Part I - Unit 1. Accounting

Section В

Jeffrey Archer is a master storyteller, the author of Kane and Abel. William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless Polish immigrant – two men born on the same day on opposite side of the world, their paths destined to cross in the ruthless struggle to build a fortune. The story, spanning sixty years of two powerful men linked by an all-consuming hatred, brought together by fate to save and finally destroy each other.

1.

When William started work as a junior director of Kane and Cabot in September, 1928, he felt for the first time in his life that he was doing something really worthwhile. He began his career in a small oak-panelled office next to Tony Simmons, the bank’s director of finance. From the week that William arrived, he knew without a word being spoken that Tony Simmons was hoping to succeed Alan Lloyd as chairman of the bank.

The bank’s entire investment programme was Simmons’ responsibility. He quickly delegated to William some aspects of his work; in particular, private investment in small businesses, land, and any other outside entrepreneurial activities in which the bank became involved. Among William's official duties was to make a monthly report on the investments he wished to recommend, at a full meeting of the board. The fourteen board members met once a month in a larger oak-panelled room, dominated at both ends by portraits, one of William’s father, the other of his grandfather. William had never known his grandfather, but had always considered he must have been a ‘hell of a man’ to have married Grandmother Kane. There was ample room left on the walls for his own portrait.

William conducted himself during those early months at the bank with caution, and his fellow board members soon came to respect his judgment and follow his recommendations with rare exceptions. As it turned out, the advice they rejected was among the best that William ever gave. On the first occasion, a Mr. Mayer sought a loan from the bank to invest in ‘talking pictures’ but the board refused to see that the notion had any merit or future. Another time, a Mr. Paley came to William with an ambitious plan for United, the radio network. Alan Lloyd, who had about as much respect for telegraphy as for telepathy, would have nothing to do with the scheme. The board supported Alan's views and Louis B. Mayer later headed M.G.M. and William Paley the company that was to become C.B.S. William believed in his own judgment and backed both men with money from his trust and, like his father, never informed the recipients of his support.

2.

One of the more unpleasant aspects of William's day-to-day work was the handling of the liquidations and bankruptcies of clients who had borrowed large sums from the bank and had subsequently found themselves unable to repay their loans. William was not by nature a soft person, as Henry Osborne had learned to his cost, but insisting that old and respected clients liquidate their stocks and even sell their homes did not make for easy sleeping at nights. William soon learned that these clients fell into two distinct categories: those who looked upon bankruptcy as a part of everyday business and those who were appalled by the very word and who would spend the rest of their lives trying to repay every penny they had borrowed. William found it natural to be tough with the first category but was almost always far more lenient with the second, with the grudging approval of Tony Simmons.

It was during such a case that William broke one of the bank's golden rules and became personally involved with a client. Her name was Katherine Brookes, and her husband, Max Brookes, had borrowed over a million dollars from Kane and Cabot to invest in the Florida land boom of 1925, an investment William would never have backed had he then been working at the bank. Max Brookes had, however, been something of a hero in Massachusetts as one of the new intrepid breed of balloonists and flyers, and a close friend of Charles Lindbergh into the bargain. Brookes’ tragic death when the small plane he was piloting, at a height of all of ten feet above the ground, hit a tree only a hundred yards after take-off was reported in the press across the length and breadth of America as a national loss.

William, acting for the bank, immediately took over the Brookes estate, which was already insolvent, dissolved it and tried to cut the bank’s losses by selling all the land held in Florida except for two acres on which the family home stood. The bank’s loss was still over three hundred thousand dollars. Some directors were slightly critical of William’s snap decision to sell off the land, a decision with which Tony Simmons had not agreed. William had Simmons’ disapproval of his actions entered on the minutes and was in a position to point out some months later, that if they had held on to the land, the bank would have lost most of its original investment of one million. This demonstration of foresight did not endear him to Tony Simmons although it made the rest of the board conscious of William’s uncommon perspicacity.

3.

When William had liquidated everything the bank held in Max Brookes’ name, he turned his attention to Mrs. Brookes, who was under a personal guarantee for her late husband’s debts. Although William always tried to secure such a guarantee on any loans granted by the bank, the undertaking of such an obligation was not a course that he ever recommended to friends, however confident they might feel about the venture on which they were about to embark, as failure almost invariably caused great distress to the guarantor.

William wrote a formal letter to Mrs. Brookes, suggesting that she make an appointment to discuss the position. He had read the Brookes file conscientiously and knew that she was only twenty-two years old, a daughter of Andrew Higginson, the head of an old and distinguished Boston family, and that she had substantial assets of her own. He did not relish the thought of requiring her to make them over to the bank, but he and Tony Simmons were, for once, in agreement on the line to be taken, so he steeled himself for an unpleasant encounter.

What William had not bargained for was Katherine Brookes herself. In later life, he could always recall in great detail the events of that morning. He had had some harsh words with Tony Simmons about a substantial investment in copper and tin, which he wished to recommend to the board. Industrial demand for the two metals was rising steadily, and William was confident that a world shortage was certain to follow. Tony Simmons could not agree with him, insisting they should invest more cash in the stock market, and the matter was still uppermost in William’s mind when his secretary ushered Mrs. Brookes into his office. With one tentative smile, she removed copper, tin and all other world shortages from his mind. Before she could sit down, he was around on the other side of his desk, settling her into a chair, simply to assure himself that she would not vanish, like a mirage, on closer inspection. Never had William encountered a woman he considered half as lovely as Katherine Brookes. Her long fair hair fell in loose and wayward curls to her shoulders, and little wisps escaped enchantingly from her hat and clung around her temples. The fact that she was in mourning in no way detracted from the beauty of her slim figure. The fine bone structure ensured that she was a woman who was going to look lovely at every age. Her brown eyes were enormous. They were also, unmistakably, apprehensive of him and what he was about to say.

4.

William strove for his business tone of voice. "Mrs. Brookes, may I say how sorry I was to learn of your husband’s death and how much I regret the necessity of asking you to come here today."

Two lies in a single sentence that would have been the truth five minutes before, He waited to hear her speak.

"Thank you, Mr. Kane." Her voice was soft and had a gentle, low pitch. "I am aware of any obligations to your bank and I assure you that I will do everything in my power to meet them."

William said nothing, hoping she would go on speaking. She did not, so he outlined how he had disposed of Max Brookes’ estate. She listened with downcast eyes.

"Now, Mrs. Brookes, you acted as guarantor for your husband’s loan and that brings us to the question of your personal assets." He consulted his file. "You have some eighty thousand dollars in investments - your own family money, I believe - and seventeen thousand four hundred and fifty-six dollars in your personal account."

She looked up. "Your grasp of my financial position is commendable, Mr. Kane. You should add, however, Buckhurst park, our house in Florida, which was in Max’s name, and some quite valuable jewelry of my own. I estimate that all together I am worth the three hundred thousand dollars you still require, and I have made arrangements to realise the full amount as soon as possible."

There was only the slightest tremor in her voice; William gazed at her in admiration.

"Mrs. Brookes, the bank has no intention of relieving you of your every last possession. With your agreement we would like to sell your stocks and bonds. Everything else you mentioned, including the house, we consider should remain in your possession."

She hesitated. "I appreciate your generosity, Mr. Kane. However, I have no wish to remain under any obligation to your bank or to leave my husband’s name under a cloud." The little tremor again, but quickly suppressed. "Anyway, I have decided to sell the house in Florida and return to my parents’ home as soon as possible."

William’s pulse quickened to hear that she would be coming back to Boston. "In that case, perhaps we can reach some agreement about the proceeds of the sale," he said.

"We can do that now," she said flatly. "You must have the entire amount."

William played for another meeting. "Don’t let’s make too hasty a decision. I think it might be wise to consult my colleagues and discuss this with you again at a later date."

She shrugged slightly. "As you wish. I don't really care about the money either way, and I wouldn't want to put you to any inconvenience."

William blinked. "Mrs. Brookes, I must confess to have been surprised by your magnanimous attitude. At least allow me the pleasure of taking you to lunch."

She smiled for the first time, revealing an unsuspected dimple in her right check. William gazed at it in delight and did his utmost to provoke its reappearance over a long lunch at the Ritz. By the time he returned to his desk, it was well past three o'clock.

5.

"Long lunch, William," commented Tony Simmons.

"Yes, the Brookes problem turned out to be trickier than I had expected."

"It looked fairly straightforward to me when I went over the papers," said Simmons. "She isn’t complaining about our offer, is she? I thought we were being rather generous in the circumstances."

"Yes, she thought so too. I had to talk her out of divesting herself of her last dollar to swell our reserves."

Tony Simmons stared. "That doesn't sound like the William Kane we all know and love so well. Still, there has never been a better time for the bank to be magnanimous."

William grimaced. Since the day of his arrival, he and Tony Simmons had been in growing disagreement about where the stock market was heading. The Dow-Jones had been moving steadily upward since Herbert Hoover's election to the White House in November 1928. In fact, only ten days later, the New York Stock Exchange had a record of over six million shares volume in one day. But William was convinced that the upward trend, fuelled by the large influx of money from the automobile industry, would result in prices inflating to the point of instability. Tony Simmons, on the other hand, was confident that the boom would continue so that when William advocated caution at board meetings he was invariably overruled. However, with his trust money, he was free to follow his own intuition, and started investing heavily in land, gold, commodities and even in some carefully selected Impressionist paintings, leaving only fifty per cent of his cash in stocks.

When the Federal Reserve Bank of New York put out an edict declaring that they would not re-discount loans to those banks which were releasing money to their customers for the sole purpose of speculation, William considered that the first nail had been driven into the speculator’s coffin. He immediately reviewed the bank’s lending programme and estimated that Kane and Cabot had over twenty-six million dollars out on such loans. He begged Tony Simmons to call in these amounts, certain that, with such a government regulation in operation, stock prices would inevitably fall in the long term. They nearly had a stand-up fight at the monthly board meeting, and William was voted down by twelve to two.

6.

On March 21st, 1929, Blair and Company announced its consolidation with the Bank of America, the third in a series of bank mergers which seemed to point to a brighter tomorrow, and on March 25th, Tony Simmons sent William a note pointing out to him that the market had broken through to yet another all time record, and proceeded to put more of the bank's money into stocks. By then, William had rearranged his capital so that only twenty-five per cent was in the stock market, a move that had already cost him over two million dollars — and a troubled reprimand from Alan Lloyd.

"I hope to goodness you know what you're doing, William."

"Alan, I've been beating the stock market since I was fourteen, and I’ve always done it by bucking the trend."

But as the market continued to climb through the summer of 1929, even William stopped selling, wondering if Tony Simmons’ judgment was, in fact, correct.

As the time for Alan Lloyd’s retirement drew nearer, Tony Simmons’ clear intent to succeed him as chairman began to take on the look of a fait accompli. The prospect troubled William, who considered Simmons’ thinking was far too conventional. He was always a yard behind the rest of the market, which is fine during boom years when things are going well, but can be dangerous for a bank in leaner, more competitive times. A shrewd investor, in William’s eyes, did not invariably run with the herd, thundering or otherwise, but worked out in advance in which direction the herd would be turning next. William had already decided that future investment in the stock market still looked risky while Tony Simmons was convinced that America was entering a golden era.

William’s other problem was simply that Tony Simmons was only thirty-nine years old and that meant that William could not hope to become chairman of Kane and Cabot for at least another twenty-six years. That hardly fitted into what they had called at Harvard ‘one’s career pattern’.

Notes:

Dow Jones Index – фондовый индекс Доу Джонса, рассчитываемый для промышленных и транспортных акций на Нью-Йоркской фондовой бирже с 1897 г.

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) – Нью-Йоркская фондовая биржа: крупнейшая в мире фондовая биржа, основанная в 1792 г.

Federal reserve banks (FRBs) – федеральные резервные банки (США): 12 государственных кредитно-финансовых институтов и их отделения, являющиеся частью федеральной резервной системы и выполняющие функции центральных банков в особых округах (из нескольких штатов)

M.G.M. – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, знаменитая кинокомпания (США), основанная в 1924 г.

C.B.S.(formerly an acronym for Columbia Broadcasting System) - одна из трех крупнейших телевизионных и радиовещательных компаний в США.

Word file

Word-combinations

Section C

Complaints

Complaints may be of several kinds, and may arise from delivery of damaged goods, too many or too few goods. If a customer is dissatisfied with quality of his order, he will complain. In this case he should refer clearly to the articles in question, by referring to his own order number or to order number of his supplier’s invoice, or both. Then he should describe the nature of his complaint and state what action he wants his supplier to take.

Helsinki, 10th March, 2006

Dear Sirs, When unpacking your cases with ”NIVA” cars we experience difficulties due to inadequate and unsuitable packing. There is so little space between the top of the cases and the top of the cars that some cars are getting damaged on the top. We suggest that you should make the cases with one board of about 30 cm higher, which could enable us to unpack the cases without damaging the cars. We hope to hear from you soon,

Yours faithfull…