CITY AND SUBURBAN
Goodbye to the money market's master of kindness and caviare
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
0 ut of the City and the world, with Kenneth Whitaker, goes a unique source of fun and the maker of one of the success stories of the ' modern City. Gerrard & Reid, when he moved in 30 years ago, was a humble form of City life — a 'running broker'. It scratched a living from bills of exchange and other money-market fodder, without being a full member of the market recognised by (and borrowing from) the Bank of England. He won recognition, and then a quotation for the shares, and by the end of the Sixties he was being called on, with the Bank's blessing, to rescue the National Discount. This Victorian veteran, the first joint-stock company in the money market, had reached a stage where its best assets were its building and its tax losses, but it was still four times the size of Gerrard. Mr Whitaker took it over, sold the building, and used the losses in the bull market which — such was his sense of timing — followed in a fortnight. He made Gerrard & National the biggest house in the money market, and so it is today, with a balance-sheet approaching £5 billion. Now Gerrard thinks of itself as an interna- tional business dealing in all kinds of fixed-interest securities — yen bonds, Dan- ish government stock, Dutch guilder cer- tificates of deposit — a successful debutant as a gilt-edged market-maker, a pioneer of the rapidly growing markets 'ir nnancial futures. The team in charge is the team which Mr Whitaker picked, and whose progress he would monitor over the tele- phone with snorts and chuckles. Ebullient, enterprising, happy to surprise and even to shock — he once bought an undertaker for Gerrard, explaining: 'Synergy, my boy, it's something else we can do with our top hats' — he accrued stories around him, many to do with his technique of putting Gerrard & Reid on the map by what we now know as Power lunches. Two brokers were sniffing round one another at a City occasion: Haven't we met before? Where was it at lunch at Gerrard?"Lunch at Gerrard? What did they give you?' Cod's roe and saddle of lamb."Oh, then, we can't have met there' — the implication being that the cod's roe eater must be a second eleven person, asked to a second eleven lunch, because caviare was not served. I recall taking Patrick Sergeant to lunch at Ger- rard. When we had got through the Louis Roederer and sat down to table, our host said: 'Mr Sergeant, d'you like eggs?' Eggs,
I thought, how nice — Benedict? Florentine? Not a bit of it. Small black eggs, in a stoneware pot which appeared to hold a quart of them. One such occasion was to make friends with a new man in charge of one of the big banks' money book. All went well, and the banker finally said: 'My word, Mr Whitaker, I didn't know much about Gerrard till I came, but really am impressed with what you've done here — what's been your secret?' All done by kindness, my boy, all done by kindness.' At this, Paul Bareau, a fellow guest, intervened: 'No, no, Kenneth, you've left something out. All done by kindness and caviare.' Kenneth Whitaker never stinted either, and both were of the best.
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