A sellers' market
I TAKE my hat off to the boys and girl (Carol Galley, no less) at Mercury Asset Management. They have outsmarted the great Goldman Sachs at the difficult art at selling out at the top. It is true that, unlike Goldman, they never set their sights on $30 billion — a modest £4 billion would do but the cheque from Merrill Lynch, which bought their business, went through safely and their own money need never worry them again. Managing other people's money is a great business when markets are rising, for the managers tend to be paid on commission, but when prices fall by one- fifth in two months, some of the gloss must come off it. It was midsummer when Gold- man's partners voted to bring their firm to market. I said at the time that they were taking a once-for-all price, or trying to: `They do not want to be left hanging around in the market when it gets hit on the head with a plank.' Now the plank has descended and the sale is off. All those putative multimillionaires are left to tell each other that their firm works better as a partnership and that if they had raised new capital they would only have put it into hedge funds. So I dare say that Goldman has done the right thing, if only by accident. As for the clever boys and girl at MAM, I am told that they took cash, rather than taking shares in Merrill Lynch — which have since then lost half their value — and I imagine that they put the money in a nice strong bank.
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