What Is at the Center of Merchant Banking?

David Senra says absolute confidence sits at the center of merchant banking, first between father and son, later between brothers, and later still between partners in different countries. Absolute confidence matters because a lot of the businesses have no paper. They do not like keeping records. They treat merchant banking as more of an art than a science and do not want to let people in on what they call the magic.

A line he read appears over and over in the books: we must not let in daylight upon magic. The line is still the motto. Bankers are laconic people who only say 10% of what they think. Much of what merchant bankers do is never made public. The Rothschilds never let any outsider go through their archives. The Barings do not even bother to put their name on their letterhead.