评论
打印
Marc Rich
马克里奇
Marc Rich, king of commodities, died on June 26th, aged 78
“原物料大王”马克里奇于6月26日去世，享年78岁
A NEW employee once asked Marc Rich for advice on trading. He expected, perhaps, “Buy low, sell high”, or “Think long-term”. Or perhaps, given Mr Rich's habit of going to the office at daybreak, “Up with the lark”. Instead, Mr Rich picked up a knife and ran a finger across the edge. “As a trader you often walk on the blade,” he said softly. “Be careful and don't step off.”
曾经一名新职员向马克里奇寻求生意方面的建议。他期待的回答可能是“低价买进，高价卖出”或者“做长远思考”。或者考虑到里奇天一亮就去办公室的习惯，所以可能会说“早起床”。但是，里奇拿起一把小刀，一根手指放在刀刃上滑动，然后轻声说：“作为一个商人，经常会有走在刀刃上的感觉，所以要小心，不要让自己掉下来。”
Few walked it more skilfully than Mr Rich. Obsessively, he scanned the globe to see crises coming, wars brewing, shortages looming. He bought before anyone else did, and was first there when countries began to look round for oil or zinc or nickel. On the eve of the Korean war, as a mere junior trader at Philipp Brothers in New York, he created a market in mercury, which the army needed for batteries. The price soared. From the late 1960s, somehow anticipating the Arab oil-export embargo, he began to create a spot market for oil. Previously, all crude was tied up by the big companies in inelastic long-term contracts. Starting in Tunisia, Mr Rich began to buy and sell it for immediate delivery, like any other commodity. When the embargo bit after 1973 he was swimming in oil when the majors were struggling, and was able to sell it at a mark-up of as much as $14 a barrel. Some called that profiteering. Mr Rich called it a service charge. He could have demanded more, but that would have been “like taking candy from a baby”.
没有人能走得比里奇更轻巧熟练。他观察世界各地，预见哪儿危机将要发生，战争将要爆发，商品将要发生短缺，尽情沉溺于这一切。当一些国家开始到处寻求石油、锌或镍时，他总是第一个买到这些商品的人，也是第一个去到那里的人。在朝鲜战争前夕，虽然只是纽约菲利普兄弟公司一个资历较浅的职员，里奇却开创了有关汞的市场。当时军队需要汞来制作电池，所以汞价格飙升。从20世纪60年代末开始，不知为何他预感阿拉伯会禁令石油输出，所以他开始创立了石油现货市场。在这之前，所有原油都被大公司以硬性长期合约的形式限制住了。里奇首次在突尼斯开始以立即交付的形式买卖原油，就像其他商品一样。1973年后，贸易禁令产生负面影响，当其他人深受其苦时，他却拥有着大量石油，这样他以每桶加价14美金的价格出售石油。一些人称这种行为是投机倒把。里奇认为这是服务费。他本可以要价更高，但是那就“像从小孩手里抢糖果一样简单”。
A free agent in this exhilarating new market, he went from strength to strength. Turning on his insistent, feline charm, he sought out buyers and sellers while his partner Pinky Green arranged shipping. It was a winning combination, forged at Philipp Brothers but soon outgrowing it. In 1974 the two of them, peeved that their bonuses were still so small, left to form Marc Rich + Co. The main office was in Zug in safe, secret Switzerland, no questions asked.
在这个振奋人心的新市场中，作为自由代理人的里奇不断发展强大起来。靠着自己坚持不懈、猫科动物般的魅力，他不断找寻买主和卖主，而他的搭档平卡斯?格林则负责安排运输。这是成功的合作，他们在菲利普兄弟公司形成的，但是很快地他们不再需要依赖这个公司了。二人因不满自己的奖金仍是很少，所以在1974年都离开了这家公司，一起创立了马克?里奇+有限公司。总公司设在瑞士的一个叫楚格的地方，这里安全、神秘、不问理由。
From there, with cat-like tread, Mr Rich found his way round any political or moral obstacle. He sold Soviet oil to apartheid South Africa, despite a UN embargo, and between 1979 and 1994 made profits of around $2 billion there. He sent Soviet and Venezuelan oil to Cuba in exchange for sugar, ignoring America's ban on trade. He sold on the global market surplus Iranian oil that had flowed to Israel down a secret pipeline, and kept the arrangement going seamlessly despite the Iranian revolution of 1979, another embargo, and the American hostage crisis. The Iranians respected their contracts, he explained. They could not sell their oil, so he bought and sold it for them, using shell companies wherever necessary. Keeping well below the radar, as he always did, he was soon the world's largest independent oil-trader, with a turnover in 1980 of $15 billion.
从这里开始，里奇发现他的路布满了各种形式的有关政治、道德的阻碍，他小心地走着。他将苏联石油卖到种族隔离的南非，尽管当时联合国颁布了贸易禁令。在1979到1994年期间，他就这样赚了将近20亿美元。他将苏联和委内瑞拉的石油输送到古巴以换取糖，全然不顾美国的贸易禁令。他把过剩的伊朗石油拿到全球市场上出售，伊朗石油曾沿着一条秘密管道流向以色列，并且把这一切进行得天衣无缝，尽管1979年伊朗发生了革命，尽管禁止跨国贸易，尽管爆发了美国人质危机。他解释说，伊朗人尊重他们的合同。伊朗人不能卖掉他们的石油，所以他先买下，然后不顾一切利用空壳公司替他们售出石油。在这种公司的保护下，正如以往一样生意顺利经营着，很快地他成为世界上最大的独立石油贸易商，1980年的营业额达到150亿美元。
Then he stepped off the knife-blade. In 1980-81 he violated America's domestic oil-price controls by relabelling Texas crude from old fields as new-found, jacking up the price by as much as 400%. He made profits of $105m and shipped them abroad, avoiding taxes of $48m. Once federal prosecutors were after him for that, they charged him with 64 other crimes, including racketeering and “trading with the enemy”. In 1983 he fled to Switzerland with his family, having also tried to spirit away two trunks of subpoenaed business papers.
也就在这时，他从事业浪尖掉了下来。在1980到1981这段期间，他触犯了美国对国内石油价格控制的规定，原因是他把从德克萨斯旧油田开采的原油重新贴上标签变成新石油，从而将价格提高了4倍。他因此获益了1.05亿美元，并将这些钱运送到国外，逃脱了4.8千万美元的税款。正因为这样，联邦司法人员控告他，同时他被控的其他罪行达64项，包括诈骗和“与敌人贸易”。1983年他和家人逃到瑞士，当然他试图想要偷走两箱商业报告。
The outsider
局外人
Thereafter he became a fugitive, a star of the FBI's most-wanted list. He remained—until 1994, when he sold his stake and his company became the vast, tentacular Glencore—the world's biggest trader of metals and minerals, while darting between Spain, Switzerland and Israel, a citizen of all three. In Marbella or St Moritz, beside a $9.5m swimming pool or among his Braques and Picassos, with a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, he reconciled himself to exile. His father died in America; he had to say kaddish down the telephone. You cry a little, you move on.
因此，他变成了一个逃犯，也位列美国联邦调查局最想抓捕人犯名单之中。他一直是世界上最大的金属和矿物贸易商，直到1994年他卖掉了自己的股份，而他的公司成为嘉能可这个涉猎领域广的大公司。这段期间他在西班牙、瑞士和以色列这几个国家之间奔波，成为这三个国家的公民。在马尔韦亚或圣莫里茨，或者在9.5百万美元打造的游泳池旁边或者在他收藏的布拉克和毕加索的作品间，这个估计拥有25亿美元财富的人才会勉强承认自己被流放。他的父亲死于美国；他只能在电话里念着赞美诗《珈底什》。他认为，小段悲伤，然后继续前行。
In his own mind he was shy, modest and innocent of everything. American embargoes, he maintained, did not apply to companies based in Switzerland. Bribes, such as the $1m he gave to Nigeria's transport minister, were paid “in order to be able to do business at the same price as other people were willing to do the business”. Getting round the price controls on oil from old fields was something many of the oil majors had done, too; but only he was faced with criminal prosecution for it.
在他自己心目中，他是害羞、谦虚和清白的。他认为，美国的贸易禁令不适用于总部位于瑞士的公司。而那些贿赂，比如他送给尼日利亚运输部长的1百万美元，这只是“为了能够做生意，就像其他人也会愿意以同样的价钱做这样的生意”。绕开对旧油田开采的石油的价格控制也是许多的大石油公司会做的事情；但是只有他为了这个事情而面临到刑事控诉。
Why? Perhaps, he mused, because he was Jewish, always the outsider: the refugee boy from Belgium who changed schools so often that he had no friends and hardly talked to anyone. Perhaps because he loved Israel more than America, showering it with money for good causes, helping to airlift Jews from Ethiopia and Yemen, and giving Mossad's agents contacts in Iran. Or perhaps just because he was making an awful lot of money. He always saw profit where others didn't care, or dare, to look; he got that from his father, who had started in business by peddling round Antwerp pieces of fabric and scrap metal that factories had thrown away.
为什么？他沉思道，可能因为他是犹太人，从而总是局外人：这个从比利时逃难出来的男孩因为总是换学校而没有朋友，也几乎没跟任何人说过话。可能因为他爱以色列胜过美国，所以他提供大量金钱给以色列去做一些伟大事业，帮助空运那些来自埃塞俄比亚和也门的犹太人，安排了莫萨德在伊朗的特务据点。或者可能只是因为他赚了大量肮脏的金钱。他总是看到别人不在意，或者不敢去看到的利润；这一点遗传了父亲，他的父亲开始做买卖时靠的是在安特卫普走街串巷地兜售工厂丢弃的一块块布料和废弃金属。
In 2001 Bill Clinton pardoned him, his hand pushed by the Israeli prime minister, the king of Spain, an ex-head of Mossad and Mr Rich's ex-wife Denise, who had given generously to the Clinton library and to Democratic campaigns. The president later regretted his action, calling it “terrible politics”. Mr Rich, oblivious to politics, would have called it good business.
2001年比尔·克林顿赦免了他，以色列总理、西班牙国王、莫萨德前负责人和里奇的前妻丹尼斯推动了这个结果。丹尼斯曾对克林顿图书馆和民主党竞选慷慨地捐赠过。后来这位总统为自己的行为感到后悔，称之为“政治祸端”。对政治没有意识的里奇肯定会说这是一笔好生意。
