While employed by the NYSE firm, Irving Lundborg & Co. I was deemed uncontrollable and needing proper supervision. So, I had my own.personal, compliance officer. Living on the edge, skirting the fucking rules were my specialty. And the powers that were at Lundborg decided that they needed a pair of extra eyes to supervise my trades.
Peter Costigan had all the necessary bona fides to ride herd on me: Stanford Undergraduate and Stanford Business School degrees. Most important he had a great sense of humor and with me, was a fucking hard drinker, though not as hard as me and he did escape my fate of needing to go to Alcoholic Anonymous, which turned out to be a life changing experience.
Peter often went to London to flog stocks.One day, at a boozy lunch, he commented that his niche market in London were investment companies that owned investing dollars.The UK had at the time, 'currency controls' to restrict pounds leaving the UK. So Peter would trundle off to London, ensconce himself at the Connaught and generate commission from investment companies that owned dollars. Peter concentrated on local California company shares.
One of my great, most fun, drinking experiences was with Peter and his closest friend, Bill Kneas. One evening, after getting suitably fucking smashed at the North Beach Restaurant, Peter left Bill and me to continue our drinking and get more fucking brilliant with each drink.
A most wonderful feeling when really smashed is the feeling of being a genius. No chance to replicate that feeling when sober. I see and feel all my 'pimples' when sober.
Bill lived in Marin and his wife came in to get him after speaking with him on the phone. Bill asked me to care for his car, an Oldsmobile Convertible. In those days I thought that genius was my first calling and being a big shot my second calling. So the Princess and I had a place in the City, at the Clay Jones Apartments, with a fabulous view of the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. Loved to sit in an easy chair, inhaling Grants 8 Year Old Scotch smashed, enjoying the view.
The parking attendant at the North Beach told me that he had two Olds converts, a blue and a gray. Which one did I want? I chose the gray and drove off in it. All hell broke loose when it was discovered that I chose the wrong color car. Batting .500 was not acceptable. After suitably apologizing to the owner upon return of the car the following day, I sold the guy some stock in King Resources which then went bankrupt.
After looking into 'currency controls' and deciding that a prepaid London gig would be terrific for me, I went to my 'pay stations' in Midland, Texas and convinced the CEO's of five public oil and gas companies that pre-conditioning London to Midland company shares would pay off with the English buying their shares when they became available sans currency controls.Great trade: I produced results spending gobs of their fucking money.
My first step was to meet Peter and his wife Anne in London where Peter was to introduce me around. That was not, by any measure, a spectacular success. But Peter's introduction of me to Gordon Grender plus Bill Tichy's (a friend and Dean Witter analyst) introduction to Don Moynihan of Witter's London office began almost 15 years of London success and pleasure. It was pure joy living for months at Claridge's Hotel, shuttling in and out of London on the Concorde, making life long friends with lots of laughs along the way.
I damn near drowned in my own ego.
This go round started in 1977.Currency controls were lifted by Mrs. Thatcher in 1979. Like a blind hog, I found an acorn.
~
2 comments:
Great stories!
Another great one! Loved going to the North Beach with you. Best fun next to being in New York with you. NOTHING was more fun than that :) Well, listening to all the American Airlines flight attendants swooning over you was pretty sweet, too, especially all the ones in the Admiral's Clubs across the country, talking about their Hermes scarves and Lalique earrings. A phone call from the Legend opened a lot of doors :)
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