The Nutcracker

by John Blankley

Imagine a very large room at the top of a bank building in New York and a very large table in that room. The room is full of people, some of whom you know. They are bankers you’ve seen before, but most are new faces. You enter with your Chairman, your Counsel and your Advisor and everyone moves forward, hands outstretched – all ready to shake you warmly…by the throat.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I thought this would be a good opening line for a novel about my experiences during the CH 11 proceedings of Hvide Marine. But of course the novel has already been written – by Tom Wolfe in “A Man in Full” the Saddlebags chapter. It should be essential reading for anyone contemplating anything so rash as borrowing money from a bank.

So I think I will make this my theme for today: the role of finance in our business and what can happen if things go wrong. Richard du Moulin spoke earlier yesterday about the chain of responsibility in our business and maybe deliberately maybe not omitted to mention the lenders and their role and responsibility. So let that be my task today with special emphasis on “The recent unpleasantness” as I refer to Hvide’s bankruptcy. (As an aside I would remind you that this was the phrase used by old ladies as recently as the 50′s to refer to the US Civil War!)

This is only an excerpt of The Nutcracker

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