Page 273 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

The invitation was for all insurers participating in the policy: John, Harry, and the managing director of CSB, James Duck who, because of the size of the account, which meanwhile was more than AUD 10 million, did not want to let slip the chance to give a critical lecture on the breakdown of the relationship of trust. There would also be a so-called cover holder audit. So six persons travelled on 15th December to the Californian sun at Santa Barbara, with mixed feelings. None of them wanted to lose that „bringer of premiums“. But the situation was on a knife-edge. Fred had booked them into the best resort, the „Four Seasons Resort Biltmore“.
Each of us had our own flat there. Fred arrived with an entourage of nine persons, five from Australia and four from the States, among them people the visitors had never seen, those responsible for IT, bookkeeping and Claims. We had hired two cars of the type Chrysler Dodge at the Los Angeles airport. A black Hertz staff member had explained that we should on no account stop en route because there were everywhere criminal types hanging about on the edges of roads. I thought of my bladder; the trip along the coastal road would last 2.5 hours, an agonizing idea, he explained to John. John answered only:
„We’ll stop anyway. We’re Lloyd’s brokers and not American sissies.“
A remark that did not fail to have a reassuring effect on me. The trip from the airport at Los Angeles went via Santa Monica and Malibu along a picturesque road - names that were known from Hollywood series. I was disappointed by the places and the primitive construction of the houses; everything seemed to be made of paper mâché. Antique high-tension wires on wooden poles bordered the road.
After two stops we at last arrived at Biltmore Four Seasons. It was 5 p.m. and more than 20 hours since we had left home. Sleep was called for. Dinner was announced for 9 p.m. The hotel offered all it could in the way of luxury, even if it bore no comparison with the resort on Hayman Island. The dinner passed without intensive business conversations; for that the people arrived from London were too tired. And anyhow Fred had announced a great presentation for the next morning in the hotel’s conference centre.
At breakfast hardly anybody said a word. Everybody had his own thoughts, somehow the trust was broken and with skeptical expectations we made our way to the conference room expecting no good. On the wall hung a large screen, in front of it a lectern, around which the chairs were arranged in a semi-circle.
++++++
272