Dead Hedge

By Mora L. Hazard

Dead Hedge is a satire. It is a fictitious novel, but based on a real case. It portrays the corruption and criminality prevalent in the global banking system today. It is the story of Cleopatra and how she and her shipping company were manipulated and cheated by powerful forces that reached into the High Courts and even governments. How Cleo was

• Language: English
• Publisher: Subon Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781738454488

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dead hedge

a novel by

Mora L. Hazard

Published by Subon Publishing

Copyright © 2024 Nobu Sue

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered or stored, in any form, or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by and means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author.

Some names and locations may have been changed for privacy reasons.

The author is solely responsible for the accuracy of the information in this book and accepts full responsibility for its originality and warrants the publisher that no part of the book is knowingly false or libellous and does not infringe on privacy or duty of confidence or break any relevant law or regulation.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7384544-7-1

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-7384544-8-8

Cover Art: Lauren Frances—www.instagram.com/labhrai

Book Design: www.ShakspeareEditorial.org

To all those who have suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful.

1. The Setup

It is May 2008 and the woman from the East is visiting London. As usual, it is part business and part holiday. Her name is Cleopatra and she is meeting with businessmen, playing backgammon and eating spaghetti bolognese, her favourite Italian food, which they do particularly well in England.

She strolls through Cavendish Square in the late morning, on her way to Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in Bishopsgate to meet the senior manager who works exclusively on her company’s account. The meeting has been scheduled to discuss some London Clearing House charges that the bank forgot to debit for a month, something that seems quite unlikely to Cleopatra. But she is sure there is a simple explanation and she is confident they can sort the matter out quickly and amicably.

It is bright, but unseasonably cold and Cleopatra is wearing a thick woollen scarf she has borrowed from the hotel concierge. Summer feels like a long way off, even though it is just around the corner. She has no idea, as she saunters down the tree-lined avenues in holiday mood, that her meeting with the manager from Royal Bank of Scotland will be hijacked and the topic will be something she is totally unprepared for.

Cleopatra has never been to the RBS offices before but, from the outside, they are exactly what she expected; a grandiose construction of glass and chrome, jutting into the sky like the prow of a warship.

An RBS lieutenant called Gerrard Justice had invited Cleopatra to come to his office – and to come alone. She enters the reception and is directed upwards by a lone receptionist, half-heartedly picking at a Tupperware salad. She does not ask Cleo to sign in, which seems very strange. As she leaves the elevator, she is surprised to find that the whole floor is deserted. Her footsteps echo as she walks, somewhat nervously, past rows and rows of empty desks and abandoned computers.

Finally, a man wearing a black Harry Potter suit pokes his head out of an office and beckons Cleopatra inside. He sits at the end of a table and the room is full of folders and paper documents, as if it is some kind of bunker. The man has a long face and a shock of white hair that sits awkwardly on the top of his head – it looks coarse and slightly askew, like a wig. Cleopatra tries hard not to stare, but the man, who introduces himself as an under-manager, and not the person Cleopatra was expecting to meet, seems completely nonchalant.

There is no-one else present. No-one on the entire floor.

The man tells Cleopatra to sit and, when asked where everybody is, he says they must be at lunch. Cleopatra cannot think of any office in the world, let alone a top global banking headquarters, which would be completely abandoned during the day, even if it was lunchtime?

Ignoring attempts at polite conversation, the man immediately begins asking Cleopatra a series of quick-fire and bizarre questions about herself and her experience with RBS – questions that he should know the answers to, and which seem quite irrelevant to Cleopatra.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Malaysia.’

‘Not Egypt?’

‘My father was Egyptian. I was born in Singapore.’

‘What is your business?’

‘Shipping, of course.’

He wants to know how often Cleopatra checks the accounts, how much she currently has in margin calls, and whether or not she would ever consider swapping her company’s accounts to another bank.

Cleopatra’s company is Singapore East Asia Shipping, and Royal Bank of Scotland is supposed to be handling its Forward Freight Agreements. But this man does not mention FFAs, nor the London Clearing House options which the bank forgot to charge to SEAS. There is nothing in the conversation that is remotely connected to the senior manager who is supposed to be handling the account.

The man in the black suit speaks slowly but erratically, trying to hide his accent. When Cleopatra does not answer his totally unexpected questions immediately, he appears to become a little impatient, narrowing his eyes and pursing his thin lips as he leans back in his ergonomic chair and assesses Cleopatra coldly over the top of his steepled fingertips.

After about half an hour of this strange inquisition, he dismisses Cleopatra without extending his hand.

‘You can go now!’

‘What about the London Clearing House charges?’

‘That’s all been sorted.’

The floor is still empty when Cleopatra leaves the room. She is not offered tea or coffee or refreshment of any kind, not even water. The man never introduces himself or presents Cleopatra with a business card, so he remains anonymous. In hindsight, Cleo thinks that perhaps she should have been more inquisitive, but she is grateful for having a major western bank looking after her company’s interests, without which she would not be able to trade Forward Freight Agreements through the London Clearing House.

Nevertheless, it is not how she expected to be treated, especially by someone who purports to be nothing more than a mid-level manager at RBS. Cleopatra is being courted by companies all over the world, who want her as an investor or an advisor. The man in the black suit, by contrast, would not even shake her hand. She wonders why the man had taken such a dislike to her – was it something she said? Maybe the way she stared at the man’s hair? Perhaps she delayed too long in answering the questions?

On the way back to her hotel, Cleopatra reflects on her behaviour, but can find nothing that might be construed as discourteous in any way.

Oh well.

About a month later, in early June 2008, Cleopatra is invited to Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters in Bishopsgate – again to meet the senior manager who is supposed to be handling SEAS’ account. Once again, she meets the strange man, this time dressed in a blue suit, smiling all the time. A happy man. Once again, there is no one else on the floor. Once again, the man asks her a series of probing and unremitting questions that leaves her feeling slightly dazed, as if she has just been embroiled in some Kafkaesque trial. When they finish, the man dismisses Cleopatra curtly again.

‘You can go now!’

What Cleopatra is unaware of at the time, in June 2008, is that Royal Bank of Scotland is overexposed to the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, it has paid far too much for ABN AMRO, just to stop Barclays for getting its hands on that company, and it has had to raise £12 billion from shareholders in the form of the biggest rights issue in European history. At this time, the writing is on the wall and RBS is literally insolvent and desperately needs liquidity. Cleopatra’s shipping business, Singapore East Asia Shipping, has plenty of liquidity. In other words, RBS needs SEAS’ money to save it from oblivion.

SEAS is RBS’s largest individual private client, with a vast amount of wealth for the bank to plunder. SEAS has not had to borrow money, so RBS has never asked the company to provide audited financial information. Very odd!. Cleopatra is a very successful woman – her name is one to be reckoned with in the global shipping business and in financial circles in general, especially in the east. She uses private jets, stays in the best hotels, always gets the best table in the best restaurants – in short, she is a flamboyant, jet-setting woman-about-town.

She is also very naïve when it comes to the chicanery of Western bankers.

SEAS is the perfect victim for Royal Bank of Scotland – it is privately-owned, exists outside Western regulatory oversights and, as a Middle-Eastern company, it has no ‘friends’ to protect it from the vultures in the City of London and on Wall Street. The man in the wig and blue suit knows Cleopatra is not a member of the ‘Old Boy’s Network’ that controls the financial sector and she realises that, while Cleopatra may be an expert in the shipping industry, she is inexperienced when it comes to the dirty dealings of high finance.

Cleopatra is stepping into the jungle of investment banking and the predators are starting to circle – but she cannot hear their growls of greed.

And so, after the sinister meetings with the strange man on the deserted floor of RBS’s headquarters in Bishopsgate, Cleopatra resumes this second visit to London – marvelling at the white, portland-stone alcoves of Temple and the Monument’s golden flame – standing at the top of Lombard Street and taking in the grandeur of the colonnaded Bank of England. It is a place of financial elegance, of historical dominance and prestige. So easy for a woman from the Middle-East to become over-awed!

Little does Cleopatra know, as she merrily takes in the sights and sounds of London Town, that the predators hiding in the financial undergrowth are already upon her and her SEAS shipping company.

2. The Beginning

Cleopatra’s father was called Suleyman and he set up the Sarawak Shipping