When Man Fingers introduced he was stepping down as chair of Terra Firma final 12 months, one of many UK’s most tenacious dealmakers indicated he was beginning a brand new, more-benevolent chapter. “Man desires to vary the main target of his life,” the personal fairness agency stated of its founder’s plans to commit himself to philanthropy. Whereas nonetheless controlling Terra Firma-backed companies, corresponding to property group Annington and McDonald’s eating places within the Nordics, Fingers recognized variety, inclusion and psychological well being initiatives as his charitable goals.
Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Fingers kick-started the UK personal fairness increase, turning into a billionaire and one of many nation’s most influential financiers. However his popularity was later bruised by enterprise failures, expensive authorized feuds and caustic public recriminations.
Simply final week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence paid Annington £6bn to take again 1000’s of army properties, after years of authorized wrangling. For Terra Firma, the deal seems like a win. For the federal government and taxpayer, it was “one of many worst-ever” offers, based on the UK defence secretary.
Fingers’ retirement announcement final 12 months was in keeping with a renovation of his popularity that had begun a number of years earlier. In his 2021 memoir, The Dealmaker: Classes from a Life in Non-public Fairness, Fingers vowed to reform each his private habits and “philosophy of enterprise”. His objective, he wrote, would turn into “to go away the world a greater place”.
One instance was Mansfield School at Oxford college, to which he and his spouse donated hundreds of thousands of kilos through the years. This largesse offered the funds for The Fingers Constructing, a glass and stone construction combining pupil housing and the college’s human rights institute. The annual Fingers Lecture, which takes place there, welcomed audio system together with Sir Bob Geldof and Lord William Hague, a detailed buddy of Fingers, who’s now Oxford’s chancellor.
However two dozen former staff and enterprise associates described a unique aspect of Fingers to the Monetary Instances. The people, who labored for Terra Firma between 2002 and 2023, variously accused him of screaming and raging at employees, humiliating underlings and repeatedly telling sexually specific tales at work. The FT has additionally seen WhatsApp exchanges, dated from 2019 to 2023, between staff wherein they talk about Fingers “pushing us all to the sting”. In a single, a lady says she is “scared to be alone” with him, after he lowered her to tears.
Former staff spoke to the FT on the situation of anonymity for worry of reprisal. Many stated they felt Fingers’ current positioning as a philanthropist and mental-health advocate was hypocritical, given the way in which he handled them. “Individuals know they’re signing up for lengthy hours, exhausting work and no boundaries,” stated one former worker. “Nobody indicators up for bullying and intercourse speak.”
One junior worker, who left Terra Firma in 2020, stated Fingers informed her privately that he liked studying about sadomasochism. “He was speaking about how he’d actually suggest Story of O, that Fifty Shades of Gray was primarily actually beginner, introductory stuff. It wasn’t hardcore sufficient for him,” she stated. Story of O is a 1954 erotic novel a few feminine photographer who’s skilled to be a intercourse slave by her lover.
The accusations make Fingers the most recent high-profile UK determine to be accused of failing to reform their office behaviour. “There was this tradition for 25 years within the Metropolis of individuals like that, they usually’ve simply gotten away with it,” stated one former senior male colleague of Fingers. “His story is likely one of the business.”
This 12 months, the Monetary Conduct Authority, the Metropolis’s regulator, launched efforts to enhance how complaints of bullying and different non-financial misconduct are handled. Since October, all UK corporations have a authorized obligation to anticipate and forestall sexual harassment within the office.
Terra Firma is now run by Fingers’ son, Richard, whom staff stated was well-liked and had a notably totally different administration fashion. A press release offered by the corporate learn: “We now have at all times regarded the wellbeing of our folks as our prime precedence. To be clear, there is no such thing as a place for bullying, intimidation or inappropriate conduct of any sort at Terra Firma and there by no means has been.”
It added that Terra Firma had “strong processes and whistleblowing mechanisms in place” and that “problems with this nature have and can at all times be handled severely and confidentially, and our folks have been made conscious of how one can escalate them.” The corporate maintains that its HR perform labored properly and that it was by no means notified concerning the allegations towards Fingers referred to on this article.
When allegations have been put to them for remark previous to publication, legal professionals for each Terra Firma and Fingers stated that “this story on no account displays the tradition of Terra Firma now or prior to now”.
In his memoir, Fingers described a tough childhood. He was dyslexic and dyspraxic, he wrote, making him a goal for bullies and for corporal punishment in school. He additionally recounted being sexually abused by his piano instructor.
After attending Oxford, Fingers ultimately landed on the London outpost of Nomura in 1994. The Japanese financial institution welcomed his concept to imitate US corporations, utilizing low cost debt to purchase European companies with untapped potential. By 2002, a string of successes satisfied Fingers to go it alone. “I [wanted] to create a personal fairness agency to rival — and surpass — the best of the US giants,” he wrote about founding Terra Firma.
In London, potential Terra Firma recruits have been put via a rigorous course of to show themselves: a string of interviews, numerical and verbal reasoning assessments, and psychometric evaluation. Those that made the minimize discovered themselves on the coronary heart of the personal fairness increase. “It was intense . . . thrilling, mental, egalitarian,” stated one former senior director who labored there within the early years.
However Fingers was a taskmaster with a mood, and he anticipated employees to match his work ethic. It was “hazard cash”, the identical individual recalled. “You might be paid for the hours you retain, for the robust speak . . . He was not a tyrant however was positively autocratic.”
Based on staff, Fingers was unpredictable: “charming and charismatic” at one second, “harsh [and] domineering” the subsequent. Seemingly minor incidents might set off him. “There was a tradition of worry and trepidation round Man, significantly round what sort of temper he’d be in,” a former human assets director stated.
A number of former staff likened Fingers’ conduct to that of an impulsive little one. “He’s like somewhat boy who desires to show himself,” one stated. That always manifested in sexually inappropriate tales and specific feedback. “Individuals can be fairly horrified, ladies would positively be offended,” a senior male former colleague stated. “He used to assume it was amusing. It wasn’t.”
At different occasions, employees stated, Fingers raged. “There have been most likely numerous conferences the place he internally simply misplaced it,” stated a unique former senior director, who labored at Terra Firma for a decade. “A billionaire shouting at a 22-year-old analyst who has simply come from college about how silly that individual is.”
Former staff who spoke to the FT stated they felt they didn’t have recourse to Terra Firma human assets. “The concept of any individual coming to the human assets director eager to make a criticism about Man was inconceivable,” the previous HR director stated. “He dominated all people with a rod of metal.”
There have been upsides to Fingers’ idiosyncratic management. Workers have been picked from various backgrounds and juniors have been uncovered to high-level decision-making exceptional at different personal fairness corporations. Past profitable pay packages, staff stated Fingers might be personable and mentoring. “There have been cases when he actually made folks really feel like household and supported them,” one other former director stated.
In an announcement to the FT, Fingers stated he “based Terra Firma on the precept that each one voices can be heard. I deny ever having been a bully, a tyrant or behaving inappropriately, however on this atmosphere there have been occasions when tempers have been misplaced, voices raised and feedback made that some could have discovered tactless or ill-chosen. I apologise to anybody who felt upset or offended by how I spoke or reacted prior to now. I perceive that my drive to construct a profitable firm and take my staff with me typically meant I spoke harshly, for which I’m very sorry.”
Fingers’ representatives denied that he had an inclination to speak about intercourse or books about intercourse. They stated he can’t exclude the chance that he informed jokes that will have appeared inappropriate however that he by no means meant to make folks really feel uncomfortable.
By early 2007, Terra Firma was closing its third fund, which might in the end complete €5.4bn. That was the 12 months the agency acquired report label EMI for £4bn. A music buff whose autobiography options lyrics as epigraphs to every chapter, Fingers quickly discovered he had misgivings concerning the deal. Strains from Eric Carmen’s plaintive ballad “All By Myself” preface pages in his memoir about EMI.
Terra Firma struggled to service EMI’s debt, and Fingers got here to imagine that lender Citigroup had tricked him into the deal. He filed a expensive lawsuit, which he ultimately misplaced. In 2011, Terra Firma was compelled at hand management of EMI to the financial institution. Fingers’ buyers misplaced £1.5bn.
One former Terra Firma director informed the FT that Fingers was as soon as “as influential as” Stephen Schwarzman and Leon Black, the founders of US personal fairness giants Blackstone Group and Apollo World Administration, “however in the end EMI meant that he can be remembered for very totally different causes”.
The loss was compounded by Fingers’ private life. By then, he had moved to Guernsey, a tax haven within the Channel Islands, to publicly protest towards the Labour authorities’s fiscal coverage. However his spouse and 4 youngsters stayed behind, a separation Fingers later described as “emotionally very robust”.
For a few years after the transfer, based on his legal professionals, Fingers didn’t journey to London. However staff made frequent journeys to work out of Terra Firma’s Guernsey outpost or went on abroad journeys with Fingers. Typically, they have been required to work out of his house on the island. “Even when he wasn’t there,” one individual recalled, “the selections all went via him”.
A number of expressed sympathy for his or her former boss’s private circumstances. Fingers’ anger, some employees stated, usually adopted moments of vulnerability. When he was candid about his troubled childhood, these he opened as much as might discover themselves in his crosshairs. “He was virtually so scared of his personal emotions that he would then go on a rage,” one of many former staff stated. “As if . . . he needed to put you in your house.”
After the publication of Fingers’ memoir and articles wherein he described his mental-health struggles, some employees “simply couldn’t imagine it”, as one individual put it. “How might he speak about being bullied when he was such a bully?” One other enterprise affiliate added: “In a manner, I really feel he [was] having a dialog about what he want to be like,” referring to Fingers’ advocacy.
Within the guide, Fingers wrote about making an attempt to engineer a Terra Firma comeback, following the EMI debacle. However promising offers upset, and the corporate struggled to lift cash. Fingers admitted that, by 2019, “the rebirth of the agency hadn’t labored . . . I might lastly withstand the truth that I used to be by no means going to be Stephen Schwarzman.”
In 2020, Fingers, a frequent op-ed author, based Interact Britain, a charity meant to scale back political polarisation. “By and huge what I noticed was a person who was doing his finest, who did in the end care concerning the individuals who labored on the agency,” an worker who labored intently with Fingers round this time stated. “Somebody who . . . was making an attempt to take a look at how they might use their place for some good.”
However former staff stated altering mores in Metropolis workplaces over current years appeared to cross Fingers by. The problem was not company-wide, staff famous. “This shock went via the Metropolis . . . there was an actual cleanse,” stated a former Terra Firma funding director. “[But] it didn’t get via to him that issues have been altering and also you couldn’t behave that manner any extra.”
One individual, who stated they left Terra Firma partially due to Fingers’ outbursts and sexual feedback, stated Fingers as soon as informed a narrative at a piece offsite a few enterprise affiliate masturbating within the bathtub. “I’m simply him considering, ‘what the fuck’?” they stated. A number of former staff stated he made feedback concerning the measurement of ladies’s breasts. “Man over-sexualised all the things,” added one other staffer who labored intently with Fingers and left not too long ago. At work dinners, she stated “the dialog would at all times revolve round intercourse . . . folks’s kinks”.
A former senior colleague added: “He informed us as soon as a few story when he joined [a City trading floor] and analysts needed to lie on the bottom and the secretaries must take their knickers off and stroll over them.” Two different staff stated Fingers had informed them an analogous story. Fingers’ consultant disputed particulars of this anecdote and stated he had used it for example how the tradition of the Metropolis had modified for the higher. (Among the staff disputed this characterisation.)
The lady who left in 2020 alleged that, on one event after a piece dinner in London, she was so distressed by Fingers’ behaviour she referred to as a relative on her manner house. She stated his inappropriate feedback and overly acquainted method have been “terrible”. One other time, throughout an abroad enterprise journey in 2019, Fingers insisted on strolling her again to her lodge room after dinner. She stated he then hung round her room door, standing uncomfortably near her. Afterwards, in misery, she referred to as the identical relative.
The lady, who stated she ended up taking a number of months off work after leaving Terra Firma on account of stress from Fingers’ bullying, stated she was talking out now as a result of she discovered Fingers’ advocacy “galling” and needed him to be accountable: “I’m not a shrinking wallflower, and what occurred wasn’t OK.”
She and a number of other others commented that, aside from Fingers, Terra Firma was an gratifying place to work. “Should you eliminated him, yeah, completely that poisonous stuff would all go,” stated a former senior director. “The office tradition was really excellent,” stated the previous HR director. “However there was at all times this spectre of, when Dad’s house, all people went to their room and hides underneath their beds.”
