated by the Gaussian curve for which the equation is given) and Julian must get power of attorney to release funds from family and other trusts to flesh out the accounts for a possible sale to Cy Mannheim of the American bank First Federal.
In a converted lifeboat station in Cornwall, Artair MacCleod, first husband of Sir Harry’s wife Fleur and recipient of Tubal alimony in recognition of his bringing ‘a captive wood nymph’ to Sir Harry’s bed, mounts local productions of Thomas the Tank Engine and writes his life’s work, a five-hour performance based on the life and novels of Flann O’Brien. Daniel Day-Lewis is in his sights as star of the film.
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