A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster. CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man (1871) HOFFMANN’S NON-EXISTENT PUBLIC profile had not been achieved without effort. One day, quite early in the history of Hoffmann Investment Technologies, when the company still only had about two billion dollars in assets under management, he had invited the partners of Switzerland’s oldest public-relations firm to breakfast at the Hotel Président Wilson and offered them a deal: an annual retainer of 200,000 Swiss francs in return for keeping his name out of the papers. He set only one condition: if by any chance he was mentioned, he would deduct 10,000 francs from their fee; if he was mentioned more than twenty times in a year, they would have to start paying him. After a lengthy discussion, the partners accepted his terms and reversed all the advice they normally gave their clients. Hoffmann made no public charitable donations, attended no gala dinners or industry awards ceremonies, cultivated no journalists, appeared on no newspaper’s rich list, endorsed no political party, endowed no educational institution and gave no lectures or speeches.
