David Lockhart (2)
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it, because the whole thing was so absurd.
“Do you know what two times every year comes to after ten years?”
Two might not sound like a particularly large number, but once you keep doubling it, the scale changes completely.
No matter how large a sheet of paper is, it’s hard to fold it more than seven times. If you somehow managed to fold a sheet forty-two times, it would reach from Earth to the moon.
I nodded.
“Fifty-two million dollars. That’s why I said ten years.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes. I’ll put it in the contract. If I break it, you can walk away immediately. Of course, you won’t have to return the signing bonus.”
“……”
How much confidence did someone have to have to say something like that so casually?
Naturally, no company making an offer like this could be normal.
“What exactly would I be doing?”
“What does an investment firm do? Investing, of course.”
“What would my role be?”
As if he already knew what I was thinking, Han Miru said, “Are you worried I’d make you do something illegal?”
“I’ve seen plenty of financial scandals over the years. Some were outright illegal. Others weren’t illegal on paper, but they still dodged the law and hurt investors anyway.”
“For example?”
David tried to think of something fitting.
“Not long ago, there was a case in Korea where a private equity fund tricked its investors. They claimed they were investing in receivables from public institutions, but they put the money into mezzanine deals and siphoned it off until the whole thing went bankrupt. Do you know about that?”
At his words, Han Miru burst out laughing.
“Ha. Of course I do. Better than anyone, actually.”
Then he added, “I was the one who exposed it.”
David blinked.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. I uncovered the mess and blew the whistle.”
Han Miru gave him a brief account of what had happened back then. Since it was the sort of thing anyone could verify with a little digging, it wasn’t a lie.
Why was he here?
What had happened after he left the company for him to end up like this?
Han Miru kept going.
“First, I have no intention of raising outside capital. I prefer a family office model. Second, if I were going to do that, I wouldn’t have brought in Mr. Lockhart.”
In fairness, David had already been marked as a failure. It would be hard to raise money by putting him front and center.
Then another question came to mind.
“How much do you know about me?”
Han Miru smiled faintly at that.
“Let’s just say I know more than most people.”
“What about Victory Investment’s bankruptcy?”
“In my opinion, management knew there were serious problems and just pretended not to. They figured that once the company went public, they could recover their money. Am I wrong?”
But during the listing review, it came out that they had inflated revenue and performance figures. The listing was canceled, and the company went bankrupt. So did the investment firm that had poured in enormous sums.
“If there’s anything that violates the law, you can report it to the authorities. I’m the representative here, so I’ll take responsibility. What do you say?”
If that was true, there was no downside for him. In any case, he needed money now.
David nodded reluctantly.
“Fine. Should I draw up the contract right away?”
At that, Han Miru gave an awkward smile.
“I don’t actually have a lawyer yet, so I couldn’t prepare one. I’ll send the signing bonus first. Next time we meet, bring a contract you’ve drawn up yourself.”
David stared at him in surprise.
“You’re going to send one million dollars without even signing a contract?”
Han Miru answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“If I don’t sign one, are you going to break your promise?”
“No.”
“Then that settles it. Give me your account number.”
As a lawyer, David believed everything had to rest on the foundation of a contract. That was why he couldn’t make sense of the situation.
How could he trust someone he had just met?
Once David gave him the account number, Han Miru wired the money on the spot. A million dollars appeared in David’s account.
“It’s sent.”
Still half in doubt, David checked his phone and nodded.
“I confirmed it.”
They hadn’t signed a contract yet, but once the money changed hands, the deal was effectively done.
There was no reason to hesitate any longer.
Collecting himself, David asked, “What is Continue Capital’s goal?”
“Do you know which private equity firm is the largest in the world?”
“Redstone.”
“Then what about the largest investment firm?”
“White Road, led by Chairman Aaron Baker.”
Han Miru nodded.
“Our goal is to become bigger than that within ten years.”
A laugh almost escaped me again. But the expression on the face of the man who’d just said it never wavered once.
David studied Han Miru’s face and eyes more closely.
Confidence?
No, this was beyond confidence.
It was conviction. Absolute conviction, with no trace of doubt or hesitation at all.
For the first time, David felt both awe and fear toward the young Asian man sitting across from him.
“Who exactly are you?”
Han Miru smiled.
“You’ll figure that out once we work together.”
* * *
We stood up and shook hands.
“Take care of your personal business over the weekend. We’ll meet again on Monday. We’ll be heading to California for a few days, so get ready.”
David didn’t press him with more questions. He simply bowed his head.
“Understood. I’ll see you then.”
We shook hands and parted ways.
After I watched him leave the café, I let out a silent cheer.
I hired David Lockhart.
Under normal circumstances, even meeting him would’ve been impossible. But now he was unemployed and desperate for money.
That made the contract easy.
If he had refused, I would’ve offered two or three million instead. One million dollars was a bargain.
Because he would go on to become a legendary investor.
I’d read an article about him once.
David had a daughter with a serious illness.
He had once said that the hardest period of his life was when the company he worked for went bankrupt, he lost his job, and he had to search for work while trying to keep his family afloat.
He said that if he could have found the money to pay for his daughter’s treatment, he would have sold his soul to the devil.
Fortunately, he landed a job at Shark Management under Michael Preston.
And there, David proved his extraordinary talent. He uncovered accounting fraud at several companies.
Shark Management would buy a mountain of put options, short the company, and then expose the fraud.
The allegations were true, and the stock of the targeted companies collapsed. Shark Management made many times its original investment.
In his first year, David posted a 320 percent return. The next year, 550 percent.
He also did not hold back when it came to investing in industries with future growth.
Electric vehicles, IT, semiconductors, cloud computing, and more.
Even there, David Lockhart achieved enormous success.
Once the rumors spread, investors came flocking with money in hand.
There were even claims that he could pull in more than ten billion dollars on name recognition alone.
That wasn’t just a joke. A three-billion-dollar blind pool closed as soon as fundraising opened, and his own Lockehart ETF reportedly drew in seven billion dollars.
As David’s name grew, major investment firms moved to recruit him.
More than one of them offered him a blank check.
Calnine Group offered him a head position outright. But he remained loyal to Shark Management until the end.
The biggest reason was that they had taken him in when he was at his lowest.
Thanks to David Lockhart’s skill, Shark Management would grow into one of the world’s top three private equity firms.
“That’s how it would have gone, anyway……”
This time, I was the one standing in front of him.
Now he would work for Continue Capital, not Shark Management.
I had secured the best horse for the path I intended to run.
“First step taken cleanly.”
I hoped the rest would go this smoothly too.
I was about to finish my coffee and stand when someone spoke to me.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?”
I looked up at the speaker.
It was a woman with red hair and very pale skin.
About 165 centimeters tall. Early twenties, maybe. Her hair was pulled up into a single knot, and she wore large glasses. There were faint freckles across the bridge of her nose.
She had on skinny jeans, a linen shirt worn loose over them, and a battered pair of Converse.
A pretty striking look, actually.
A beauty like this was talking to me in a strange country like the United States?
Why?
Could she be one of those pyramid schemes?
“Who are you?”
At my question, she introduced herself.
“Hello. I’m Trish O’Connor, a reporter for the Wall Street Times.”
“The Wall Street Times?”
“Yes.”
I’d never heard of it.
“Is it affiliated with The Wall Street Journal?”
“No.”
“Then what about The New York Times?”
At my question, she answered with confidence.
“Not at all. We’re a small online newspaper.”
“I see.”
For a small online paper, wasn’t the name a little too grand?
“What did you want to talk about?”
“I was writing an article in the back, and I happened to overhear your conversation. Sorry if that was rude.”
“It’s fine.”
The fault lay more with the people holding a meeting in the café than with the person who overheard it.
Honestly, they should’ve rented an office.
“What article were you working on?”
“About the aircraft engine explosion at Atlanta Airport yesterday. A Korean man supposedly turned the plane around just before takeoff……”
“Pfft!”
I nearly sprayed coffee everywhere.
“Why are you reacting like that?”
“Oh, no. I think I saw that in the news yesterday too.”
She probably wouldn’t dream that the Korean man in question was me.
Trish asked, “The person you were just speaking with was David Lockhart, the lawyer who worked at Victory Investment, right?”
“You know your stuff.”
She nodded as if it were obvious.
“I wrote a piece on Georgia Dynamic.”
“Georgia Dynamic?”
“Because of their accounting fraud, Victory Investment went bankrupt.”
“Ah, right.”
Of course I knew that.
In truth, an investment firm doesn’t usually collapse just because one investment goes bad. But furious investors filed a class-action lawsuit against Victory Investment, and that eventually forced the company into bankruptcy.
And David Lockhart took the blame for it.
“Even knowing that, you hired him?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t his fault.
The reason I knew the truth was that it only came out later, after David had already made his name at Shark Management.
Passing the buck onto a subordinate and slithering away like a slippery fish seemed to be the same no matter where in the world a company was based.
“You really paid him a million dollars without even signing a contract?”
I gave her a small wink.
“I’ve got a decent eye for people.”