close_game
close_game

Review: The Money Trap by Alok Sama

ByMadhu Trehan
Oct 17, 2024 08:32 PM IST

The former president and CFO of the SoftBank Group writes about his experience of cracking impossible deals at the multinational investment holding company

I need you pay me $200,000 as retainer. Within four weeks, I give evidence who is behind this. As success fee, you must pay me $ 1 million.” “How did you get these photos? Did you take them?” I ask. “You pay me and I get answers,” he responds. “But you need know some things I do illegal in many places. So you cannot use what I give in court of law.” “I can’t be involved with anything illegal. Neither can my employer,” I tell him.”

All about the legitimisation of greed. (Shutterstock)
All about the legitimisation of greed. (Shutterstock)

Alok Sama lures you into The Money Trap with a scene straight out of a spy thriller. After that, of course, you cannot put the book down. The author benefited from a course he took in creative writing and this volume is replete with philosophical musings from Hindu scriptures, references to music of all genres and enough book references for you to draw up a rich reading list.

304pp, ₹2096; Macmillan Business
304pp, ₹2096; Macmillan Business

Once a naïve St Stephen’s College student, Sama emerged as one of the world’s biggest players in money markets. Sama met Masayoshi Son at his friend Nikesh Arora’s wedding. Masa laced the subsequent job interview with a $5000 bottle of wine. Sama joined SoftBank, worth $50 billion at that time and at its peak $200 billion, and the games began. He takes the reader through the wild excitement of impossible deals made by skin-of-the-teeth negotiations facilitated by dashing across multiple continents and exotic locales in private planes, and juggling soul crushing schedules that made this reviewer wonder about his family life. Sama seems to keep both ends up blessed with a brilliant wife.

But as the opening paragraph leads you to anticipate, cracks begin to needle you. The book’s structure could be layered with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, with Sama being Alice, who falls down the rabbit hole. Masa is the Queen of Hearts, who declares in a trial court, “Sentence first – verdict afterward”. And the Queen is generous with “Off with her head”! The Queen’s closest aide, the Knave of Hearts, who is wrongly accused of stealing the tarts is, of course, Nikesh Arora. And who is the Caterpillar? Rajeev Misra, who notably walked around SoftBank offices barefoot and in a cloud of vape smoke. In Carroll’s classic, the Caterpillar sits on a mushroom, smokes a hookah and treats Alice (Sama) with sly contempt and envy. The Caterpillar directs Alice to the magic mushroom that allows her to shrink and grow. The Money Trap’s Caterpillar ensures that our Alice/Sama is not allowed to grow and tries to make him shrink. In my conclusion, they all go down the rabbit hole.

(Read Bradley Hope’s February 26, 2020, report in The Wall Street Journal, “SoftBank’s Rajeev Misra Used Campaign of Sabotage to Hobble Internal Rivals.” This, apparently, included a failed attempt to honey trap Nikesh Arora with hidden cameras placed in his hotel room!)

Is it Sama’s emotional elegance that prevents him from giving us all the dirt? Did the writing course not teach him that when you write a whodunnit, the author then must reveal who actually did it?

Every era of change brings holistic upheaval. Take American culture to illustrate this point and you will see that the 1910s and 20s saw the emergence of new writers like Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, the popularity of jazz, and Gertrude Stein’s discovery of radical artists like Picasso. In India, the Freedom Struggle created a movement of poetry led by Rabindranath Tagore, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sarojini Naidu and artists such as Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose. The 1950s saw the arrival of the Beatnik generation with writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac alongside the rise of the American Civil Rights movement and of blues music. A decade later, the Hippies were striding onto the scene, the Pill and free love changed relationships, anti-Vietnam protests echoed across the world, and a strident new feminism brought about a tsunami of change. It was the decade of Hunter Thompson and his gonzo journalism, of Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion and the protest music of Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez. Art was radicalised by Andy Warhol, Jean Basquait, Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel. Politics and war influenced all these eras and art, music, theatre, literature reflected that. There was always a movement.

And then we come to the contemporary age. Money, just money. Although many devastating wars proliferate, they aren’t reflected in the creative output. Today’s music is largely Taylor Swift’s continual heartbreak with slim political songs. The times aren’t reflected too much in literature either. Some artists and writers do create urgent work but no compelling all-encompassing cultural movement exists.

Author Alok Sama (Courtesy https://x.com/alok_sama)
Author Alok Sama (Courtesy https://x.com/alok_sama)

In fact, nothing seems to exist beyond the legitimisation of greed. It is admirable, as The Money Trap suggests, that boys from “humble” backgrounds made ever so much money. Yes, they invested in business enterprises, which may not have happened if they hadn’t provided the finances. But how have they changed the world? They made money out of money; played a poker game where bluffing is part of the skill of winning. What did they create? What is their legacy? What will they leave behind? And yes, hordes of enthralled young people watched the dance.

As Sama writes:

“We watch fools dancing, and feel like greater fools for watching. But when we join the party, the music stops.”

Madhu Trehan is a journalist and author.

See more
SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
SHARE
Story Saved
Live Score
Saved Articles
Following
My Reads
Sign out
New Delhi 0C
Saturday, November 02, 2024
Start 14 Days Free Trial Subscribe Now
Follow Us On
// // //