The Fix

Chapter 10 Goodbye, Big Nose

After single-handedly saving UBS tens of millions of dollars following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Hayes saw out the year in style with a trip to Las Vegas with Sarah Tighe. The couple had been together just over a year, and Hayes had never been happier. What he'd done to deserve this intelligent, attractive woman he didn't know, but he was smitten. As the clock counted down to midnight on New Year's Eve, amid the bright lights of the Strip, Hayes asked Tighe to marry him. She said yes.

Confident, mature and outgoing, Tighe was in many ways the opposite of her fiancé. Where Hayes had to be reminded to change his clothes in the morning, Tighe dressed sharply in knee-length dresses or skirts, short tailored jackets and high heels. Before they went to social events, Tighe, who had studied psychology at university, would tell Hayes not to ask people how much they earned or comment on their weight.¹ Sometimes it seemed she was more like his mother than his partner. But Hayes was brilliant, passionate about what he did and, when he wanted to be, quite charming. He was like no one she'd ever met and she was fiercely protective of him.

While things were going well in his personal life, professionally, 2009 couldn't have gotten off to a worse start. In December, Read, his closest confidante, had retired from the market. For years the ICAP broker had set his alarm for 2:30 a.m. and made his way to a desolate trading floor to cover the Asian markets from ...