Jack felt the adrenalin pumping through him in a way he hadn’t for years. The boardroom was packed with journalists and photographers and he’d finished his last radio interview as fresh as the first, even though he’d said the same things twenty times over. He was very good at this, he knew it. Everyone in the room knew it, you could feel it. The public relations people hadn’t liked his concept of posing the questions about the company’s results before they were actually asked, but he’d insisted it would allow him to present the material in a contained, logical flow, and it had worked beautifully. When he opened the forum for additional questions, there were very few and they were mainly follow-ups from the ones he’d flashed on the screen in his own presentation. It was a virtuoso performance. Journalists didn’t clap, but he’d felt they’d wanted to.
He loved performing in public, always had. Speech-making was easy, selling a message was a gift. Why, he’d even developed a groundbreaking communications package for the staff. Each month a live video was transmitted on closed circuit to all HOA offices via satellite. Jack was the star of the show, true, but so were the employees, in a lesser way. There was the ‘hero of the month’, someone who’d made a unique contribution. A camera crew surprised this individual at his or her workplace with Jack presenting an award-like ‘This Is Your Life’ without the relatives. There were questions and answers, and graphs and charts, and every other device anyone could dream up. The staff loved it-and they loved Jack, almost ran from their workstations to shake his hand when he wandered through a call centre, to no great purpose, just so they could see him, just so they had the opportunity to run from their workstations. But this was the big time, with radio and TV and every major newspaper in the country. HOA had a massive retail shareholder base apart from insuring half the homes in the country. Its performance was an indicator to the economy’s performance; its results were real news. Even though they weren’t really his results, yet, but he was the head of the company, he was the person they wanted to see.
Yesterday he’d been in Canberra visiting the Minister, massaging perceptions, ensuring when the results were released there wasn’t a spin that the profits were excessive, explaining the return on equity was still only fifteen per cent-low considering the risks, and the regulatory regime, never forget the regulatory regime, the impact on the business of filing all those reports, of copying all those board papers. And as the Minister was escorting him out-yes escorting him out, a good sign the company’s handler said, an excellent sign-who did they meet as they strolled through the corridors of Parliament House? The Prime Minister. Just like that, in the corridor. The Minister had simply stopped the PM as he hurried past with a couple of minders. ‘Prime Minister, good morning. I’d like you to meet Jack Beaumont, new CEO at HOA. Giving us some of his valuable time.’
And the Prime Minister had stopped in his tracks and seemed genuinely pleased to meet Jack. ‘Welcome to the people’s house. Heard a great deal about you, Mr Beaumont. Keep up the good work.’
What would he have heard about him? Jack couldn’t imagine, but it was obviously positive, that was the point. He wasn’t impressed by meeting important people; he’d met plenty of important people. Half of them lived in residences he’d built, for goodness sake. But this was the Prime Minister of Australia, who lived in a relatively modest late Victorian house on the harbour in Kirribilli, a house Jack had never been in but now would probably be invited to because-because he was who he was. And this was the Prime Minister.
As the last of the press packed up their gear, Jack saw Mac Biddulph wave from the doorway and give him the thumbs-up sign. It was one of the qualities Jack had come to appreciate in Mac. He was supportive, but let him get on with the job.
‘Mr Beaumont. Could I have a word before you go?’ He turned to find a woman he’d noticed during the presentation because she’d been impossible to miss. At least, impossible for Jack to miss. She’d been seated in the front row but had asked no questions. He knew the PR people were careful to allocate seating positions based on rank, so she had to be a journalist of some substance, but he’d no idea who she was. In truth, it wasn’t her stature as a journalist that had caught his attention. She was an extraordinarily attractive woman in a severe sort of way. There was nothing overtly sexual or flirtatious in the way she was dressed or looked, quite the contrary. She appeared to be wearing a man’s suit, but it wasn’t cut like any man’s suit Jack had ever seen. There was some subtlety in the shape that made it completely feminine, despite the fact she was also wearing a collar and tie. The collar on the shirt was spread somehow, the tie was knotted lower; whatever it was, the effect was captivating, compelling, almost heady as she stood smiling at him with a wry, challenging smile.
‘I’m Prue Patterson from the Australian. We haven’t met. Very impressive presentation. You must be pleased with your results.’ She gazed at him from clear, blue eyes behind the oversized, black-rimmed glasses of a librarian or a school mistress.
‘Thank you, but they’re not really my results, you know. I’m the new boy on the block, so I’m just putting the shine on other people’s hard work.’
‘Indeed.’ She smiled again. ‘But you polish up so well. I’m not a business journalist, which is why you may not have seen me before. I used to write for the business pages but I get bored by figures.’
‘So do I. But don’t tell anyone.’
‘I’m very good at keeping secrets-unless, of course, they’d interest my readers. I write mainly profiles and opinion pieces these days, and I’d like to write a personal profile on you to run in the feature pages. You’re very important to a lot of people now, Mr Beaumont, and we don’t know much about you.’
She observed his dismissive shrug with amusement. He seemed such an unlikely person to be connected with Mac Biddulph, who she knew well. Her profile on Mac had won her a Walkley Award and a trip on the Honey Bear. Both sat on her mantlepiece, one way and another. There was a certain naivety about Jack Beaumont that appeared deeper than just natural charm. Not that there was anything wrong with natural charm. ‘I’d very much like to interview you in a relaxed setting-over lunch, for example.’
Jack had flirted with too many attractive women not to recognise the undertones. But despite the heady injection of adrenalin from the morning, he was in control.
‘I don’t have lunch these days. I mean, I eat lunch, but usually at my desk or a sandwich in the park or something. I’m not really a luncher anymore, if you know what I mean.’
Her mouth curled up at the corners in an extremely alluring way. ‘How interesting. You see, we’ve just discovered you’re not like the average run of businessmen who move from club to restaurant to boardroom on a regular lunching cycle, and we haven’t even started the interview. So it’s dinner then?’
‘Well I’d rather it was just in the office, if you don’t mind. If I could get my assistant to call you…’
‘I don’t deal with assistants. It’ll be quite painless, the dinner, I promise you. It’s a well-established format I’ve used many times. You might even enjoy it.’
Jack handed over his card with his direct line number and found himself in the restaurant before the week was out. She was extremely professional and businesslike in her approach to the interview, as they sat in a booth at the back of a fashionable restaurant in The Rocks. She ordered the wine and the food, after asking what he’d like, told the waiter to leave the white wine out of the ice bucket, was in control from the moment she arrived fifteen minutes after he’d been seated. Her research was extraordinary. She knew details about his life he’d forgotten himself. When she asked about his competitive streak he’d tried to shrug it off with an ‘Oh shucks’ line, but she brushed it away with facts.
‘You won the eight hundred metres open championship in the GPS athletics in one minute fifty-four point two seconds which, although it wasn’t a record, was only nought point five seconds outside; you play golf off a single figure handicap, you blitzed the top end of the Sydney property market for ten years, you’re the CEO of a major corporation. Don’t be coy.’
The restaurant was nearly empty, and half of the second bottle of wine sat between them. She’d switched off the tape machine ten minutes ago and put the notebook into some extraordinary handbag that appeared to be constructed from rusty nails. They sat, relatively silent after the steady rhythm of her questions. He wasn’t entirely surprised when she carefully removed her glasses and, looking him straight in the eyes, said ‘I don’t normally sleep with the people I interview Jack, but in your case I might make an exception.’ It was two days later and the buzz of press interviews and chance meetings with the Prime Minister had worn off. Jack sat at his desk with stacks of documents arranged across its surface. He’d asked Renton Healey for a summary of the company’s financial position, key performance indicators and potential cost savings, but this trolley-load of unbound papers had arrived. When he’d complained that he was drowning in detail, Renton had replied, ‘Let me know what you feel is irrelevant and I’ll have it removed immediately.’ The implication was obvious-you won’t know enough to sift the gold from the dross.
But he was sifting: painstakingly, excruciatingly slowly, Jack was working through the piles. And the nuggets were there. Sometimes they appeared to be fool’s gold and raised more questions than answers, but he was determined to grasp the essence of this business. He would not be a once-over-lightly presenter of someone else’s work-a show pony of a CEO. And if any of them thought he’d ever operated that way, they were wrong. Sure he’d been the creative force in his own business, but he’d always understood the detail, even if it was managed by others.
He was struggling with the detail, or lack of it, in a thick pile of contracts Renton had dropped on his desk. He’d wanted to examine the quantum of HOA’s payments to outside contractors, but instead of an analysis he’d been given all the legal contracts. His initial browsing had been disturbing. The monies involved were way beyond what he’d expected, and some of the contracts were vague in the extreme; the description of the services to be provided was so broad as to be meaningless.
The further he dug down into the papers the more alarmed he became. Some of these matters he would raise at the board meeting next week. Others would require more intense scrutiny. But he wasn’t going to let it go. He’d sell the story better than anyone, but it was going to be his story.
‘Thank you, gentlemen. The hour is past. We have a quorum so let me call the meeting to order.’
Sir Laurence’s prim tones relayed antiseptically through the next-generation German sound system, bounced dully off the silk-lined boardroom walls and fell mainly on deaf ears. As he glanced around the U-shaped table, he was reminded that the ‘gentlemen’ was no longer entirely appropriate. His slightly bloodshot eyes fell on the brightly coloured plumage of Rosemary Stipple, the headmistress of the private school that one of Mac’s daughters had attended. She’d recently joined the board at Mac’s insistence, despite Sir Laurence’s strong objections that she had no business experience of any kind and had never been on any other board except that of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra-and only because her husband was a major benefactor. The market would see her as no more than a sycophantic supporter of Macquarie James Biddulph and a sop to political correctness and would deride the appointment. So said Sir Laurence. Mac had just laughed.
‘The market follows me, Laurence. They couldn’t care less who’s on the board.’ Sir Laurence’s lips curled slightly at the left corner at this remark. ‘All that corporate governance crap is just for the annual report and the regulator. Anyway, Rosemary is a woman.’
On this last point Sir Laurence wasn’t entirely convinced. She appeared to be dressed at present in the plumage of a rainbow lorikeet. He’d always understood it was the male bird that wore the brightest colours. In any event, she might not be a man but if she wanted to be a member of his board she would have to do her best.
‘Gentlemen. If we could please.’ He tapped the small microphone in front of him with his silver pen. The sound reverberated through the fifteen miniature speakers in the ceiling and finally penetrated the consciousness of his distinguished board members. They were all in their customary places. It had always fascinated him the way some process of natural selection caused people to occupy the same seats in a meeting room even though there were no allocated places. It was a ritual dance, a pecking order. As far as he was concerned, so long as they all understood that the chairman’s seat was at the head of the table, they could scatter where they liked.
‘The minutes of the meeting of February the fifteenth. Any comments?’
There were never any comments on the minutes. The directors were acutely aware that at least four or five drafts would have passed across the antique partners’ desk in Sir Laurence’s office in a flurry of neatly pencilled corrections before they were finally allowed, reluctantly, into the voluminous bound volume that comprised a set of HOA board papers. This document was delivered by courier to the office or home of each director in a sealed security pouch and had to be signed for by the recipient before it was released. Sir Laurence had considered locked and chained red boxes in the tradition of Westminster, but had rejected this as perhaps too governmental. Nevertheless, he insisted on the intricate sealing device which required a tough plastic tab to be broken-often at the expense of Rosemary Stipple’s fingernails or Justin Muir’s temper-just as he did on the sweeping of this room for bugs before every meeting. You could never be too careful.
‘Shouldn’t we wait to get Mac on the line, Laurence?’ To the casual observer, Jack’s question was a harmless observation. To Laurence Treadmore it contained a quiver of sharp insults. It failed to address him as chairman-the proper appellation in a boardroom. It then failed to recognise his everyday title, a title conferred on him by the Queen of Australia. It came from someone who, while purporting to be the chief executive of a major public company, wasn’t even wearing a tie let alone a jacket in his boardroom. He’d already discussed the question of the tie with Mac but he’d just laughed it off, saying, ‘We all have our own style, Laurence, even you. Who cares so long as the market loves him?’
He refused to look directly at Jack as he answered-but then he never looked directly at him or addressed him by name.
‘I understand we’re having difficulty establishing a connection to the Kimberley. Perhaps the secretary could ask our technician to step in.’
The rest of the board resumed checking their diaries and phone messages in a series of electronic beeps, despite the chairman’s clear ruling that no such devices were to be switched on during a meeting. Only Sir Laurence noticed the totally inappropriate exchange of ‘G’day Tom’ and ‘Hi Jack, how are you?’ between the technician and the CEO. This type of familiarity between management and workers could only lead to trouble.
Crackles and static began to emanate from the doughnut-shaped speakerphone in the middle of the table and finally they heard the unmistakable tones of Mac.
‘We have him now, Sir Laurence.’
‘Thank you. You may leave us. Good morning, Mac, we have you now, although I must say the line isn’t particularly good, there’s still a great deal of static. Is there stormy weather in the Kimberley?’
Mac laughed from the gut. ‘Stormy weather? It’s the dry season. It doesn’t rain for months. I’m in the shower, Laurence, that’s the noise you can hear, and a bloody good shower it is, too. Biggest head on it you’ve ever seen. Had it brought over from England. How are you all?’
The distasteful nature of this exchange caused both corners of the Treadmore mouth to curl-usually a dangerous sign. This constant failure to attend board meetings in person, no doubt a complete absence of any attempt to read the papers and now to attend in a state of undress, even by phone, was beyond any pale Sir Laurence could conjure. How could two such distinctly opposing personalities survive together? The answer, as both were acutely aware, lay in the bonding power of money. It was the Araldyte of their relationship, whose unique properties could cause any two surfaces to adhere, no matter how uneven.
Mac, wrapped in an outsized white bath towel, sprawled in a massive colonial wicker armchair in the shade of the double-width verandah. Everything at Bellaranga was enormous. You could fly over its million acres in a helicopter for a couple of hours and still be on the property. The views were infinite-from the beginning to the end of the world in time and space was how Mac phrased it when he was in a lyrical mood. Some of the oldest artworks in the world were on this place, painted on the walls of rock caves by peoples unknown; some said the Australian Aborigines, some said not. To Mac it was irrelevant. They were graceful, elegant, tasselled figures with extraordinary headdresses, painted with exceptional skill, as alive on the rock face now as they would have been over twenty thousand years ago. One of Mac’s prized showpieces was a small Matisse oil with dancing figures. He reckoned Matisse must have been to Bellaranga.
How he wished his old dad could see him now, the lord of this domain and the other world on the end of the telephone. He’d never believe it. One of the European migrants who’d brought their skills to help build the Snowy Mountains Scheme, his father became more proudly Australian than any native born. He named his son after Governor Lachlan Macquarie and added James, as English a name as he could imagine. Mac still saw him sometimes, walking away from him down a Sydney street or cupping his hands to light a cigarette in a pub doorway. He remembered the line into the small church in Auburn and the crowd stretching away under the trees at the graveyard. He’d never seen half these people before, yet they all knew Ja.
Suddenly he was brought back to the present by some discordant note from the telephone. His mind worked that way. He could half listen to the conversation and hear a clear bell ring in the middle of the hubbub.
‘I’m sorry, Chairman. I missed some of that. The line’s not too good. Would you mind summarising for me?’
Sir Laurence was only too happy to oblige. ‘The chief executive, in the course of presenting his monthly report to the board, was highlighting the wellknown fact that we run a negative profit on our insurance operations with an insurance margin of one hundred and three per cent. While this is common in the industry it is apparently of great concern to him. He was directing his remarks to the twin questions of pricing and costs in addressing this issue. I trust this is an accurate summary?’ Sir Laurence gestured vaguely in Jack’s direction.
‘Yes, Mac. I know some insurance companies lose on every policy they write and make their profit on investing shareholders’ funds, but to me it’s a dangerous way to run a business and I’m not comfortable with it. We’ve got to look more closely at how we price risk. There might be a percentage of our book we want to discard because we can never make money on it and some business we want to keep but reprice.’
Mac’s voice echoed from the doughnut. ‘Hang on, my friend, you’ve got to tread carefully here. The market won’t like us writing less business just because we think we’re going to make more profit somewhere down the track. They want growth. But I thought I heard you talking specifically about the cost side.’
Jack’s enthusiasm began to rise. ‘Absolutely. There’s so much we can do there. Not just with internal costs, although I’m convinced already we can take eighty to one hundred million out of those, but on the education side, with our policyholders. If we can teach them how to better secure their homes, we reduce the incidence of burglary. And more, if we can work with local communities and the police on drug rehabilitation, we can help to treat the cause. If we can convince local councils to use our rating information and rezone likely flood areas, or change the building codes for hurricanes and severe storm areas, we can reduce claim costs and help our customers at the same time. Because that’s what insurance is all about, as I see it. Just a spreading of risk across the community so one family’s disaster is shared by everyone else.’
There was silence in the boardroom and from the speakerphone. Finally, Sir Laurence spoke. ‘Are you still there, Mac?’
‘Yes.’ A short cough. ‘Yes, of course, Laurence. Chairman. Just thinking about Jack’s comments. Very commendable sentiments. Very much in line with my own thinking. Of course, you have to balance these long-term aims with the short-term interests of the shareholders. As directors, I think that’s where we have to look, is it not, Chairman?’
‘Indeed. The Corporations Act requires us to represent the interests of shareholders at all times.’
‘Just so. I’ve heard you say that many times. So, Jack, it’s quite right of you to raise these matters and commendable that you should get on this track so quickly, but we must plan carefully and slowly to strike the right balance of interests. Everyone agree?’
There were murmurs from around the table of an indeterminate nature, as there usually were when Mac put this question. No vote had ever been taken in this boardroom, no clear dissent ever expressed.
‘Excellent. So I think we’re all agreeing with you, Jack, just expressing a note of caution. But didn’t I hear you mention specifics on the cost side?’
Jack drew a deep breath and coloured slightly. ‘I’m not sure you are agreeing with me, Mac. It’s clear as day to me we need to move ahead on all this immediately and in the absolute interests of the shareholders. Our investment returns have been behind the market lately and I’m still trying to understand how our profits are increasing at such a pace.’
Now it was very quiet and still in the room. No one shuffled papers or fiddled with pens. Even Shane O’Connell, who was usually prodding at his electronic organiser with a stylus, sat with his palms flat on the table. Jack continued.
‘Frankly, I see the cost side as the easy part. For instance, we seem to spend a fortune on consultants. I’m certain we can slash that in half. I don’t even know what they all do yet, but I’ll have a detailed analysis for you by the next meeting. And the other example is this company called Beira. We appear to pay it between thirty-five and forty million dollars a year, yet no one seems to know what it does precisely. So there’s a ton of potential for cost-cutting and I plan to get on with it.’ He paused and counted to ten in his head. ‘In the interests of shareholders.’
It was really no more than a rock jutting out of the Mediterranean. The vegetation, such as it was, consisted of a few scrawny olive trees struggling for survival in a thin layer of wind-blown soil trapped in the rock’s crevices. There were donkeys to carry supplies from the boat up the hill to the village, chickens in the yards, depression in the air. He only ever went there once with his father. It was enough. Enough to remind him where he came from, more than enough to know he wasn’t going back. He’d searched for it in the index of his atlas but there was no Beira listed among the Bs. But Ja was proud of where he came from and grateful for where he’d landed. They were different in that way. Mac felt he’d wrestled what he had from opponents who would have turned him over in a crocodile roll given half a chance. His father saw life with a softer palette.
He walked stiffly down the verandah steps to the lush green lawn under the poinciana trees, the only expanse of soft green anywhere in the Kimberley in the harsh dry season. When he woke, alone, in the early morning after a day of riding, his body always felt like a rusty old car that needed a grease and oil change. He loved being alone up here. It was strange, because in the city he hated to sleep or eat alone and rarely did, but he’d never brought Bonny or any other girl to Bellaranga and Edith had only come twice. It was too hot for her, too wild, too far from the bridge club. A few times a year he flew major clients or investors in for fishing and shooting but, unlike life on the Honey Bear, this was bloke’s stuff, men’s business. Huntin’, shootin’, drinkin’-but no rooting. And a great tax deduction.
This last thought brought him back to the subject of the board meeting with an unpleasant jerk. What possessed these people, given a huge salary and the chance to make a fortune from options, to go digging in holes full of snakes? First Buckley, with all his pompous crap about corporate behaviour, and now Jack Beaumont sounding like he was preaching a sermon. He’d have to learn. There were some holes that had big snakes in them with very nasty bites. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Let Renton Healey sort it out. He could confuse anyone in three easy lessons. He’d been promoted to CFO and given a whacking pay increase thanks to his loyalty and ability to show flexible, creative thinking on tricky issues; now was the time to bring those qualities into play.
Louise entered quietly through the open hatch, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden steps. It was one of Jack’s flights into whimsy, this study in a loft with a narrow staircase and a trapdoor. It was a wonder he hadn’t included a pole to slide down into the bedroom.
‘What are you doing, lover boy? It’s three o’clock in the morning. What’s happened to the digger who sleeps under gunfire?’ She was holding his head in both hands now and he was grateful for the warmth and comfort. He nuzzled into her body. ‘This is a worry; you’ve either fallen in love with another woman, in which case tiny parts of your body will be lightly sauteed with onions and garlic, or you’re more concerned than I’ve seen you since your daughter was born breech. Which is it? Be quick lest I ready the pan.’
Where had his ‘values’ come from, that’s what Jack could never figure out. His mother was a classic snob who revered all things English, all persons of a higher social order, as she saw them. His father’s principles were elusive. But somehow Jack had developed a black and white view of some issues that wouldn’t leave him. His behaviour might wander at the margins but he believed he’d never walk away from his basic principles. On the other hand, he hadn’t really been tested before. And was he being tested now? That’s what was waking him in the night. If he knew for sure something was wrong he’d attack it, but these issues seemed to slip and slide, ripple and flatten like wind on a river. He couldn’t even explain them properly to Louise.
‘So are you saying you think they’re running the business inefficiently or recklessly or acting fraudulently or breaking the law or what?’
‘God no, not breaking the law. Well, I hope not. I mean, I’m not saying that. I don’t understand enough I suppose. The issues are very complex but I’m trying to make them simple.’
She rubbed the back of his neck again. ‘And that’s part of your talent and the value of fresh eyes. And part of mine, remember? So simplify them for me.’
It was like the old days when they’d sit together in their first ramshackle office above the delicatessen, the smells of cheese and salami and fresh bread drifting up the fire escape. He’d explain the brilliant design concept that short-sighted councillors couldn’t fit into the local codes and she’d tear it apart with logical precision, put it back together in almost the same order and make it fit. But she always left it as his idea.
He tried to lay out the shapes in his head now as lines on a plan, but they weren’t as straight, the corners weren’t as sharp. It had all started brilliantly. Mac had been right, the market loved him. The shares had jumped two per cent in three months despite his lack of major company, not to mention insurance industry, experience. He was a great story, just as Mac had predicted. ‘They love growth, son, and that’s what you represent. You’re a salesman. You know about increasing our share of new homes, forging bonds with property developers, driving the top line. That’s what matters. Let us worry about making the profits, managing the balance sheet, all that stuff that’s unbelievably complex in an insurance company. Leave it to the accountants and the actuaries. That’s what I do. You bring the business in the front door, the profits will fall out the back, I promise you.’
But would they? That was the part he couldn’t see. When Jack sat through the briefing with his CFO, Renton Healey, and later with the head actuary, he could see the policies marching in the front door in ever greater numbers-but at prices that left no margin for any profits to fall out the back. And when they gave the argument he’d heard so many times now-that most insurance companies don’t make money from their underwriting operations-he’d replied, ‘I know that. But the best ones do. They have insurance margins below one hundred per cent, not at one hundred and three per cent like us. And sure, they make the bulk of their profits by investing policyholders’ funds when the sharemarket’s performing well. But at least they won’t go broke when it isn’t.’
Renton Healey had just remained calm and grimaced, you couldn’t call it a smile, not in that squashed pumpkin of a face with a shock of pumpkin red hair above it, and looked at him in that paternalistic, slightly pitying way adults do with children who are struggling in their lessons.
‘Jack, isn’t it a bit early in the learning curve to be trying to reconstruct the entire insurance industry? We’ve been doing things this way for quite a while. The market fully understands the nature of the insurance cycle, the concept of the smoothing of profits, the orderly flow of releases from reserves. They’re fully aware of the swings and roundabouts of investment returns and the sophisticated systems of collars and caps we implement to assist in smoothing. And of course the very effective but complex reinsurance arrangements we have in place to limit risk and, to some degree, to protect financial returns. I think it’s fair to say, without wishing to be patronising in any way, this is an area you are still grappling with.’ Here the pumpkin crumpled again. ‘The point is, Jack, unless you have a clear overview of how all these factors come together, how all the levers are pulled, you can’t be expected to understand how the bottom line is derived. Or how the balance sheet fits together. They’re very difficult concepts for anyone from outside the industry, I grant you, but we’ll do our best to explain.’
He shifted his sizeable posterior in the expensive Italian chair.
Exercise and Renton Healey were not as close friends as cannelloni and a Margaret River pinot noir. Possibly a little cheese. At lunch. Despite the new CEO’s edict, banning alcohol for the management team during working hours. The new CEO had a great deal to learn, and not just about reinsurance contracts. Healey chuckled to himself. Indeed, he was unable to learn anything on that subject.
As Jack tried to explain now to Louise, if HOA was losing money on underwriting its policies, and their investment returns were below those of the previous year, how could they keep announcing record profits?
‘Well, maybe they’re right, darling. You said yourself this business is more complicated by a mile than anything you’ve done before. As much as one is loath to suggest that the boy genius is incapable of getting his Scouts badge for insurance basics, maybe you just don’t understand. Yet.’
He’d thought about that a lot, wondering if he wasn’t up to this challenge intellectually, but as he discovered more about the business his confidence was growing, not diminishing in awe at the majesty of it all. It wasn’t that difficult. He believed in his simple analysis-just people sharing risk to protect one another. All the rest was gobbledygook. But maybe this was something Louise couldn’t help him with. Maybe he needed an expert this time.