By Alice Lloyd
Meet Joel Litman. He strikes an imposing even otherworldly presence... particularly if he’s recently flown in from his firm’s office in Manila. There, he commands a corps of number-crunchers, expertly trained in tracking down the Platonic ideal of pure valuation. I’m accustomed to seeing finance gurus in Dockers and Patagonia vests. So I was surprised to hear that Joel always wears a three-piece suit. When we meet on a late- summer day in Baltimore, he’s paired said suit with wingtips, a pared-down paisley tie, and a Patek Philippe watch. The uniform rarely varies, he tells me, even when he’s on-site in the South Pacific. It’s there, his home for half the year, where he oversees his staff of about 100 eagle-eyed accountants. Their work – correcting financial statements line by line to account for the 130 worst flaws and inaccuracies built into the standard rules by which accountants measure value – is as technically tedious as it sounds.
American Consequences
33
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