Emmanuel “Manny” Roman is waiting for me at his table in Marino, an old Italian family restaurant in Hollywood. I am a few minutes late. If anyone has an excuse to be late, it is my guest, the chief executive of Pimco, the giant fund manager. It has some $2tn of assets under management and the markets are in turmoil. I am hotfoot, I explain, from the Getty Museum, on the far side of town.
With the same crisp precision that he might outline to investors his view on whether to stay invested in China or how much to worry about exposure to Russia — his answers, I learn later, are yes and not much — Roman rules on the merits of the Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He then urges me to go to The Broad museum, though cautions it is “the collection of a very rich man so it’s incredibly predictable”.
I have come to LA to see another very rich man, but one whose tastes are anything but predictable. Roman is a cosmopolitan French financier who pre-2008 might have been dubbed a “Master of the Universe”. He is also a legendarily literary patron of the arts. I am keen to hear his thoughts on the global outlook at this turbulent time. But I also want to know how his worlds intersect — the world of trading and the world of ideas — if they do at all.