In what seems like another lifetime, before I hosted my own YouTube show and I was a blogger, I was a financial correspondent for CNBC. And that's where I met Larry McDonald. Larry recently published his own book "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers," and in it he devotes an entire chapter to me. When I learned of this I was deeply touched. He says some wonderful things about me that I wanted to share will all of you.
EXCERPT
By Larry McDonald
And still we were aware of the value of publicity. We needed to keep our name out there in the front line of the bond investment world. And the one exposure we lacked was the business channels on television, Bloomberg and CNBC. A slot there would surely send us straight through the roof. But … how to pull that off ? My favorite CNBC program centered around a very beautiful reporter called Kate Bohner, who produced a daily essay for around 10 minutes on some quite difficult financial subjects. Difficult for the average reporter that is. But I had always thought Kate was different. She showed a very astute grasp of complicated matters. To me she always seemed more like an executive in a finance corporation, a big commercial bank, or an investment house. There was just something more thoughtful about her, a quality that went beyond just telling a topical story.
There was no question of telephoning her because there was no chance of getting through. There was probably a network-screening operation designed to snag perverts, rapists and sex-maniacs, to protect girls as good-looking as Kate. I did not think it was in the interest of Convertbond.com for me to find my way onto that particular list.
So I pondered the problem, and decided, when the time was right, to launch my message through the internet. By now I was certain Kate Bohner would have her own e-mail, which, of course, was a secret, with no way of finding it out. But I worked in a hot-shot internet company with access to a lot of know-how and I resolved to try and crack the Kate Bohner code.
I started with Kbohner@CNBC.com, and ran through about 30 different permutations. And I compiled this list of potential internet addresses, waiting of course for the right moment when I could write a good friendly message. Days went by and then I turned on the television, switched to Kate’s channel and saw to my delight she had a brand new hairdo. Very slick, a bit shorter, and it made her look fitter than ever. I aligned my 30 different addresses on the computer, and composed my short message – “Really nice new hairdo today,” – signed Larry McDonald, co-founder, Convertbond.com. I then fired them all out, a scattershot approach, fully expecting all of them to come back,‘address unknown.’ And 29 of them did. But 15 minutes after I opened fire, one came back which was not ‘address unknown.’ It was a reply. Kate Bohner had responded – “To Larry. So glad you noticed. Thank you !”
I now had her e-mail address, and all I needed was a reason to send her another message. And that was real easy. I just waited until she broadcast another good essay on a subject I knew a lot about, and then fired her off a signal – “Kate : I really liked your piece about bonds today. Very insightful. I might be able to give you a hand with that type of stuff. Maybe even give you a few creative ideas. Yours, Larry. PS don’t change your hairdo !”
I made no attempt to suggest a meeting or even a phone call, just kept it easy, and complimentary toward her, a task which was not too testing. By this time I had made some provisional inquiries about this goddess of the airwaves. And the answers, given her astute grasp of finance, were predictable.
She did business and international studies at Wharton, and graduated from Columbia University School of Journalism. Her dad was a professor of English literature and she spent several years in Europe. Just about what you’d expect from someone that good at her job. Would I hear again ? Would she make contact ? Back came another response. “I’d appreciate that, Larry. By the way, what do you do ?”
I waited a day and then sent her an e-mail explaining about our new website, told her I was sure it was sufficiently revolutionary to make her a very good piece, and that we were riding the dotcom wave in a very big way. The Wall Street Journal had already mentioned us. So had Barrons. Again she responded, and suggested that we meet, perhaps for drinks one evening after work. Of course I immediately agreed, and she suggested the bar at the Gotham Lounge in Lower Manhattan.
Beside myself with excitement, I finished work early, drove out of Greenwich, and headed into the city. The traffic was heavy, and I almost crawled over the Triboro’ Bridge, and onto FDR Drive, heading south. At last I was going against the afternoon rush-hour flow, and I remember racing along the highway beside the East River toward Wall Street at a real good clip. The good news was I was right on time. The bad news was Kate never turned up. I waited for ages, sipping fizzy water and becoming
steadily more disconsolate. I did not have a phone number for her, and to be honest I was completely baffled by her absence. In the end, after 45 minutes, I left the Gotham and drove back to Greenwich, and decided not to contact her. I thought that was her prerogative. Next day she sent me an e-mail apologizing. And her reason was not anything simple, like working late or a
car that wouldn’t start. Kate had been in a car crash, a full-blooded wreck, and this time we swapped phone numbers in case she was in another one. Our new date was for the next week, Wednesday at six.
And once again I drove into the city, and this time the traffic was worse. I was two minutes late and double parked outside the Gotham before running in. I spotted her immediately. She was sitting way down at the far end of the long bar with a girl friend.
I introduced myself, and she introduced me to Candace Bushnell, the New York-based author of Sex In The City. I remember Kate ordered me a glass of wine while I dashed out through the bar to get rid of the car. As I did so, I glanced into the mirror and could see Candace smiling and giving Kate the thumbs up. I saw her mouth the words, “He’s so cute.”
With my confidence high, I parked the car and went back in. Right away we all got along, and had a great evening together. The three of us went out for dinner, and ended up at Kate’s place for a nightcap. Candace went home first, leaving Kate and me alone, an opportunity to show her I was a proper gentleman, not some smart-talking lounge lizard on the make. We concluded the evening with a chaste kiss on the cheek from Kate to me, and we parted, each with a friendship which has lasted to this day. I still think she’s one of the best financial reporters in the business.
But I knew right from the start, I could not really compete. I mean, Jesus, she’d been married to Michael Lewis who wrote Liar’s Poker. She’d been at the soccer world cup in Paris. But Kate came through for me in spades. We talked quite often, and under my tutelage she wanted to do two programs on convertible bonds. One would plainly be on Amazon, Bookstore to the World. This was a bond upon which I was a real expert. And she wanted to do a second program, on a global corporation with a recently issued convertible bond. I knew just the outfit for her, Diamond Offshore, the Louisana-based deep-water drilling kings whose services are in demand worldwide. This has always been a very exciting, brilliantly-run operation and I really believed in their new bond, and credit quality.
I regaled Kate with their history, and their longtime success searching for oil in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. So far as I could tell, they had always made a stack of money, in oil fields throughout the entire planet, especially off the coast of Texas, South America, Western Australia and the North Sea. What I always loved about Kate was the ease with which her imagination was fired. You could be talking about a bond, just a name, but you start painting pictures of a big sea off the coast of windswept
Scotland, of men braving the storms, drilling into the ocean floor in freezing, dangerous conditions, pumping the crude oil, hundreds of miles from home, out there on a giant offshore rig. Right then you had a real audience, not just some impatient journalist, looking for a sound bite.
And when Kate went on air with her essays – CNBC coast to coast, worldwide, an international audience - talking about the bonds, the background, the price and the potential profits, she was the best. And did she ever do us proud. She mentioned Convertbond.com several times. She mentioned me constantly and prominently. She quoted me, according to senior partner, Larry McDonald … I have just spoken to Convertbond.com partner Larry McDonald – there’s no doubt in his mind.
Overnight Steve Seefeld and I became world oracles on the convertible bond. And we deserved it, because we both understood the subject as well as anyone. And a lot better than most. Kate Bohner made us famous, and in turn we helped to make Kate look her peerless best. What a team.
I should perhaps mention here, formally, that at this stage in the proceedings Convertbond.com went berserk. Those 150,000 hits we received off the Wall Street Journal story now looked like a real slow day. We had hits from all over the world, hundreds of thousands of them, inquiring about convertible bonds, extolling the virtues of convertible bonds, explaining about new issues. People were ransacking our site for information, sending messages, requesting interviews, hammering in their credit card details. Steve and I, exhausted at the best of times, forgot our tiredness and looked to the future. Every week we fed our best ideas to Kate, kept her posted with all the new developments, and she often told me it was like getting dispatches from the front line of a war zone. Four times more she did programs, all of which featured us and our website. And right now she had the attention of the entire bond-investing world.
The major publications, Barrons, Fortune, and the Journal, were forever writing about the convertibles, and we were getting hits from some of the biggest investors in the world, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and several other big value investors. Everyone was looking for information on Convertbond.com. Everyone was talking about us. We were getting bigger and bigger, and shortly we would be named by Forbes Magazine as the Best of the Web. Kate for one brief moment seemed to think this was getting bigger than all of us, but I steadied her, told her with her Wharton expertise, and her natural flair, she could do anything. And I would make her the foremost authority on convertible bonds in the entire media world. “Kate,” I said, “You can handle this.” She looked at me, and said, “Larry. You’re damn right I can!"
