Do you believe in handwriting analysis or "graphology"? No? Well, major U.S. and European firms do, and this has been a part of their HR practice for screening would-be employees for some time now. In fact, according to this website, approximately 80 percent of large corporations in Switzerland routinely use handwriting analysis in their recruitment procedures. Practitioners who swear by graphology claim that one's handwriting allows them to uncover some character traits that they would otherwise miss in a live interview.
It's no surprise, therefore, that Access International Advisors (AIA Group) also employ handwriting analysis, but this time as part of its due diligence process for vetting investment advisors. You see, AIA is a hedge fund founded in 1994 by René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet ("Thierry de la Villehuchet" for short), a French nobleman, money manager, and businessman who had connections to powerful and wealthy European aristocrats.
Is an investment advisor or fund manager trustworthy enough to handle huge investments? AIA sought to answer that partly through graphology. By deconstructing one's handwriting through a critical analysis of the slant, pressure, size, shape, loops, and even spaces between words, it is said that an expert graphologist can discern a subject's mental aptitude, emotional makeup, odd or unusual personality traits, and many other qualities.
We don't really know the instances in the past when AIA had rejected an investment advisor or fund manager based on the results of their handwriting analysis, but we do know that AIA had waived this due diligence procedure in the case of financier Bernard Madoff, according to this account.
Thierry de la Villehuchet did not know Madoff personally, but he trusted enough his partner in AIA, Patrick Littaye, a French banker he had known since 1970, for him to apparently throw caution to the wind. As reported here by The Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Littaye says his firm conducted thorough due diligence when selecting outsider fund managers. Candidates had to undergo a handwriting test with a graphologist and Access would often hire private investigators to check the background of executives.
The relationship with Mr. Madoff, which for Mr. Littaye dated to the mid-1980s, wasn't subject to the same rigor, in part because of Mr. Madoff's reputation on Wall Street. "Of course we made an exception with Mr. Madoff," says Mr. Littaye. "I can't imagine asking him to pass a handwriting test."
Actually, given Madoff's sterling reputation in Wall Street at that time, Mr. Littaye had a point. Madoff helped create Nasdaq, the first electronic exchange. The SEC consulted him on electronic trading issues. He also operated a legitimate and heavily regulated broker-dealer business, among others. In other words, he seemed like somebody who'd pass a handwriting test with flying colors, so why bother.
But we all know that even larger than life figures have their own little secrets, no different than ordinary mortals like you and me. Madoff's little secret, however, was mind-boggling--he had been operating a decades-long $50-billion Ponzi scheme all along. Ten days after this shit hit the fan last December, Thierry de la Villehuchet was found dead in his New York office, after slashing his wrist and taking sleeping pills (click this link for a chronology of the Madoff scandal). Thierry de la Villehuchet and AIA had invested heavily with Madoff and lost $1.4 billion in the process. (If you want the list of Madoff investors, click this link).
In hindsight, I wonder: Could this tragic death have been averted had AIA required Madoff to submit to a handwriting test? Now, any answer to that would be highly speculative but it's a question begging to be asked.
If we are to believe one claim, graphology's accuracy in profiling one's personality and behavior is about 80-90%. Of course, we don't know how this measurement was made. Fortunately, scientific studies have been undertaken to test the validity of handwriting analysis as a predictor of personality traits and job performance. The Wikipedia summarized the results of these studies as follows:
- Graphologists were unable to predict scores on the Eysenck personality questionnaire using writing samples from the same people.
- Graphologists were unable to predict scores on the Myers-Briggs test using writing samples from the same people.
- Using meta-analysis drawn from over 200 studies, graphologists were generally unable to predict any kind of personality trait on any personality test.
- Professional graphologists using handwriting analysis were just as ineffective as lay people at predicting performance.
- A broad literature screen done by King and Koehler confirmed dozens of studies showing the mechanical aspects of graphology (slant, slope, etc.) are essentially worthless predictors of job performance.
In other words, Thierry de la Villehuchet's death could not have been averted even if AIA's standard handwriting test were done on Madoff. It's too unreliable a technique for anyone to put much faith in it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment