| Medicine for the old folks in Iowa JJ Ingersoll, our head of global focus, is raging at Stella de Santos's latest coup. Our newly hired head of regional and emerging focuses has just launched a record-breaking 1,000-year floater for debut borrower El Republico de Basket Caso. A novel marketing structure was used. The republic felt a costly roadshow process would be counter to its and investors' interests given its lack of a credit rating or a central statistics office. So we elected to send every fund manager in Edinburgh a case of single-malt whisky with a prospectus inside. Reports coming back from our salesforce were that the woody-tasting Isle of Gaga went down very well, and that the orders were large. Macpherson at the Braveheart Pension Trust said the pricing started to look exciting on the rocks and bubbly with soda. In the face of his rival's success, JJ fears he's lost his touch. The yo-yo on the 85th floor has already sent Stella a soon-to-be-published memo promising her a contraband supply of elastic bands if she keeps up this level of productivity and continues to answer her phone after two rings, all of which is good for the bottom line. |