Файл: Е.А. Копылова Тексты для внеаудиторного чтения (английский язык).pdf

34

Reading

In the past, people were often rather ashamed getting into debt, but now it is considered quite normal to owe money on one’s credit card, on a hire purchase deal, etc. People sometimes talk of a “buy now, pay later” mentality. What is your attitude to such a mentality? What do you think about debtors? (like, hate or don’t care about them) Do you remember your largest debt? Can you imagine the debt of $9.25bn ? Here is the information about the most famous debtor in the world.

ALAN BOND

DE:

Hello and welcome to Make or Brake. My name is David Evans. In today’s programme we look at the rise and fall of the Australian tycoon, Alan Bond. A self-made millionaire, Bond has been a well known figure in the Australian business world since the early 1960s, but it wasn’t until 1983 that he became a famous figure on the world stage. And then he hit the headlines not as a businessman, but as an international sporting hero.

BBC news:

Australia II is by the line and the boat goes. There it is, she wins! Australia II has won the America’s Cup!

35

DE:

When Alan Bond’s boat, Australia II, won the America’s Cup on September 26 1983, it was hailed as one of the most extraordinary sporting achievements of the decade. The America’s cup was no ordinary yacht race. The New York Yacht Club had held the trophy for an incredible 132 years and in that time the Cup had become a symbol of American power and prestige. Most Australians stayed up late into the night to watch the race on TV. When Alan Bond’s boat crossed the finishing line, the whole nation went wild. Bond – or Bondy, as Australians liked to call him – became a national hero overnight. At a party to celebrate the victory, the Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, sent Bondy and his team this message.

Hawke:

There’s not many occasions when an Australian Prime Minister knows that the can speak for every Australian, but on this occasion Bondy and all of you there, we say “Well done, congratulations” – I don’t think there’s been a greater moment of pride for Australia than in what you’ve done.

DE:

But, of course, Alan Bond was not really a sporting hero. Bondy was basically a businessman and he hadn’t won the America’s Cup just for fun. He’d invested millions of dollars in his challenge and, like any good businessman, he wanted to see a return on his investment. Bond was a man who had always known exactly what he wanted and how to get it, as he makes clear in this interview about his early years.

Bond:

I wanted to make a million before I was 21 and I started business when I was 18. And I set myself a goal – I’d make a million by the time I was 21. And I did it.

DE:

So Bond was a millionaire by the age of 21. He went on to make several more millions as a property speculator in Perth during the boom years of the 1960s. Then the crash in the property market in the early70s forced him to diversify his interests. He went into mining, oil exploration and retail and had soon build up Western Australia’s biggest business empire.

36

But in the years immediately before the America’s Cup win, things had not been going so well for Alan Bond. He still had a vast amount of capital tied up in property and the property market was dead. His investments in the Australian retail sector had turned sour and he was losing money hand over fist. In February 1982 the lack of confidence in his Bond Corporation had caused its share price to fall from $2.50 to $1.50 in a single month. By early 1983, Alan Bond had been forced to start liquidating his assets. Of course, the America’s Cup changed all that. Prime Minister Bob Hawke realised the commercial significance of the victory almost immediately.

Hawke:

It’s not just a sporting achievement, it shows what our technology can do in economic terms it’ll be worth, I think, hundreds of millions of dollars to Australia, because the tourists will come, the Americans and other nations will come here to try and wrest this cup off us. But I don’t think they’re going to do it, not for a long time.

DE:

Bob Hawke imagined that the America’s Cup would bring hundreds of millions of dollars to Australia. Alan Bond was also thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars, but he had very different ideas about where they should go. After the America’s Cup Alan Bond was a winner in the eyes of the world. Suddenly everybody wanted to do business with him.

In the mid-80s the banking system was awash with money. Banks were desperate to lend and Bondy was only too happy to borrow. With access to enormous supplies of credit, he embarked upon one of the biggest takeover binges the world has ever seen. In a series of dazzling corporate raids, he gained control of hundreds of companies all over the world. Normal banking practice is to lend money against assets. That way, if the borrower goes bust, you liquidate the assets and the chances are you’ll get your money back again. But in Alan Bond’s case banks were prepared to lend enormous sums with no more security than a potential cash flow. If Bond wanted to buy a company, he simply presented the bank with an estimate of the cash the company could generate. As long as the company’s cash flow covered the repayments on the loan, Bond would be given the go-ahead to take it over. The result was that Bond began to

37

construct a business empire founded on debt, in which the only real security was the name of Alan Bond. In the next part of the programme we look at the phenomenal growth of Bond’s organization and examine the reasons for its eventual collapse.

BBC news:

Australia seems to specialise these days in self-made millionaires with international business ambitions. The latest is Alan Bond, who took the America’s Cup for Australia last autumn, and now plans to expand his interest in Britain and America.

DE:

Not only in Britain and America, but all around the world. Bond expanded into everything he could – property, leisure, retail – he even acquired a British company producing airships. But at this time, Bond’s growth plans were really focused on two main areas: brewing and media. Brewing was practically attractive to Bond, as it gave him access to the strong cash flow he needed to service his rapidly rising debts. In June 85, he launched a successful takeover bid for the giant Australian brewer, Castlemaine-Tooheys. The bid price of $1.2bn was a staggering 5 times the market capitalization of the Bond Corp itself. The deal was financed, as ever, by debt. After the success of such a breathtaking coup, Alan bond’s next step should have been to pause and consolidate. But, as far as he was concerned, brewing was no more than a cash cow. Castlemaine lager might be able to service his debts, but Bond was looking for something a little more glamorous. He had decided that the future of the Bond Corp lay in television. Bond wanted control of the airwaves. So, in January 1987, he pulled off his next successful $1bn takeover – this time for Australia’s top TV network, Channel 9. Later in the year, he added the giant American brewer, Heileman, to the pile, at a cost of $1.5bn. The debts of the Bond Corp grew higher and higher. But unfortunately for Bondy, 1987 was not the best year to be taking billion dollar risks.

News reports:

There was panic in the markets today; er, it was a bloodbath… I call it the nearest thing to a meltdown I ever want to see… It was as bad a day on the markets as there’s ever been…So far a breathtaking L60bn has been wiped off the value of stocks and shares.

38

DE:

Black Monday. October the 19th 1987. the worst financial collapse since the Great Crash of 1929. The world was faced with economic disaster. many investors who had bought in the 87 bull market were financially ruined. In an attempt to stabilize the markets, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Nigel Lawson, gave an interview just a few days after Black Monday.

Lawson:

There’s no reason why confidence should be weak, there’s certainly not in Britain where the British economy is very sound and very strong. But I believe that the world economy generally, despite the undoubted problems of the United states, the world economy is in fairly good shape.

DE:

Alan Bond was one of the few people to share Mr. Lawson’s optimism at the time. Just 3 weeks after Black Monday, at an auction at Sothebys, New York, a world record $54m was paid for Van Gogh’s painting Irises. The general public didn’t find out the identity of the buyer until a year later, but the world’s bankers knew immediately. It was Alan Bond. Just his way of saying – “I still mean business”. Despite the general financial gloom, Alan Bond carried on as before. According to him, the stock market crash had simply made assets cheaper to buy. He became more and more daring. In October 1988, exactly after the crash, he launched a bid for the huge Lonrho empire. This time the bid price was an amazing $2bn.

But Alan Bond’s problem with the Lonrho bid was not the money. His problem was with Lonrho’s boss – English businessman Tiny Rowland. Like Alan Bond, Tiny Rowland was a fighter, he was a man who didn’t give in. He was determined that Alan Bond’s bid should fail. Rowland’s defence against the Bond takeover bid was simple. Bond would need to borrow the money to take over Lonrho. So Tiny Rowland asked the banks the obvious question: “Should you really be lending money to this man?” The answer, of course, was “No”.

Despite all that Alan Bond had said, Black Monday had been a disaster for him. It had wiped $200m off the Bond Corp’s market valuation. By buying in the pre-crash bull market, he had paid far too much for his assets – in the case of Channel 9, probably twice the market value. On top of that Bond didn’t manage his companies well. Castlemaine’s share of

39

the brewing market had slipped from 50% to 38% in its 4 years under his ownership. Why should the banks keep faith with him?

Of course, Bond could stay afloat for as long as he could pay his interest bill. But as interest rates rose from 12% to 18%, so Alan Bond’s problems grew. An interest bill of $280 in 1987 had climbed to more than a billion by 1989. Under pressure from Tiny Rowland, Bond’s bankers started to question the Bond Corp’s financial standing. One by one they withdrew their support. Sotheby’s auction house even reclaimed Van Gogh’s Irises. Bond had never paid the bill. The bond Corp announced a loss of $980m for the year 88/89 and Alan Bond finished the decade with debts of $9.25bn. One of the biggest debtors in the world.

II. In the text, there are subordinate clauses with conjunctions emmitted. Try to find them (they are 6).