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Bath, England
Alec Winston, a lifelong British citizen, was born in Bath, UK, to a modest but successful merchant family. His father started a small home furnishings store whose inventory appealed to middle class families. The store operated on the principle of “cash and carry.” Buyers paid in cash for their selections and made their own arrangements to transport those purchases to their homes.
While the home furnishings business in Bath wasn’t cut-throat, there was competition. Winston’s father realized early on that competition based on price was a race to the bottom and God help the victor. So, his father decided to compete on customer service instead. His store was one of the first to deliver purchases to the home and haul away whatever was being replaced—all at no additional charge.
Alec’s father was ahead of his time in one regard. Owning a fleet of trucks, let alone a single truck, was an expensive proposition as was maintaining a force of furniture haulers. Before it was known as outsourcing, his father sold the truck, discharged his laborers, and convinced other entrepreneurs to assume these costs on his behalf. Paying to deliver new furnishings and retrieve the old was far more cost-effective when there was a sale. The burden of paying for the truck and the laborers in slow months—and there were slow times—was shifted to others.
Alec took his undergraduate degree from the local university’s School of Management and joined his father’s small firm. It was a good business capable of comfortably supporting both father and son. But Alec’s business education taught him the value and rewards of growth and expansion.
Alec’s father didn’t share his son’s views about which he heard too often. There was the lecture on horizontal integration, vertical integration, and increasing the pool of likely customers. The father, holding his own limitations in high regard, couldn’t share his son’s enthusiasm for expansion, and he certainly didn’t believe in extending credit. Cash and carry had served him well. Trusting people to pay him after he’d delivered their purchase was a prospect he found too risky.
The father didn’t object to Alec’s proposal to have the local banks extend credit to their customers. He agreed to let Alec serve as the small company’s finance manager helping customers arrange to finance the purchases made in their store. The banks welcomed the additional business, but by their very nature bankers were a conservative lot. And at that time, bankers agreed to extend credit based on the strength of the personal relationships that existed between a bank and its faithful customers. Those unbanked had no such relationship, and no bank was willing to extend credit.
This led Alec to realize that the small banks in Bath would eagerly lend to the group of people who needed credit the least. If credit was to be the lever on which growth would be financed, then it needed to be made available to those who otherwise couldn’t afford to shop in his father’s store.
Alec’s family was considered prosperous by the time he joined his father’s firm, and their good fortune continued during his tenure. They purchased a new, larger home on Widcombe Hill just outside of town midway between Bath and the university that was his alma mater. His family’s largess, however, was assembled based on avoiding risk in business, not embracing it. Alec polled his merchant contemporaries in Bath, many of whom attended the university as well. A small group of whom agreed that growth and risk went together even if their respective fathers disagreed.
So WiseCredit was formed. Working their university connections, they assembled a small team of computer scientists, financial analysts, and others trained in commerce at the local university. They sought, and received, occasional advice from some of their former lecturers who also helped to establish highly remunerative connections in the London banking business.
Within a matter of years, British citizens throughout the southwest acquired their first credit cards and small lines of credit courtesy of WiseCredit. Local businesses realized the value in accepting the WiseCredit promise to make payment in full when their cardholders produced their card at the point of purchase.
Not everyone could repay these obligations, and the management committee of WiseCredit saw the wisdom in collecting wage and payment information on which to base their future decisions to extend, limit, or withdraw the lines of credit put forth to their clients. What started as a necessary adjunct to their business of extending credit soon became very profitable in its own right. Acquiring and selling “credit information” to businesses developed into the tail that wagged the dog. This prompted the management committee to sell the significant credit portfolio to the banks, who arrived very late to the game. Having off-loaded all their risk freed their capital for further growth as a credit bureau and exchange.
Following the old aphorism that nothing succeeds like success, WiseCredit eventually acquired a set of competitors. Over time they each collected the same information from the same population, so they could no longer compete based on the quality of their information. They began to compete instead based on price. And so, began the race to the bottom.
Alec heard about the evils of engaging in this race at his father’s dinner table from the time he was a lad in short pants. He knew the game was stacked against him. He sold his interest in WiseCredit to his partners who believed they could “grow” their way to prosperity—making up for the shriveling business margins through increased volume.
Alec knew better.
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Thirty years later, Alec Winston, a long-established patron of the fine arts, now Sir Alec Winston, continued to buy and sell personal and financial information. His business extended around the globe, but centered on a valuable subset rather than the population at large. You had to be an “up and comer.” Established wealth was no longer the sole criterion, although that helped. Owning a great idea was far more important, especially if the idea was valuable and those who did have the financial resources wanted to share in the idea for a price.
Elsemere Assessments, named for his deceased mother, didn’t fear the competition. They didn’t have any. The company purchased financial and personal information that was illegal to acquire in most countries. In some, it was against the law to even sell it. Yet, there was always an eager market, the legality notwithstanding.
This wasn’t a volume business. Elsemere received several hundred commissions each year. Alec didn’t need to advertise, indeed, his firm avoided all publicity. His buyers found Elsemere through word of mouth. The information they sought was so valuable that he alone set a price on its worth. And, his customers were always willing to pay that price, if it helped to guarantee that there was an actual return in that return on their investments.
He also adopted his father’s outlook regarding risk. He never wanted to own the means of production. His workers were always contractors. They only received payment when a commission was in hand. His gross margins were astoundingly huge, and the cost of acquiring, maintaining, and selling his product seldom exceeded five to ten percent of his revenue.
Even though his stock in trade was now illegal, he didn’t fear investigation or prosecution. His contractors were always ex-agents of national security services. The security services knew their former employees and contractors had to earn a living when their sanctioned intelligence, and counter intelligence, days came to an end. And Elsemere was viewed as an acceptable next stop for former agents. In fact, keeping them “in the game” was good for the security services. It provided a back bench, or reserve, of proven, active ex-agents willing to provide these same services when their former employers had the need.
The only real wrinkle was Elsemere’s retirement plan.
Sir Alec learned early on that placing sensitive information in the hands of someone brash enough to use it—in an extracurricular manner—constituted a threat. The security services knew this to be true in their own line of work. You couldn’t afford to have too many well-informed free agents let loose in the country side. They could leverage what they knew to affect a form of profitable blackmail. Unfortunately, that could boomerang on Elsemere and eventually compromise its core business.
Governments made certain that former agents who shared what they shouldn’t paid a price and knew their silence had long since been bought and paid. A “tell all” book had to be vetted prior to publication. Serving as a technical advisor on a film production was acceptable, if the “advisor” didn’t compromise any past, current, or future intelligence activity or operation. If an advisor still didn’t want to play by the rules during retirement, then retirement could be arranged to end abruptly. It was prison or worse.
Sir Alec recognized the wisdom of this approach. So, he arranged for Elsemere to skip the vetting options and move directly to the termination of services—with prejudice. Again, the state services didn’t object. What was good for the goose was good for the gander. With one important exception.
The intelligence services produced an unending stream of analysts and data gatherers. They hired new groups each year, trained them, supported them to their scheduled retirement date, worked them hard and long without mercy, and then cast them out into the world without a resume touting their true skills and achievements. They could never share with anyone—their spouses included—what they did for the state.
Those who were trained to kill numbered far fewer and were paid far better.
The government services exercised incredible patience and care for their killers. They could work, from time to time, even well after their retirement. And there was little risk of a person in the murder-for-hire business writing under his true name and identity or making a clean breast of it prior to death. There was no statute of limitations for murder. No, these folks took their secrets to the grave.
Like governments, Elsemere took great pains to care and protect their contractors who practiced murder for hire. It didn’t pay to do otherwise. No one wanted this type of unhappy employee.
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It was a cold, overcast day in Bath when Sir Alec returned to the corporate residence. He’d been an invited speaker at the university’s School of Management. As one of the school’s more successful alumni, he was asked to “participate” often in the development of new scholars and graduates. Participation always meant “to give,” and he gave generously of both his time and money.
He returned to his office to learn the San Francisco law firm informed him that their client was grievously injured, under suspicious circumstances, while in custody awaiting a bail hearing. Despite transport to a trauma center, he died. Did Sir Alec wish them to investigate further or take any action on his firm’s part?
Sir Alec was most displeased on multiple points. This issue with two of his contractors was proving difficult to bring to an orderly conclusion. He was, in fact, paying for two funerals, as expected. He just wasn’t burying the people he intended. And that didn’t include the special medical attention for which he had to make expensive arrangements.
What concerned him more was the potential for publicity, or in this instance, even more publicity. Too much publicity could lead an enterprising journalist from the U.S. to the U.K. and that risk was simply unacceptable.
The law firm had already briefed him on the publicity generated by the gob smacked woman contractor who more than rose to the occasion. Here the roles were reversed. He expected Mr. Tyendinaga to demonstrate his special capacity and triumph over the woman. Instead, just the opposite happened.
He had his PA inform the law office that he considered the matter closed for now. They were to take no further action on his part for the moment. If circumstances changed, he would let them know.
He swiveled in his banker’s chair away from his leather desktop to gaze out the window and onto the long hilly street connecting Bath and its university. The gaudy orange, articulated bus carrying students, staff, and faculty from town to the university slowly crawled up the hill creating a queue of cars behind. Today’s seminar at the university was a transportation challenge. The professor leading the seminar exhorted the students to think outside the box. That’s why he was invited. No one could think outside the box as well, or even better, than Sir Alec.
Nothing succeeds like success.