Extracts from An Oral History of Barings

1: Introduction

In 2009 The Baring Archive Limited commissioned An Oral History of Barings. The project was undertaken in partnership with National Life Stories at the British Library.

The extracts cover a range of topics from the 1940s through to the 1990s.

The audio extracts included in this exhibition were selected from interviews made between 2009 and 2013. The original full length interviews are accessible at the British Library together with transcripts and content summaries. In some cases the interviews have been closed or partially closed to public access at the request of the speaker. Details of the full interviews can be found by searching the Sound & Moving Image Catalogue by interviewee name, keyword or by the collection reference number: C1367.

The extracts available here have been edited but every effort has been made to maintain the integrity and spirit of what was said. The views expressed are not necessarily those of The Baring Archive or National Life Stories at the British Library.

The copyright of all extracts is held by The British Library Board and The Baring Archive Limited 2012.
2: Life at Stratton Park

The safes were downstairs which were the wine cellars. They were very cold down there. I remember having a hot-water bottle on my knee to keep my hands warm.

Margaret Lambert (nee Akers) (b1921) joined the Coupon Department of Barings in 1938. She was among the staff members who moved to Stratton Park from where Barings operated during the Second World War. She was called up in 1942 and did not return to Barings. Her father-in-law, husband and two brothers also had careers at Barings.

In this extract she talks about life at Stratton.
3: Bishopsgate and war-time Barings

The banking hall was a series of oak sloping desks all the way round, three quarters of the way round and in the middle was what was known as the Box and that held the general manager and a senior clerk.

Anthony Akers (b1923) followed his sister, Margaret Lambert, into Barings in 1940 and remained at 8 Bishopsgate during the Blitz. He served in the army and returned to Barings after the war, later becoming head of the Stock Office. He retired in 1983.

In this extract he talks about his experiences during the War.
4: Stratton Park and fire watching duties

Stratton Park was approached by a long drive and it was a dark grey building of two storeys, quite long, and it overlooked a very nice parkland and you walked across that parkland to the village of East Stratton.

Philip Hatch (b1926) started at Barings in 1942 and returned there after serving in India with the Lancashire Fusiliers. He worked in the Stock Office, the Mergers Department and in credit management. He oversaw the implementation of the first computer system in the banking area and retired in 1987.
5: Being interviewed for Barings

I had a letter from Barings saying they'd heard of me and inviting me to call at No 8 Bishopsgate for interview, and off I went.

Derek Warren (b1928) came to Barings in 1948 having served in the Palestine Police Force. He spent most of his career as the Correspondent and later the European Correspondent. After retirement in 1988 he took on the role of visitor and advisor to the Barings pensioners, which he did until 2005.
6: Visiting the partners' room

The partners were sort of God, they lived in this place called the room.

Richard Comben (b1946) joined Barings in 1964 from school. He worked in foreign exchange and bond dealing, and he was posted to Saudi Arabia for a period in the 1980s when Barings advised the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority. On returning to London he continued in the investment management business which became part of BAM. He took early retirement in 1996.
7: Starting a joint venture in Nigeria

We were approached, would we be interested in going into a joint venture in Nigeria alongside the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank.

Nicholas Baring (b1934) joined the bank in 1958. His early career included a number of overseas postings and in the 1970s he had a particular responsibility for the expansion of international investment banking. Later he performed a similar role in asset management before retiring as executive in 1989 to become Chairman of Commercial Union. He was trustee and eventually Chairman of the Baring Foundation.
8: Becoming a computer specialist

So the bank actually put out a notice, I think it went up on the notice-board, saying that we'd like a few people to put themselves forward for aptitude tests to become programmers.

Edward Derbyshire (b1944), having joined Barings as a clerk in 1962, soon moved into a specialist computer role as techonology developed in the late 1960s. He left for a short period in 1978 but returned to continue in IT with Barings until taking early retirement in 1994.
9: Starting as a graduate trainee

The firm paid for us, the four graduates, to receive tuition from academics at, I think the City University or City Business school, in corporate law, in, I think, accountancy for, two days a week, and in basic economics.

Christopher Steane (b1956) joined Barings as a graduate trainee in 1978 assigned to the Credit Department from where his career in banking and capital markets developed. He continues with ING Commercial Bank working in both London and Amsterdam as Head of Lending. He is a trustee of the Baring Foundation.
10: Development of the art collection
11: The new 8 Bishopsgate and Barings' buildings

It was a terrific building because it was open plan and you had wonderful views.

Kevin Lee (b1953) was training to be an accountant when he joined Barings in 1978 to work in Internal Audit. He became head of Treasury and Trading Services within the bank before transferring to Baring Asset Management in 1989. He was in charge of Investment Operations then Change Management until 2009 when he retired.
12: Hong Kong during the Stock Market Crash

So for a large transaction the share certificates were actually carried around town in suitcases.

Peter Norris (b1955) joined Barings corporate finance from university in 1976. Apart from a spell with Goldman Sachs he remained with the Baring Group until 1995 when he was a director of Barings plc and Chief Executive of Barings Investment Banking Group. He was in Hong Kong from 1987 to 1992.
13: Globalisation and the economic climate

Actually being a global investor was nothing new and of course at Barings there was a fabulous tradition and history of global investing.

James Williams (b1950), having started with Lloyds Bank, joined Henderson Administration in 1975 to work in Hong Kong. Henderson's and Barings formed a joint venture, later bought out by Barings, and this developed into Baring Asset Management. Among other roles, he was a director and Chief Investment Officer. He left BAM in 2002.
14: Looking after clients in Japan

We had a chap called Cook and he used to write these big books on countries which usefully could be called Cook Books.

Diarmaid Kelly (b1959) originally trained as a blue button with Pinchin Denny. He was part of the Japanese broking operation which joined Barings from Henderson Crosthwaite in 1984, and which formed the foundation of Baring Securities. He was Deputy Chairman of Baring Securities and remained with ING Barings until 1996.
15: Hearing news of the crisis

The staff began to appear in the office too, not summoned, they just appeared, from all over the place, and by Sunday afternoon the whole building was full of people.

Andrew Tuckey (b1943) originally trained as an accountant and joined Barings in 1968 from British American Tobacco. He specialised in corporate finance and had a particular interest in Far East business. He was Deputy Chairman of Barings plc in 1995 and continued for a period as a consultant with ING Barings.

Mary-Anne Daly (nee Wilkinson) (b1957) started her career with Chase Manhattan Bank and came to Barings corporate finance in 1988. She moved to the Paris office and later transferred to the asset management business. After returning to London she continued to work in Baring Asset Management private clients business until leaving in 2001.

Daphne Chidwick (b1934) was already an experienced secretary when she joined the typing pool at Barings in 1956. She went on to be senior secretary and later a manager. She stayed with the bank until retirement in 1992 when she took on the role of visitor to the Barings pensioners.
16: Find out more

The extracts available in this exhibition give just a flavour of the content of An Oral History of Barings.

The original full length interviews are accessible at the British Library together with transcripts and content summaries. In some cases the interviews have been closed or partially closed to public access at the request of the speaker. Details of the full interviews can be found by searching the British Library's Sound & Moving Image Catalogue by interviewee name, keyword or by the collection reference number: C1367.

Further extracts from the interviews are available in the publication 'In the Locker of My Memory: Extracts from An Oral History of Barings'. To request a copy please contact the archivist at baring.archive@uk.ing.com.

Explore Further

Audio: Margaret Lambert talks about life at Stratton Park

Audio: Margaret Lambert talks about life at Stratton Park
Transcript: Margaret Lambert

Transcript: Margaret Lambert

Stratton Park 1939

We had a dining room there, which was in the house, where we all, we used to get breakfast there and lunch, and dinner, at night. And then there were the various departments. There was the Dividend Department, which actually, although I was in the Coupon Department, we had overflowed into the Dividend Department. And that was overlooking the rose garden. And Cyril Lee, who was in the Dividend Department, used to have a gun, and he’d shoot the rabbits out of the window. The safes were downstairs which were the wine cellars, and they became the safes. They were very cold down there, if you had to go and work down there. I remember having a hot water bottle on my knee to keep my hands warm. We weren’t down there all the time, it would be when you, when you were doing what was known as cutting off coupons, that was the bonds which had got a coupon. They don’t do that these days, this is all old-fashioned. And then the bonds would be paid out twice a year. And then there were other various departments. There was the Foreign Correspondence Department. These were all different, different rooms in the house. And then there was the swimming pool just outside. It was surrounded by the stables, and the stables had little flats around which obviously, when it was a big house, used by grooms and things like that, and these were turned into small flats I think for more senior members of the staff. And then one down below of the stables was turned into a bar, and that was known as the Strange Cow. We were all given our ration of sugar I remember. We to go around the woods collecting wild strawberries and then make strawberry jam. And then at weekends people went home, a bus would take them to Micheldever station where they caught a train into, Waterloo I think it was.

Time: 1 min 55 secs
Audio: Anthony Akers talks about Bishopsgate and war-time Barings

Audio: Anthony Akers talks about Bishopsgate and war-time Barings
Transcript: Anthony Akers

Transcript: Anthony Akers

8 Bishopsgate

The last Norman Shaw building in the City of London. Well it was brick built, it had an arched doorway, then it had a long corridor up and then double doors again into the banking hall, and the banking hall was a series of oak sloping desks all the way around, three quarters of the way around, and in the middle was what was known as the Box and that held the general manager and a senior clerk. The petty cashier was one side and in the corridor in front of him there was a fireplace in which during the winter we had a coal fire, and opposite him on the other side was the chief cashier who was responsible for dealing with the lending of the money from day to day. So every day the money brokers used to come in with their top hats, frock coats, spend a little time in idle conversation with the general manager, who would then have decided whether to bring back money or lend out money. We had these regular procession of money brokers walking in and out, and all done by hand, even though telephones were available, but nothing was done on the telephone in those days.

Time: 1 min 32 secs

Getting a job at Barings

You couldn’t get a job in Barings unless you were recommended by somebody, you couldn’t just write in and say – they never took anybody on like that. If you were recommended they would take you on whether there was a job for you or not, in the view that, oh well there will be soon, you know. So then I started in Barings, which was thirty-five shillings a week, which was five shillings a week more than the clearing banks paid, and shortly after I was employed they gave us a five shilling rise to take care of wartime expenses and what have you, so I was getting two pounds a week which was a monumental sum in those days.

Time: 0 min 45 secs

Barings Evacuated to Stratton Park

Barings had evacuated all but a skeleton staff down to Stratton Park near Micheldever which was one of the family homes from centuries back, but they didn’t live in it then. We had contracted a Pickfords van that used to come up from Stratton Park every day with the work and take what we’d taken in to be processed back down there, so we were just like sort of a bit of a clearing house and all the drudgery was all done down at Stratton Park where they all lived, and it also used to take the beer down to them because they had a social club down there. And one day we had to move some bars of gold from our safe in Eight Bishopsgate down to the Bank of England. So Pickfords van was outside and one uniformed policeman and we carried these bars of gold. Then it went off to the Bank of England with the bullion clerk with it and all went well there and then they found one missing and there was a temporary panic until they found it behind the barrel of beer.

Time: 1min 25 secs
Audio: Philip Hatch talks about Stratton Park and fire watching duties

Audio: Philip Hatch talks about Stratton Park and fire watching duties
Transcript: Philip Hatch

Transcript: Philip Hatch

Stratton Park and Fire Watching

Stratton Park was a, was approached by a long drive and it was a dark grey building of two storeys, quite long, and it overlooked a very nice parkland and you walked across that parkland to the village of East Stratton. All on the top floor were rooms, they were either shared rooms like the young men had a shared room, the more senior people had rooms on their own and there was a big room where all the young girls were, that was called the ‘nursery’. Downstairs were the offices and I was sent to work in what they called the day books. A day book is a journal in which all the cash and bank entries are entered, so you’ve got a record of all the entries in and out, done that day. The only adding machines I can remember cranked a handle, that’s to say you entered the amount and you pulled the handle every time, so that was the technology in those days. I mean the day started with opening the mail again if you were a junior, and I was a junior all the time really until I went into the army. You had breakfast first, I think you had breakfast before you opened the mail and then opened the mail and then you went to your department and… You had fire watching – fire watching, they had to be very careful that they didn’t leave the young men on with the young girls so you’d find that a young man would be on with a very senior spinsterish lady. If you’re on the second shift you, as a sideline you delivered tea to everybody in their rooms if they wanted it, so you saw all the girls in their hair clips and bits of paper and stuff they have [laughs].

Time: 1 min 42 secs
Audio: Derek Warren talks about being interviewed for Barings

Audio: Derek Warren talks about being interviewed for Barings
Transcript: Derek Warren

Transcript: Derek Warren

Part I: Interview at 8 Bishopsgate 1948

And I had a letter from Barings saying that they had heard of me, and invited me to call at number 8 Bishopsgate for an interview, and, off I went. I remember going up to London, crossing the old London Bridge, and all the sights and sounds of the City as it was in those days, 1948. They said, go into Bishopsgate and look for the lamp over the door at number 8, which was very prominent, and I found that very easily. And on the dot I went up the long corridor to the desk, introduced myself, and said I’d called to see Mr Hollingsworth, who was the staff manager in those days, and was taken in to the waiting room. I remember that very very distinctly indeed. John Hollingsworth filled in my actual application form, so, I didn’t actually do any writing myself that morning. And, I remember him saying quite distinctly, he said, ‘Lord Ashburton normally takes these interviews, but he’s away, and you’ll be seeing Lord Errington.’ And, he came into the waiting room and interviewed me. We stayed in there for quite some time, talking about Palestine and the forces, and various other things. And I’m told that afterwards he said, ‘Just the sort of chap we want,’ and, it was confirmed that I was joining them.

Time: 1 minute 20 seconds
Audio: Richard Comben talks about visiting the partners' room

Audio: Richard Comben talks about visiting the partners' room
Transcript: Richard Comben

Transcript: Richard Comben

Getting Letters Signed in the Partners’ Room

Well, they had – every department had a manager and I don’t think they were ever actually called deputy manager, but they were sort of number two. They didn’t have a title but, that was the structure. And so you only ever really dealt with your department manager. But the next layer up was the general manager and the deputy general manager and if there was a bigger problem it would go to him. So that was pretty much where it stopped. The partners were sort of God and they lived in this place called The Room and you just, you know, if they telephoned you, the phone would ring, had a double ring if it came from the partners and used to terrify you. You’d look around, if there was nobody else in the room you’d think oh God, I’ll have to answer it. It was quite frightening, they were really God, you know, the partners. And they had to sign bills of exchange and so we’d got it all worked out and entered it in the draft book and took it in and you’d go in there and there was a little sort of vestibule before you went in, so you could stand and look to see who was available, who wasn’t on the phone. And as you went in the room there’d be a fire crackling in the grate, the clock ticking and it was so quiet apart from that. I remember being quite nervous going into the partners’ room. I used to tune up in this vestibule [hums] because if I didn’t I’d squeak when I asked them, I’d go [squeaks] [hums] and then I walked in and you’d stand by the desk and the clock was ticking and sometimes with a quill pen, not a quill pen but an old pen they’d dip in the thing [makes noise of pen dipping], and then they’d roll it and you would have to stand there waiting for them to do all this and, ‘thank you sir’, out you went. It was, it was amazing really. Quite amazing.

Time: 1min 42 secs
Audio: Nicholas Baring talks about starting a joint venture in Nigeria

Audio: Nicholas Baring talks about starting a joint venture in Nigeria
Transcript: Nicholas Baring

Transcript: Nicholas Baring

World Bank Annual Meeting, Nairobi 1972

One other venture which came up about the same time and which I, again, was involved in was in Nigeria when we were approached – to say would we be interested in going into a joint venture in Nigeria alongside the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank. My reaction, which my colleagues were glad to share, was yes, we could be interested but we needed to have a large commercial bank alongside us. We decided in that case that our preferred partner would be Morgan Guaranty. I had a stroke of luck in that 1972 the World Bank annual – World Bank and Monetary Fund’s – annual meeting took place in Nairobi. These annual meetings – which were markets really, which we went to hear what the leaders in the international financial world – hear what they had to say, but also to try and sell our wares. The large banks always entertained on rather a grand scale on these occasions and Morgan Guaranty were throwing a cocktail party in a house, private house, which they’d rented for the purpose, on the outskirts of Nairobi and my colleague and I decided we would turn up early, and then the most huge tropical downpour succeeded and – but it prevented virtually anybody else coming and for two hours or so we were unable to get away, but it did give us a unique opportunity to, to talk about the potential joint venture in Nigeria. They were probably so glad to have something to talk about that they acceded to the idea. Of course, by that time the hike in the oil price had already become evident and so Nigeria was again a country which was beginning to look potentially very wealthy. So quite a long period of joint study by Morgan Guaranty and ourselves and then Martin Shaw and I, together with two or perhaps three Morgan Guaranty representatives, went out to meet the senior management of the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank and to finalise the agreement leading to the establishment of the bank.

Time: 2mins 29secs
Audio: Edward Derbyshire talks about becoming a computer specialist

Audio: Edward Derbyshire talks about becoming a computer specialist
Transcript: Edward Derbyshire

Transcript: Edward Derbyshire

Becoming a Computer Specialist in the 1960s

The bank decided that they would computerise the transfer department, the share registration area. Now that at the time was using similar machines, different machine room but the same kit as the dividend department was using and it wasn’t just the dividend department using that, the stock office used it for keeping records of who held what shares as well. So you had two machine rooms; one at the front of the building in the transfer department and the other one at the back of the building on the ground floor in the stock department, dividend department. This range of machines in the transfer department was of a similar vintage – they were Powers-Samas, they were quite limited in what they could do, they would handle, for example, paying dividends for shares for whom we held the register, so Watney Mann was one of the shares we did the register for. If they announced a dividend we would have to process that and print the dividend warrants, thousands of them, and stick them in envelopes and send them out to the shareholders. This was a lot of work and there was a lot of manual intervention and the machines, although they had revolutionised it I’m sure, were not doing all that much of it. So the idea was to introduce the next generation of machinery and computerise more thoroughly. They got a proposal from ICT to put in some ICT machinery, but this machinery, unlike the Powers-Samas, would need some serious programming. So the bank actually put out a notice, I think it went up on the notice-board, saying that we’d like a few people to put themselves forward for aptitude tests to become programmers and I was one of two people selected to be trained to become programmers and it all went on from there.

Time: 1 min 47 secs
Audio: Christopher Steane talks about starting as a graduate trainee

Audio: Christopher Steane talks about starting as a graduate trainee
Transcript: Christopher Steane

Transcript: Christopher Steane

Recruitment and Induction

I was offered a job in the Credit Department. There were four graduates taken on by Barings in 1978 and the firm arranged a rotation for new graduates, in which one spent time in the different departments. So, I spent some time in the foreign exchange area, principally in the back office, watching and to some extent learning about how you settled foreign exchange transactions. And then I would have spent some time, again, a month or six weeks, with the Corporate Finance Department, and six weeks with the investment management side. And then in the afternoons in that first six months the firm paid for the four graduates to receive tuition from academics at, I think the City University or City Business School, in corporate law, in, I think, accountancy for, two days a week, and in basic economics. And the one-on-one tuition was excellent, really very good indeed, and that took place from, I think normally four till six, with the period from lunchtime until four o’clock supposedly spent in reading and preparing for the academic work, but more in reality, there was a table tennis table in the room next door.

Time: 1min 46 secs
Audio: Jim Peers talks about the development of the art collection

Audio: Jim Peers talks about the development of the art collection
Transcript: Jim Peers

Transcript: Jim Peers

The Barings Art Collection

The art collection had evolved erratically over, well, over the whole history of the bank actually. It began with family portraits, of which there used to be quite a lot, and two or three of which were very fine. And then, in the nineteenth century the firm acquired, started acquiring prints and drawings, and in the twentieth century, first of all it acquired some really good watercolours, and then later, under the influence of Charlie Howick it started buying modern British paintings. And they were very, they were well chosen, they stood the test of time very well. And by the time I was responsible for them, they were areally worthwhile collection that people came to look at out of genuine artistic interest. They hung in the waiting rooms and so on, just like ordinary pictures.

And we did extend the collection a little bit in the last few years but not, not very seriously. All the pictures when bought were intended to hang on the walls to look nice and please us and our clients in our everyday working lives. We reached an understanding that we couldn’t really justify spending more money on paintings but that if we sold something, we could use the proceeds to buy other things. And we did acquire a few. But the character of the collection was really formed in the Seventies when the modern British were bought. Everybody knew it was feature of Barings, the collection was a feature of Barings, and they were quite proud of it. For the vast majority of the staff, they weren’t the kind of pictures they would recognise or would have, let alone bought, or would have on their own walls. People didn’t necessarily love the paintings but they certainly liked the fact that we had them. They, they were a definite asset. It contributed to a sense of style which was very blurry, very unclear, but helpful, because people knew that it represented quality, and sort of, integrity too, and an appreciation of the good things, the finer things in life. You can go no further than that because it didn’t affect people in their day’s work, it just, it was a flavour.

Time: 2mins 20 secs.
Audio: Kevin Lee talks about the new 8 Bishopsgate and Barings buildings

Audio: Kevin Lee talks about the new 8 Bishopsgate and Barings buildings
Transcript: Kevin Lee

Transcript: Kevin Lee

New 8 Bishopsgate and Barings Buildings

It was a terrific building because it was open plan and you had wonderful views. Initially you could see down to Tower Bridge and then slowly the Lloyds Building went up, which obscured that side of the building, looking south-east. And of course we had the top part and the views were spectacular. It was a terrific building to work in.

The building facilitated the dealing room because – this was the start of the move to Canary Wharf because there was a restriction on building in the City, you needed an awful lot of cabling below the dealers’ desks. And the fact we were in a new building, we could facilitate that whereas a lot of other buildings weren’t fit for purpose. But that, that building, 8 Bishopsgate, I mean, it still looks in pretty good shape when you walk past it now, I always stop and have a look at it. And we had this – you went in there and it was absolutely spectacular because there were the marble floors and the marble walls and there was the Barings reception. And on the left hand side as you went in there was this massive great picture, it must have been fifteen feet high and twenty foot long, of the Great Fire of London. It was absolutely spectacular. We didn’t have a plate up saying Baring Brothers and Company, it just said 8 Bishopsgate, and I think the view was, well, if people didn’t know where Barings was, we’re not going to advertise ourselves.

Wherever you go in the world, there’s a look feel still now to a Barings building. They’re always incredibly high quality, very classy, very professional. And you get a lot of commonality in these prints of the pictures so you see the same pictures in the different offices of – you know, if you read the history of Barings there’s a picture of two of the Barings partners, two of the Barings, with the book of accounts for Bank Maison Hope. And that will be cloned in all the offices. So there’s a very similar feel and I think that is important, yah.

Time: 1min 42 secs
Audio: Peter Norris talks about Hong Kong during the Stock Market Crash

Audio: Peter Norris talks about Hong Kong during the Stock Market Crash
Transcript: Peter Norris

Transcript: Peter Norris

Hong Kong during the 1987 Stock Market Crash

And of course at that time in Hong Kong it wasn’t just the phones being busy but securities transactions were settled with physical scrip ie. bits of paper for share certificates and because of the peculiarities of the local market, share certificates were kept in small denominations so you might have a hundred shares or two hundred shares on a single certificate and people wanted them broken down like that. So for a large transaction the share certificates were actually carried around town in suitcases – big suitcase so it wasn’t people coming in and out of town from the airport, it was basically stockbrokers settling transactions. And so you has this sort of bustle of people counting bits of paper and putting them into suitcases and it just generated this sort of atmosphere of incredible frenzy and activities and so on. And then October the nineteenth, the famous hurricane, Black Monday, market fell twenty-five percent, Hong Kong market fell twenty-five percent, and it was just pandemonium. And we were in the middle of a share placement i.e. a raising of money for one of the very large Chinese-owned property companies called Sun Hung Kai, ooh what was it two billion dollars, two and a half billion Hong Kong dollars which for the market then was a very large transaction and if you could imagine two billion dollars’ worth of share certificates all individual certificates representing maybe twenty thousand dollars you can imagine the volume of paper around. But we were in the middle of this and at the height of the market and crash and all these bits of paper were in transit, so we had this hideous period of time, we weren’t quite sure whether people would actually settle, you know – whether they were going to try and walk away from the transactions they’d agreed to and because of the sort of manual nature of the market it was very difficult for the paperwork to keep up with the transactions. So we were all sitting around with long faces wondering what – would the money come in when we delivered this, these suitcases went out to the other brokers around town would we get the money in and we did in the end – but it was, it was a difficult time.

Time: 2 mins 20 secs
Audio: James Williams talks about globalisation and the economic climate

Audio: James Williams talks about globalisation and the economic climate
Transcript: James Williams

Transcript: James Williams

Globalisation and the late 1980s as a Purple Patch

Globalisation was nothing new. I remember when we used to go out and promote our global skills at Barings we used to have a presentation – because some people had to be persuaded to put any money abroad as a British investor, they just didn’t sort of feel comfortable with it, they were taking a currency risk. And we use to have a presentation, we’d found in the Baring archive an old portfolio which was pre-First World War. I’ve forgotten exactly the mix of it but it included Argentina and Russia, neither were probably great places at the time, a lot in America, and actually being a global investor was nothing new. And of course at Barings there was a fabulous history and tradition of global investing. So, all those three things coming together; the fall of inflation and falling interest rates, the rise of technology generating productivity and the globalisation – and then if you added that to what in the West was quite a benign political climate, I mean, those were the years of the Regan, Thatcher years when deregulation was something that was really important, I mean, it was a purple, purple patch. And it’s sort of hard to – it’s hard to imagine it being repeated but it was a great role model, I think, for how to make things work and succeed. It’s not just that investors were making great returns but, this was important, but employment was rising in the Western countries, and it was also a time that some of the arguments that had gone on historically over, you know, capitalism on one side and more sort of collective come socialism on the other side, those arguments were really won in favour of enterprise. And then of course in the middle of all that was the break up of the Soviet Union and the end of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe and everything else, so, I mean, incredible period to be working. And going back to my own role, I was in a fabulous position because I was running global portfolios with the scope almost to invest anywhere. We could pick and chose where we wanted to from all these marvellous things that were going on.

Time: 2 mins 3 secs
Audio: Diarmaid Kelly talks about looking after clients in Japan

Audio: Diarmaid Kelly talks about looking after clients in Japan
Transcript: Diarmaid Kelly

Transcript: Diarmaid Kelly

Looking After Clients in Japan

We would meet them at the, at the airport because it was quite tedious to get in from Narita so there’d be a Baring Securities’ car and in that car would be – if it was winter and cold, hot towels and coffee and a thermos and if it was summer, very hot, there’d be cold towels and cold water and they’d be driven to the hotels. And if it was their first ever visit waiting for them in the hotel would be a book by Ian Caroup Buruma called Japanese Mirror which is about the psyche of the Japanese. There’d be a book about the Yakuza, fantastic book about the Yakuza. And then there’d be a sort of guide to Tokyo, and all this would be on their beds waiting. We had a chap called Cook and he used to write these big books on countries which usefully could be called Cook Books, they were known as Cook Books. So as you hit Indonesia or Thailand for the first time, for most clients, not all, but for most clients, particularly in the UK or the US, it’d be the first time they’d invested in this country and there’d be a description of the history of the country, the government, the politics, the parties, stock exchange, how it works, what the commission levels are, what the settlement terms are, and then a page and a half of all the major companies, the top 100 companies in that country and what they did and how they did it and what the last five years profits had been, we’d alter that every year. And those things were called Cook Books and if you walked into an Asian fund manager’s office you inevitably saw on the wall behind his desk our Cook Books, all brightly coloured, different colours for every country and all the research – Thailand for example was lime green, all the research written on Thailand was always lime green. So little company notes, everything you could just see from a mile which one was a Barings document, all terribly slick. We were quite sort of – little admen in our own way, looking back on it.

Time: 1 minute 50 seconds
Audio: Andrew Tuckey talks about hearing news of the crisis

Audio: Andrew Tuckey talks about hearing news of the crisis
Audio: Mary-Anne Daly talks about hearing news of the collapse of Barings in the Paris office

Audio: Mary-Anne Daly talks about hearing news of the collapse of Barings in the Paris office
Audio: Daphne Chidwick talks about hearing news of the collapse of Barings

Audio: Daphne Chidwick talks about hearing news of the collapse of Barings
Transcript: Andrew Tuckey

Transcript: Andrew Tuckey

Hearing News of the Collapse

I was, I was completely shocked. And I obviously couldn’t go to sleep. I just couldn’t believe – I thought for a long time, I must have gone to sleep and I had had a bad dream, and it wasn’t really real. [laughs] But then I realised, I kept sort of, in my half sleep, half awake, I kept coming back to say, ‘God! it’s, it’s, it’s actually true. This has actually happened’. So I couldn’t believe it, no, I just couldn’t believe it. But obviously every time you regained full consciousness and realised it, it had happened it was a ghastly feeling. It was a sort of, that terrible feeling you have in the pit of your stomach, awful feeling that something ghastly has happened, and you can’t, you’re never going to get rid of that feeling, ever, it’s just so dreadful. And that’s how it was, and it was like that for a long, long time. Just complete, complete shock. And then, the whole of that weekend is a sort of everything is jumbled up in my mind, there was so much happening, so many people started arriving at the bank, because when it became known that there was a problem, people who were interested in buying Barings or part of Barings started appearing. And at one point they, I don’t know how many people there were in 8 Bishopsgate but there were, sort of Sunday afternoon there were people all over the place. The whole organization was disrupted. There was this, you know, calm, measured firm, suddenly just completely turned upside-down. The staff began to appear in the office too, not summoned, they just appeared, from all over the place by Sunday afternoon the whole building was full of people.

Time: 1min 40 secs
Transcript: Mary-Anne Daly

Transcript: Mary-Anne Daly

Hearing News of the Collapse (When Working in Paris)

My boss said, ‘Look Mary-Anne I’d like you to become a director of the fund business’ and you know, that is, they were based in Ireland, ‘Come to Dublin, we’ll have a board meeting and we’ll appoint you a director’ and I thought gosh, I was really chuffed, I thought this is fantastic, so exciting etc etc. And – came back that evening from Ireland feeling very excited and late that evening he called me at home and he said, ‘Are you sitting down’ and I said, ‘Yes’ and he said, ‘Well I have to tell, I have some really bad news to tell you, the firm is bust and I said, ‘I beg your pardon, it can not be, you know, we can’t – you know we don’t, we don’t go bust because we don’t do any underwriting, we don’t…’ and he said, ‘No, I know, it’s fraud’ and he said ‘it’s terrifying, I’ve just heard myself etc but you better get yourself some, get yourself a lawyer because you’re a director of the firm so can you get yourself some legal advice ‘cause we don’t know where this is going to lead’. So I remember putting my, putting the phone down and saying to my husband, ‘Oh my God we’re bust, I’m out of a job’ and I said, ‘Oh well, fine, I’ll find another one don’t worry about it’ and then he said, ‘Yah but all our savings are in Baring funds Mary-Anne and I said, ‘Oh my God, so they are’ and we didn’t have very much at that time, because we were still young and whatever, but I just thought oh my goodness, so they are.

Time: 1min 39 secs
Transcript: Daphne Chidwick

Transcript: Daphne Chidwick

Hearing news of the collapse

I was in Cumbria. I’d gone up to Cumbria to stay with friends and there was somebody also going up there who was working at Barings and he got hold of me early on on the Friday and said, ‘Just to warn you, I think there’s something going on, we might have lost some – quite a lot of money in the Far East. The directors have been in meetings all day and there’s obviously something going on.’ So I said, ‘Fine, okay, I’m ready for that then’. And then, at about two o’clock that morning, Saturday morning, somebody who was still working in the bank phoned my hostess and said, ‘For goodness sake get to Daph before she sees the papers in the morning, because Barings is going down’. That must have been the Saturday night because Sunday morning, we were up and out early and Gerald, my brother, went and got the newspapers and he bought two sets and he dropped a set on my lap in the car as we were going off to bird watch on the coast somewhere and said, ‘You’d better look at that’. And that was it. You know, at that stage you didn’t really know quite what it meant except we were obviously liable to be going down completely. And I was driving home on the Monday with a young friend, a daughter of the house actually, and I said to her, ‘I think you’ll have to drive home, I don’t think I can do it’, you know I was still shaky. And so we drove home and there were fourteen telephone calls on my telephone, all of them upset. I don’t think anybody asked about their pension, they were all just, you know, what can we do, it’s ghastly.

Time: 1min 27 secs