In the days that followed, the city moved on the way cities always do—with the smooth, amnesiac momentum of a place that has ten thousand stories happening simultaneously and is loyal to none of them. But in the specific corridors of the financial district, the story of what had happened at Harrison & Cole that morning moved with the speed and particularity that financial circles reserve for information that affects the underlying calculations of significant amounts of money.
The IPO of Carter Holdings was quietly pulled from the schedule within forty-eight hours. The announcement cited “market timing and strategic realignment,” which was the language companies used when they needed to retreat without naming the reason. But the people who needed to know the reason knew it. The lead underwriter had a conversation with the team at Reed Financial that lasted eleven minutes, and when it was over, the underwriter had a different understanding of which way the wind was blowing. Two institutional investors who had been warm on the offering sent brief emails citing “portfolio rebalancing,” which was how portfolio managers said goodbye when they did not want to explain themselves. A credit line that had been extended to Carter Holdings on the basis of anticipated IPO liquidity was reviewed by the lending institution’s relationship manager, who placed a call to her counterpart at Reed Financial and came away from the conversation with new information.
Within a week, the financial infrastructure that Ethan had believed was the product of his own vision and effort and charm—and which had been, in substantial part, a structure built on the quiet, invisible foundation of his ex-wife’s father’s network—had revealed itself to be load-bearing in ways he had never examined.
He spent those days in a cascade of increasingly difficult phone calls. He called investors who were warm two weeks ago and found them cool, then cold, then unavailable. He called his underwriter and was told the situation required reassessment. He called a lawyer—a different lawyer from the one at Harrison & Cole—and was told that there was nothing legally actionable about a private equity firm withdrawing from an informal network of relationships. He called three people who had previously seemed like friends and found that they shared with the investors a sudden pressure on their schedules.