WHAT goes on in company boardrooms? The pro-business position is that our company directors, made sharp and hungry through the cut and thrust of competition, are expertly directing money, people and resources.

But a recent court case suggests to me that our top directors act in a way that makes them seem like self-indulgent idiots. This appears to me to be “lifestyles of the rich and famous” played as a kind of tragicomedy.

Just before Christmas a court case involving one of Britain’s top corporate families surfaced in the press. 

I’ve been looking at some of the legal papers. They tell a story which to me seems like a plot out of the Home Box Office drama Succession, where finance meets Freudian complexes and personal failure.

Jo Bamford, the son of JCB magnate Lord Tony Bamford, is suing his “best friend,” saying he was able to “steal millions of dollars” by taking control of a firm they set up to get US residence rights for rich Chinese and other foreign nationals. 

The case will be heard in US court, but Bamford’s own “pre-trial brief” paints arguably a very poor picture of the judgement of a leading member of one of the most powerful British families.

As well as being the son of digger magnate Lord Bamford, Jo Bamford is quite an important figure in British business circles. 

Jo Bamford says he has sat on the board of digger-maker JCB since 2003. JCB is both an important British firm and politically influential, with JCB companies donating around £4 million to the  Tories. 

Jo Bamford is also chairman of Wrightbus, a Northern Ireland bus-maker, which has won taxpayer-funded contracts worth nearly £80m for zero-emission buses in England and Northern Ireland over the last three years. 

Bamford is interested in “green” technology and also runs a hydrogen-power investment fund called Ryse Hydrogen.

According to his pre-trial brief, in 2012 Jo Bamford went into business with his sister’s ex-boyfriend, Joseph Manheim. Bamford came close to Manheim when he struggled with “substance abuse.” 

Manheim was “also a recovering addict” and acted as Bamford’s “12-step programme sponsor.” 

Bamford says he “came to depend heavily on Manheim’s business advice” and the man became his “mentor,” “adviser” and “crutch.” 

In 2012 Manheim proposed a business based in Delaware, US. The business, called the Delaware Valley Regional Centre (DVRC), gets rich foreign nationals to invest in US infrastructure plans. 

In return for investing $500,000 in US road-building and the like, these foreign nationals — notably wealthy Chinese businesspeople — get a green card, or permanent US residence status. 

Like other “golden visa” schemes, this US Immigrant Investor Program is regularly criticised for allowing dubious oligarchs to buy US residence. 

DVRC charges these foreigners $50,000 to run the scheme for them. Bamford appears to have had no worries about the politics or ethics of getting “preferential treatment” for rich people trying to move to the US, but he says he did come unstuck with his partner. 

Bamford claims that in 2016 he was caught by “Manheim’s Steamroller” — Bamford agreed to Manheim’s restructuring of the business, but soon believed this meant his partner now “siphons off millions.” 

Bamford says in the restructure Manheim “usurped complete control over the enterprise and set the stage for massive defalcations,” meaning financial misappropriations. 

According to Bamford, Manheim siezed control of the business from himself and a third partner, and also created lots of “crony compensation” with unreasonable expenses like a $143,000 Mercedes Benz and $3,928 spent at Delilah’s Den Gentleman’s Club.

While Jo Bamford alleged all kinds of bad behaviour from his business partner and former friend, in a US court hearing on the case Bamford himself admitted embarrassing details. 

During the hearings, Bamford told the court that he raced classic Ferraris, while Manheim claimed he also collected rare pheasants. 

Under cross-examination, Bamford admitted to using a company email account to order cannabis and send unspecified “inappropriate, explicit photographs.”

Bamford says he was cheated because he “believed his interests were being fully protected by his friend and trusted adviser.” 

Bamford’s filing says “had a general recollection” of signing documents “at Manheim’s urging” but he “did not read the documents carefully, and relied on Manheim’s assurances the structural changes were “designed to protect Bamford’s interests.” 

Bamford agreed to the restructuring partly because Manheim told him “it would create tax benefits for Bamford.” Manheim rejects all the charges as “meritless” and says they “were brought in bad faith.” 

A court will decide the truth, but the remarkable thing about Bamford’s case is how poor a picture it paints of himself — Bamford claims he didn’t properly read documents which he signed because he thought they would get him “tax advantages.” 

Maybe I am being too uptight, but I just don’t think going into business with your sister’s ex-boyfriend, with whom you share a history of substance abuse, is a good idea. 

To my mind, this does really seem like an episode of Succession, where the son of a tycoon is so self-indulged that he has terrible judgement. 

Succession is based quite a lot on the Murdoch clan, but the Bamford case suggests to me that the kind of second-generation-goes-wrong dynamic is quite widespread.

There are two competing theories about capitalism. The first is that it is a very dynamic system, where competition leads to the allocation of resources very efficiently. 

The second is that capital gives too much power to the owners of capital, who can fall prey to all kinds of inefficiencies and perverse incentives.  

The Bamford tale points harder to the inefficient and perverse than the super-dynamic theory.