The darker facet of Man Fingers’ legacy

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 needs to vary the main target of his life,” the non-public fairness agency mentioned of its founder’s plans to dedicate himself to philanthropy. Whereas nonetheless controlling Terra Firma-backed companies, equivalent 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-Nineties, Hands kick-started the UK non-public fairness growth, changing into a billionaire and one of many nation’s most influential financiers. However his repute was later bruised by enterprise failures, pricey authorized feuds and caustic public recriminations.

Simply final week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence paid Annington £6bn to take again 1000’s of navy properties, after years of authorized wrangling. For Terra Firma, the deal appears like a win. For the federal government and taxpayer, it was “one of many worst-ever” offers, according to the UK defence secretary.

Fingers’ retirement announcement final 12 months was in step with a renovation of his repute that had begun a number of years earlier. In his 2021 memoir, The Dealmaker: Classes from a Life in Personal Fairness, Fingers vowed to reform each his private habits and “philosophy of enterprise”. His function, he wrote, would turn out to be “to depart 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 over time. 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, an in depth good friend of Fingers, who’s now Oxford’s chancellor.

However two dozen former workers and enterprise associates described a unique facet of Fingers to the Monetary Occasions. 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 workers by which they talk about Fingers “pushing us all to the sting”. In a single, a girl says she is “scared to be alone” with him, after he diminished her to tears.

Former workers spoke to the FT on the situation of anonymity for concern of reprisal. Many mentioned they felt Fingers’ latest 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, arduous work and no boundaries,” mentioned one former worker. “Nobody indicators up for bullying and intercourse discuss.”

One junior worker, who left Terra Firma in 2020, mentioned Fingers informed her privately that he cherished studying about sadomasochism. “He was speaking about how he’d actually advocate Story of O, that Fifty Shades of Gray was basically actually novice, introductory stuff. It wasn’t hardcore sufficient for him,” she mentioned. Story of O is a 1954 erotic novel a couple of feminine photographer who’s educated to be a intercourse slave by her lover.

The accusations make Fingers the latest high-profile UK figure 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,” mentioned 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 firms have a legal obligation to anticipate and forestall sexual harassment within the office.

Terra Firma is now run by Fingers’ son, Richard, whom workers mentioned was well-liked and had a notably totally different administration type. An announcement offered by the corporate learn: “We’ve got at all times regarded the wellbeing of our individuals as our prime precedence. To be clear, there isn’t any place for bullying, intimidation or inappropriate conduct of any type 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 individuals have been made conscious of easy methods to escalate them.” The corporate maintains that its HR perform labored nicely and that it was by no means notified concerning the allegations in opposition to Fingers referred to on this article.

When allegations had been put to them for remark previous to publication, attorneys for each Terra Firma and Fingers mentioned that “this story by no means 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 at college. 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 thought to imitate US companies, 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 private equity agency to rival — and surpass — the best of the US giants,” he wrote about founding Terra Firma.

In London, potential Terra Firma recruits had been put by means of a rigorous course of to show themselves: a string of interviews, numerical and verbal reasoning checks, and psychometric evaluation. Those that made the reduce discovered themselves on the coronary heart of the non-public fairness growth. “It was intense . . . thrilling, mental, egalitarian,” mentioned 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’re paid for the hours you retain, for the robust discuss . . . He was not a tyrant however was positively autocratic.”

Based on workers, Fingers was unpredictable: “charming and charismatic” at one second, “harsh [and] domineering” the following. Seemingly minor incidents may set off him. “There was a tradition of concern and trepidation round Man, significantly round what sort of temper he’d be in,” a former human assets director mentioned.

A number of former workers likened Fingers’ conduct to that of an impulsive baby. “He’s like just a little boy who needs to show himself,” one mentioned. That always manifested in sexually inappropriate tales and specific feedback. “Individuals could be fairly horrified, girls would positively be offended,” a senior male former colleague mentioned. “He used to assume it was amusing. It wasn’t.”

At different instances, employees mentioned, Fingers raged. “There have been in all probability numerous conferences the place he internally simply misplaced it,” mentioned 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 workers who spoke to the FT mentioned they felt they didn’t have recourse to Terra Firma human assets. “The concept of any person coming to the human assets director eager to make a criticism about Man was inconceivable,” the previous HR director mentioned. “He dominated everyone with a rod of metal.”

There have been upsides to Fingers’ idiosyncratic management. Employees had been picked from numerous backgrounds and juniors had been uncovered to high-level decision-making extraordinary at different non-public fairness companies. Past profitable pay packages, workers mentioned Fingers could possibly be personable and mentoring. “There have been cases when he actually made individuals really feel like household and supported them,” one other former director mentioned.

In an announcement to the FT, Fingers mentioned he “based Terra Firma on the precept that each one voices could be heard. I deny ever having been a bully, a tyrant or behaving inappropriately, however on this surroundings there have been instances when tempers had 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 a bent to speak about intercourse or books about intercourse. They mentioned he can not exclude the chance that he informed jokes that will have appeared inappropriate however that he by no means meant to make individuals 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 consider that lender Citigroup had tricked him into the deal. He filed a pricey lawsuit, which he ultimately misplaced. In 2011, Terra Firma was compelled handy 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 non-public fairness giants Blackstone Group and Apollo International Administration, “however in the end EMI meant that he might 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 in opposition to the Labour authorities’s fiscal coverage. However his spouse and 4 kids stayed behind, a separation Fingers later described as “emotionally very robust”.

For a few years after the transfer, in keeping with his attorneys, Fingers didn’t journey to London. However workers made frequent journeys to work out of Terra Firma’s Guernsey outpost or went on abroad journeys with Fingers. Generally, they had been required to work out of his residence on the island. “Even when he wasn’t there,” one individual recalled, “the selections all went by means of him”.

A number of expressed sympathy for his or her former boss’s private circumstances. Fingers’ anger, some employees mentioned, usually adopted moments of vulnerability. When he was candid about his troubled childhood, these he opened as much as may 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 workers mentioned. “As if . . . he needed to put you in your home.”

After the publication of Fingers’ memoir and articles by which he described his mental-health struggles, some employees “simply couldn’t consider it”, as one individual put it. “How may he speak about being bullied when he was such a bully?” One other enterprise affiliate added: “In a approach, I really feel he [was] having a dialog about what he want to be like,” referring to Fingers’ advocacy.

Within the ebook, 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 may 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 Have interaction Britain, a charity meant to scale back political polarisation. “By and enormous what I noticed was a person who was doing his greatest, who did in the end care concerning the individuals who labored on the agency,” an worker who labored intently with Fingers round this time mentioned. “Somebody who . . . was making an attempt to have a look at how they may use their place for some good.”

However former workers mentioned altering mores in Metropolis workplaces over latest years appeared to go Fingers by. The difficulty was not company-wide, workers famous. “This shock went by means of the Metropolis . . . there was an actual cleanse,” mentioned a former Terra Firma funding director. “[But] it didn’t get by means of to him that issues had been altering and also you couldn’t behave that approach any extra.”

One individual, who mentioned they left Terra Firma partially due to Fingers’ outbursts and sexual feedback, mentioned Fingers as soon as informed a narrative at a piece offsite a couple of enterprise affiliate masturbating within the tub. “I’m simply taking a look at him considering, ‘what the fuck’?” they mentioned. A number of former workers mentioned he made feedback concerning the dimension of ladies’s breasts. “Man over-sexualised the whole lot,” added one other staffer who labored intently with Fingers and left not too long ago. At work dinners, she mentioned “the dialog would at all times revolve round intercourse . . . individuals’s kinks”.

A former senior colleague added: “He informed us as soon as a couple of 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 workers mentioned Fingers had informed them an analogous story. Fingers’ consultant disputed particulars of this anecdote and mentioned he had used it for example how the tradition of the Metropolis had modified for the higher. (Among the workers 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 known as a relative on her approach residence. She mentioned his inappropriate feedback and overly acquainted method had 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 mentioned he then hung round her room door, standing uncomfortably near her. Afterwards, in misery, she known as the identical relative.

The lady, who mentioned she ended up taking a number of months off work after leaving Terra Firma as a result of stress from Fingers’ bullying, mentioned she was talking out now as a result of she discovered Fingers’ advocacy “galling” and wished 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 satisfying place to work. “When you eliminated him, yeah, completely that poisonous stuff would all go,” mentioned a former senior director. “The office tradition was truly excellent,” mentioned the previous HR director. “However there was at all times this spectre of, when Dad’s residence, everyone went to their room and hides beneath their beds.”