BOOK REVIEW Banker tries bait and switch Nothing Gained by Phillip Y Kim
Reviewed by Muhammad Cohen
Businesses across the world share a human resources dilemma. They hire novices and they develop them in professionals. In addition to working experience, they may give these employees special training and skills development. Perhaps most crucially, they entrust these employees to nurture key relationships with customers or business partners.
The danger every business faces is that these key people may leave. An employee may move to a competitor, they can pass
away, or decide they'd rather be a full time parent or beach bum. The matter is totally out of the employer's control.
The characters in a novel are like employees in a company. Authors invent characters, nurture them to become personalities that can surprise, excite, and frustrate readers, and bond with them. The one thing that authors don't have to worry about is their key characters walking out on them. At least not usually.
In Nothing Gained, US investment bank Barker Reed is under siege, with its Asia division chief and top dealmaker Jason Donahue at the center of the gathering storm. Since losing the contest for the CEO desk in New York, Donahue has assuaged his disappointment through many of the standard devices, and a few unusual ones.
Author Phillip Y Kim convincingly chronicles Donahue's Hong Kong banker high life of flying to funding meetings and client dinners, celebrating deals with cigars, brandy, broads and bonuses. Donahue's wife and two junior high age kids are comfortably ensconced on Hong Kong Island's south shore, enrolled in the right clubs, schools and lessons, with the right expatriate tai-tais (rich wives) and their children for companionship between daddy's infrequent appearances.
Rolling the dice
Beyond this cocooned upper-class existence, the American banker abroad has taken risks that defy corporate convention and good sense. Donahue has steered investors into Allcore, a hedge fund run by Winston Chan, whose main talent seems to be attracting Hong Kong paparazzi viewfinders. As more signs point to Chan as a Cantonese Bernie Madoff, details emerge of secret side deals written by Donahue guaranteeing investors' principal, putting Barker Reed (BR) on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Donahue has joined a Macau casino deal behind BR's back. He's raising money for Howard Leitner, an obnoxious Vegas B-lister with a shady reputation, and his Ascendancy Entertainment to buy a partnership in Royale Group's Macau casino from another US investor. But Royale Group chairman Martin Liu seemed determined to prove the maxim that, with Chinese companies, the real negotiation begins after you sign the contract.
Even more threatening to the health of the deal and, eventually others, Donahue has unilaterally decided to award himself a US$20 million commission for his fundraising, leaving Leitner crucially short of closing the US$1.5 billion purchase. When asked by Dominique Flaubert, Donahue's alluring, brilliant and ruthless assistant with a taste for designer chemises and cocaine, why he took the $20 million, the boss replies, "For the same reasons we've always done what we do at BR: for the money, for the sport of it and simply because we can."
As securities regulators and investors zero in on Chan and BR, Leitner's goons tighten the screws to recoup that $20 million. It's a scenario crafted from the headlines, ripe for the high stakes drama found in real life thrillers such as Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin about the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers - where author Kim once worked - that takes us inside the boardrooms and executive suites to see the nitty-gritty of finance at its highest levels.
Then tragedy strikes. The after party for a boozy dinner to celebrate closing a German bond deal moves to a Hong Kong beach, and Donahue drowns. His untimely death throws Barker Reed into a panic as the spotlight brightens on Donahue's deals. A transcontinental conference call between New York, London and Hong Kong captures the gravity of the situation, recreating the palpable excitement and tension of those real life accounts of the Wall Street crisis.
Drinking the Kool-Aid
After all, these corporate big wigs could just back up the Bentley to a bank window, fill the trunk with cash and drive away with enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. But they believe they're masters of the universe and entitled to much more, able to bend events to their will the way Superman bends steel in his bare hands, and immune from real danger. When their cocktail comprising equal parts arrogance, privilege and luck runs dry, it's a pleasure to see them squirm.
But it's a pleasure author Kim largely denies readers. Donahue's death isn't just a tragedy for BR and the bereaved family, it's a tragedy for the novel. Following the drowning, in rapid succession, Dominique Flaubert and Winston Chan disappear, and BR fires Todd Leahy, Donahue's chief of staff. Readers lose their inside view of the BR boardroom and the Allcore scam, which where the real action is taking place. Whatever we learn about the finance side of the thriller comes from Todd checking the internet or calling friends occupying middle rungs at bank, not the guys in the corner offices making the key decisions.
Moreover, the most potentially compelling characters in the novel are pushed offstage after the first few dozen pages until the finale. At a time of crisis, no business would fire its key employees, but that's exactly what Kim has done in Nothing Gained.
As a substitute for big-money intrigue, readers follow the unlikely adventures of Todd and Jason's widow, the former Cheryl Soo-jin Baek. A Korean-American architect with an unhappy adolescence who gave up her career to be a mother and wife, Cheryl is the book's sole long-running characters with a back story gives her potential be more than a cardboard cutout. In the hands of a master storyteller, watching Jason Donahue's legacy unravel through the eyes of the two people who thought they knew him best, but now find themselves sheared from their moorings amid extraordinary revelations, has real possibilities.
But Cheryl and Todd simply make unbelievably bad decisions that unfold in disappointingly predictable ways. For example, you can probably already guess the novel's love triangulations. The main plot centers on American casino tough guy caricature Leitner and his Indonesian Chinese sidekick Tony Widjaya pursuing Cheryl for the $20 million her dead husband pocketed in their deal, money she and Todd know nothing about.
Who ya gonna call?
If you're the grieving widow of a Hong Kong banker and some dudes you've never met demand $20 million and threaten your family, surely you'd alert your husband's former employer, your consulate and the local police, not necessarily in that order. Unless you're a character in Nothing Gained, in which case, you'd keep it between you and your new best pal until confiding in a former Russian beauty queen turned yoga instructor who used to flash her assets for the KGB. Then you'd plunge yourself deeper into the conspiracy with meetings in Macau and Singapore before taking off for Italy when a flimsy lead suggests Dominique is hiding there.
In addition to its improbabilities, the book has a number of oddities. Author Kim tries to capture the flavor of expatriate life in Hong Kong, but he misses some key touchstones and details. He assiduously describes brands of various items of clothing and accessories Cheryl and others conspicuously consume that readers may not necessarily recognize, but doesn't reveal make and model of car that "George, her Chinese driver" uses to ferry Cheryl around the island. It's unclear whether Cheryl lives in an apartment or is one the rare Hong Kong residents ensconced in a single family home. Amid the parade of Hong Kong types to round out the cast, there doesn't seem to be a single Brit; it wasn't that long ago that they owned the place.
Nothing Gained ventures much to create a first rate financial thriller. After creating a plausible, intriguing scenario, the novel neglects most of what's unique and fascinating about its characters, situations and settings. That big potential and small delivery will likely leave readers feeling the book lives up to its title.
Nothing Gained by Phillip Y Kim. Beijing, Penguin China, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-670-08098-4. US$10.99 (e-book format).
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the world as a US diplomat and is the author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. Find his blog, online archive and more at www.MuhammadCohen.com, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.
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, a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. Find his blog, online archive and more at 
