Describe myself in three words? Passionate, impatient and aspirational.
I come from a small fishing town in northern Greece most lawyers would not know. A very traditional family, my father was a local civil servant, my mother a homemaker. We weren’t poor, nor rich. Modest in Greece in the 1970s meant no car, no television. But there was a drive to do better. My pushy mum, when I was ten, would give any Indian or Chinese mum today a run for their money!
I was excessive on the academic side! I have four degrees. I painfully know that in the City having too many academic qualifications will inevitably go against you. It was a heavy burden to go to interviews explaining that this person with a strange Greek name and an army of qualifications could be a good lawyer.
I had a lot of disappointments. My wife, two of my children and I used to live in a small flat in Leyton, not even Leytonstone, for £110 a week. I had a noticeboard where I was pinning all my rejection letters. I ran out of space. All the City firms’ archives have a letter from Apostolos Gkoutzinis.
I wanted to be a regulatory lawyer, so I emailed [Shearman & Sterling partner] Barney Reynolds whom I met at a conference. He introduced me to Dave Beveridge, Ward McKimm and Richard Price. They interviewed me via video when I was at Harvard and invited me over. I was so keen I pretended I was at a conference in London and could just pop in. I didn’t want to take a risk that they wouldn’t interview me for the price of a flight.
I had not slept the night before, and I said: ‘Look guys, I probably know more about capital markets law, regulation and finance in an academic sense than the three of you combined, but I know zero about how to practise and how you guys do deals.’ Beveridge saw a little diamond, very rough, but a little diamond.
I pretended I was at a conference in London and could pop in. I didn’t want to risk that Shearman wouldn’t interview me for the price of a flight.
I was 30 years old and a lot of people would have asked to start mid-level, but I requested to start as a first-year associate. I just said: ‘If I start from the bottom and I catch up with my peers, I want the firm to be flexible.’ Beveridge – my mentor to this day – fulfilled that. I was double jumped in years one, three and five, probably breaking all the HR rules of Shearman. When I made partner I had been an associate for five years and five months. Nobody has done that. To this day I remain convinced that firms should take this approach when you are recognised by clients as someone who can do the deals.
Shearman’s capital markets practice at the time was an amazing place, it would be my dream if my leadership created that atmosphere again. We were doing, hands down, the most complicated deals in the market and never getting any sleep. I was sleep deprived for eight years in a row! The body was complaining but the heart and mind were very enthusiastic.
Ward McKimm is very charismatic. We did a lot of great deals together. He would never wait. I was always running behind him at airports. We would land in Johannesburg, leave our seats at the same time, but he’d arrive at the hotel half an hour before me every time.
I participated in all of the drama of Greece’s big sovereign debt and financial sector restructuring through my work for the three main banks in Greece, Eurobank Ergasias, National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank. The Greek banks were very worried there would be a debt restructuring and the holders of government debt would be asked to share the burden and write off part of the debt. At any one time I’m worried about a million and one things – from what the European Commission will do to what the shareholders will do – before I worry whether the whole thing will succeed or not.
I thought Yanis Varoufakis was a dangerous rogue minister who, if he tried to implement his ideas, would wreck the Greek economy. Sadly, I was absolutely correct. He’s a photogenic, charming personality who chose to employ his charisma and talent in the wrong calling and wrecked the entire economy for generations. He is responsible for the lost livelihoods of thousands of people.
Being a leveraged finance lawyer in the City and seeing great entrepreneurs build great businesses has been balanced against working with an unsung group of heroes of the Greek drama trying to keep the country together so that one day things will get better. Witnessing the punishing schedule simply to exist – not to make money and become rich – has been formative. The irony has not been lost on me.
I pitched for a big IPO of a real estate fund against Cleary Gottlieb and Linklaters and I was my usual self, driving hard about how I would not go home until the deal was done. They called me back and said: ‘You were a notch too high for us in enthusiasm – you need to tone it down a bit.’ I didn’t think I was getting the deal. Then he said: ‘But we loved you.’
I thought Yanis Varoufakis was a dangerous rogue minister who would wreck the Greek economy. Sadly, I was absolutely correct.
I was doing a rescue, make or break, live-for-the-day bailout for a financial institution. The rights issue had to be underwritten by the major investment banks. It would be very destabilising to announce we’re running out of money, so we wanted to say, ‘by the way, if we don’t raise the full amount all these financial institutions will buy everything’. We’re in our third night without sleep, and the announcement had to be made by 7am, when we get a 3am phone call from one of the four investment banks to say they are out. As soon as the other three heard, two said they would not pick up the missing piece and the third said: ‘If they’re out, we’re out.’ We had no deal. There might have been a run on the bank or the government might have nationalised it. I was sitting with the CEO and general counsel and we started scrolling through our phones calling the bankers we knew. It was street hustling. Some of them were asleep. We found two major UK banks to come in and made the announcement at 7.40am. When we were finished, the bank’s CEO said: ‘I’m done – I’m going to bed. Apostolos, you sort out the documentation.’
Capital markets will never become less volatile. They reflect the risk appetite, desires and mood of companies, governments and investors. Our lives are inherently volatile and we want them to be volatile. The only place where things are stable is graveyards.
I don’t see the possibility of a major transatlantic legal union as there are cultural, strategic, governance and profitability differences between the US and English firms. Unlike a factory, law firms’ assets are people so Firm A can talk to Firm B but if the fit is not obvious individual partners can go to Firm C. Whatever is being designed at senior management level, the general may look behind themselves and see there are no soldiers.
Spare a thought for the Greeks in London who have been worried about a Grexit and are now trying to avoid Brexit! Britain should stay in Europe and be a force of reform for the sclerosis of the European economic model.
Remain will win and it won’t even be close. The voters will voice their concerns and anger against Europe in the pubs and at the dinner table but behind the electoral booth people will see the risks. It would be a political earthquake which would destabilise the Western democratic world.
Negative interest rates are a deliberate transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers. It goes against the fundamentals of economics. I always worry when someone goes against the fundamentals. Your frivolous friend with a credit card lifestyle is being subsidised by you as a prudent homemaker.
A lawyer is nobody without his clients. A lot of well-known lawyers make the mistake of thinking it’s about them. A financial lawyer is a plumber in a suit. In the same way the plumber is the unsung hero of any beautiful house, lawyers are there to make sure money flows from a to b legally and safely. The lawyers should never be seen as the superstars, it should be the entrepreneurs taking risks.
The mission of a financial lawyer is to make sure a good deal will be done and problems will be resolved. But when a deal is a bad deal, whether illegal or really risky, a lawyer should say: ‘Don’t do this!’
I want people to remember me as somebody who is a good and practical lawyer, hiding his big ego behind the solutions.
I’ll be around for a while. My wife is expecting our fifth child so I’ll be doing a lot of hunter-gathering in the next 20 years. But I have in mind a small patch of land in Greece with olive and almond trees overlooking the Aegean. Greece is where I belong.
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk
Apostolos Gkoutzinis is European head of capital markets at Shearman & Sterling