CNBC Business | Eurotypes: The Private Equity Prince

Eurotypes: The Private Equity Prince

Mark Jones braves a trip inside the mind of a money making golden boy

Brian didn’t want to appear old-fashioned, he just wished Kurt’s manners were a little better. They were at the back of business class on the flight from Frankfurt, but Kurt pushed his way to the exit door the second the seatbelt signs went off. An Englishwoman in the second row said “Sorry!” in a pointed way as Kurt’s case caught her in the back of the calf. Brian apologised for Kurt, who was already through the door and on the phone.

He stayed on the phone as they sped through arrivals and into the waiting Audi limo. It’s true that when Brian first brought in Kurt to manage the takeover, he didn’t expect to be dealing with Sir Galahad. You don’t get courtly manners when you bring in the most feared private equity operators in the market. But having put his neck on the line and alienated half the board and all of the workforce, he didn’t expect to be treated like the invisible man by his new partner. A small acknowledgement of common humanity from time to time might not, he thought, go amiss.

Kurt was aware of Brian’s presence, in a way. He’d learned a very useful discipline early in corporate life after reading an article about the racing driver Michael Schumacher. Apparently the key to Schumacher’s ascendancy was his ability to focus two corners ahead and perform the current manoeuvre on autopilot. Kurt liked that. Brian was processed, dealt with, and the phone conversation Kurt was having was just going through the motions. His real focus was on the upcoming meeting.

Sure, some people couldn’t cope. One ex-girlfriend used to resort to evermore desperate means to get his attention. It only worked once, when she took off her top in Nobu. That was quite funny, he acknowledged. He just sat there and smiled till she eventually got her things and stormed out. Embarrassment wasn’t a word he’d ever bothered learning how to spell.

To Kurt, relationships were like deals. You found your target and pursued it relentlessly. You have to find time for some of the soft stuff at the beginning – the emotional sell, whatever you call it. In fact, what you were really selling was the promise of future benefits, and they (girlfriends/ managers) knew it. Kurt’s asset values were pretty strong: the flats in Geneva, Dubai and London’s Docklands, the Miami beach house, the six Porsche 911s (why not – he liked Porsches, and why should he ever need more than two seats?), the Rothkos, the share in the yacht.

After a takeover, you enjoy the sexy bit: stripping out the assets, pulverising the balance sheet, ramping the share price. But you don’t hang around longer than three years. It gets boring then, like a marriage.

Kurt had in fact been married, but that was when he was with the bank – and people working in banks fall for all kinds of sentimental crap. Kurt’s memory of that time was of being surrounded by endless fussiness: the mahogany and oil paintings, the stuffy boardroom, the flowery wedding invitations, the curtains and drapes in their Chelsea house. Crap, all crap. He didn’t hang around long after the baby was born. A guy can only take so much!