Trader brings life after the flood
A money dealer has a mission to help tsunami victims
By James Doran 
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ANDREW KRIEGER picked his way among the flattened houses and splintered trees that used to line the streets of Pudupattinam and felt overcome by nausea. Before the Asian tsunami struck, this village in Tamil Nadu had been a thriving fishing community. 

“The destruction was terrible enough,” he says. “But then I realised I was in fact walking on top of many — perhaps hundreds — of bodies. That realisation, and the awful stench, was one of the worst things I have ever experienced.” 

However, Krieger, a tall, quietly spoken 48-year-old, is not another aid worker or journalist filing a report on the disaster. He is one of Wall Street’s foremost currency traders, who was once groomed as a successor to George Soros. 

“I was at my home in the Catskills with my family when the tsunami struck,” Krieger says from his corner office overlooking New York’s George Washington Bridge. “I had to go. There was no question.” 

In the weeks since then, he has established his own private relief effort, spending millions of dollars from his own fortune, and raising much more, to rebuild lives and villages in a corner of the world that he loves more than his New York home. 

Krieger is the chief executive of North Bridge Capital, a currency trading firm. But the money markets are no longer his passion. His heart and mind are in India. He was ten years old when he began to nurture a love of the subcontinent, its people, culture and religions. 

“I picked up a book on yoga and Western philosophy and was fascinated. I was way too iconoclastic for things like the Beatles.” His parents, a conventional Jewish couple from Wilmington, Delaware, thought he was a bit “whacked out”. 

Krieger left university with a degree in Western philosophy and a PhD in Sanskrit, but chose not to continue as a translator of ancient Hindu texts. His professor suggested that he study for an MBA. “It’s like a credit card for people who don’t know what to do,” Krieger says. 

After taking the advice of a friend, who told him to shave, Krieger was hired as a foreign exchange trader by Salomon Brothers in the summer of 1984. In 1986 he became global head of currency options trading at Bankers Trust, where he increased profits from $56 million to $512 million in a year. 

However, he had a disagreement with the firm over his bonus and left. He joined George Soros and was being groomed to be the great man’s successor, but instead, in 1988, he set up his own firm. 

Krieger had an unorthodox approach to trading currency options. “When I was trading, most of my insights came to me in dreams,” he says. “There is a way of training the mind to visualise that is based in ancient yogic teaching.” 

Those dreams changed after his second visit to India. “I first visited India in 1988 and was very overwhelmed by the experience. I felt I needed a guide. So I offered out a prayer to the Universe to find my guru.” In 1989 he met Indira Devri, a guru whom he calls Ma, who invited him to her ashram. 

“When I met Ma my dreams about the markets stopped. So,” he says, as if describing a perfectly ordinary switch of strategy, “we use computer models now.” 

Krieger’s dreams today revolve around rebuilding coastal India. After the tsunami struck he hired a cargo aircraft, loaded it with $3.6 million (£1.9 million) of medicine and tried to fly it to India. But the Indian Government wanted to charge him $750,000 import duty. So instead he flew it to Sri Lanka. 

Fresh drinking water was running out in India because supplies were contaminated. Krieger had the answer. “My home in the Catskills sits on millions of gallons of natural springs and I have my own bottled water company,” he says. “So I thought I would get a container ship and fill it up.” 

A week later he was in Tamil Nadu, overwhelmed by the destruction and despair. “On our second day there was a false alarm that another wave was coming,” he says. “Many people walked slowly to the shore and sat down, simply waiting to be taken away by the sea. They were so depressed.” 

He felt compelled to help to rebuild not just their homes, but their spirits. With the help of Hope Worldwide, an American charity, he devised what he calls a “life kit”, consisting of a fishing boat with nets and motor; a prefabricated house, food, equipment, medicines and clothes to last the average family three to five months. Each kit costs $5,500 and is wholly sourced in India, making delivery quick and duty-free. 

“NGOs (non-governmental organisations) mean well, but what happens is somebody shows up with some sacks of grain and gives them out, they take a few pictures and then they leave. It is costly and inefficient and ineffective.” 

Krieger’s relief effort is now an official charity, IMGE Emergency Relief Fund. The “life kits” are part of a programme called Save The Family. 

“I can export this model all over the world, wherever it is needed,” Krieger says with zeal. “Give me $5 million and that’s 1,000 families back in business.” He is going back to Tamil Nadu in two weeks to deliver another 20 boats. “I can’t wait,” he says. “When the boats arrive we are just bathed in an ocean of love from the people. It is the greatest feeling.”

KRIEGER’S LIFE KIT

One thatched-roof hut 
Cooking utensils and stove 
Food and supplies for two months 
Furniture and bedding 
Children’s books 
School uniforms 
Clothes 
One glass-fibre boat 
One outboard motor 
One 1km fishing net 

Total cost: $5,500