Top Citi Banker Does Her Deal Making in the Countryside, With Barking Dogs in the Background
April 07 2020 - 5:59AM
Dow Jones News
By Julie Steinberg
Alison Harding-Jones has established a rule for her three
children to live by as she works from a home office during a
national lockdown: "If you're making a cup of tea, you make mommy
one and bring it in."
Ms. Harding-Jones, Citigroup Inc.'s head of mergers and
acquisitions for Europe, Middle East and Africa, has been holed up
for 2 1/2 weeks in Aldworth, England, because of the pandemic. The
village is about a 90-minute drive and train journey from Citi's
London offices and the flat she uses during the workweek.
She has traded in-person meetings with clients and colleagues
for more time with family and 12-hour days in a home office
previously used by her husband, who accompanies Ms. Harding-Jones
as they socially distance. Also present are the children, four dogs
and six chickens, whose eggs are shared with other villagers.
"It sounds like something out of Dickens," she said in an
interview.
For 25 years Ms. Harding-Jones has typically spent three days of
every week on the road. In her current role since 2017, she has
routinely jetted around the region advising corporate or
private-equity clients buying companies or selling their own.
These days, it's a challenge just traveling around her own
house. One misstep, and she'll accidentally appear in her youngest
daughter's TikTok videos.
"I think there's not a moment of her life that's not made into a
TikTok, " Ms. Harding-Jones said of her 12-year-old. "I have to be
careful not to be in the background when I go into the
kitchen."
The days of face-to-face meetings have stopped and the steady
flow of M&A activity has slowed for now.
Such meetings are hard to replace because they are essential to
striking deals, going over sensitive documents and pitching for new
business. But conversations with clients continue -- of the 18
appointments on her calendar one day last week, about half were
calls with clients, Ms. Harding-Jones said.
The coronavirus pandemic, in a way, has eased interaction, she
said. "It's much easier to get hold of people and have a real
conversation because everyone on a human level is looking for
interaction."
Work on active deals has slowed as companies assess the impact
of the pandemic on their businesses and performance. Bankers are
trying to understand how the acute focus on fighting the spread of
infection will affect regulatory approval processes and the timing
of deals already announced.
Ms. Harding-Jones's conversations currently focus on how clients
are doing internally, how their competitors are holding up and the
impact of the virus generally. She also discusses preparing for
consolidation in certain industries, such as industrials and
energy, and potential buying opportunities.
There will be Covid-19-related adjustments in the future to
companies' numbers, she said, "but no one knows what that looks
like" yet.
While she expects the transactions she is shepherding to close,
there might be some in the market where a party tries to
renegotiate as "valuations have very definitely moved," she said.
"There will no doubt be some fallout."
Ms. Harding-Jones, who is also vice chairman of the region's
corporate and investment bank, says she has been surprised at how
efficient she can be without having to commute. She is at her desk
by 7:45 a.m., and is on a constant stream of calls with clients and
Citigroup colleagues until around 7:30 p.m.
She tries to take quick breaks to walk the dogs. The three Irish
terriers and one flat-coated retriever bark during at least one out
of every three phone conversations, she estimates, forcing her to
mute the call and run them out to the garden.
The family has been taking walks in the countryside and eating
most of its meals together. Ms. Harding-Jones has also found time
to bake, making bread for the second time ever, she said, as well
as lemon meringue pie, carrot cake and a quiche.
"Everything was a rousing success except for the carrot cake,
which I think the dogs ate," she said. "It mysteriously disappeared
and when I quizzed them on how much they had eaten I didn't really
get a clear answer."
Ms. Harding-Jones says she is surprised positively by some of
the changes. Still, she asks: "Can we really keep doing this for
three, four, five, six, weeks? I don't think it's necessarily going
to get easier."
Write to Julie Steinberg at julie.steinberg@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 07, 2020 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
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