HBO’s financial thriller drama series, Industry, is back with its 4th season, and the plot is once again as satisfyingly convoluted as ever, with the characters still driven by their own selfish agendas. While many of the central characters from before, like Harper Stern and Yasmin Kara-Hanani, return to the forefront in new professional roles, there is also a completely new company introduced, in the form of the payment processing startup, Tender. v season 4 episode 1 also has others like Eric Tao brought back into the picture, while another new character, Jim Dycker, will likely become central to the story in the episodes to come.
Spoiler Alert
Who is Jim Dycker?
Industry season 4 episode 1 begins with the introduction of a new character, Jim Dycker, who rather creepily follows a young woman into a club and shows an interest in getting to know her better. The woman, Haley Clay, realizes that Jim has been eyeing her for quite some time at the club and reciprocates his interest, eventually taking him home. After a night of lovemaking, Haley wakes up the next morning to see Jim already up and having prepared coffee for her, not because he wants to romantically pursue her, but because he has some other intentions. He reveals that he is actually an investigative journalist with a specialization in looking into financial fraud, from a finance magazine called FinDigest, and he has been actively trying to come up with a new story for which he has been reaching out to multiple employees at the payment processing startup, Tender.
Turns out, Haley was the only one to have replied to his email, and that too out of professional courtesy, making Jim believe that she might be the only one approachable with regard to his investigation. In his attempt to convince Haley to at least speak to him, for the woman is absolutely livid upon learning that she has just slept with a man who has essentially been stalking her, Jim somewhat reveals the subject of the article he is planning to write. He is interested in talking to Haley’s boss at Tender, the CFO and co-founder, Whitney Halberstram, particularly about his previous executive assistant, whom Haley replaced a few weeks ago. He even tells Haley to ask her boss about his previous assistant, as he is confident that she will get no concrete answer, given he had made the woman sign numerous NDAs following something significant that had been kept secret from the rest of the company.
The suggestion is clearly that Whitney had indulged in some seriously inappropriate behavior with his previous assistant, perhaps even having assaulted her, before firing her and paying her off to keep the matter a secret. Later in the episode, Haley does indirectly ask her boss about his previous secretary, lying to him about her now asking for a reference with regard to her time at the company. Whitney immediately acts a bit strange before clearly lying that the young woman actually had some issues of her own that led him to go private with the incidents whenever they took place, solely in order to protect her and the company’s reputation. Although he pretends to be happy that she has recovered from whatever issues she had and is now looking to return to the job market, it is quite clear that Whitney Halberstram definitely has something to hide, which Jim Dycker is very determined to find out about. Towards the end of the episode, Jim even gets hold of Harper Stern’s phone number and calls her to say that she should not be trying to short Siren (more on that later) and should focus on Tender instead, suggesting that the company is involved in financial fraud as well, along with Whitney’s apparent misconduct with employees on a personal level.
What is the new company at the center of Season 4?
Industry season 4 sees a new company in the limelight, with the plot stepping away from Pierpoint, the prestigious investment bank in London, at least in the first episode. With online payments now the norm in the modern world, two friends, Whitney Halberstram and Jay Jonah Atterbury, have founded a payment processing company named Tender. In its initial years in the market, Tender seems to have done some solid business, establishing itself as an up-and-coming popular payment gateway. As Industry season 4 begins, though, the company is in a state of internal conflict, which is really quite subtle at first, owing to the difference of opinions between the two co-founders.
Jonah is the more casual and laid-back of the two friends, with his drug habit and his partying, despite him handling difficult responsibilities as the CEO of the company. Whitney, on the other hand, is much more focused and has genuine long-term plans for the company, and he is evidently not completely satisfied with his current role as the CFO of Tender. But the differences extend beyond their personalities, for Jonah wants to keep running the business as it has been in the last few years, essentially being the payment processing partner to websites and industries that are usually avoided by their more established rival companies. In recent times, Tender has had a very strong connection with a company called Siren, which is basically the OnlyFans of the Industry universe.
In fact, in order to state that Tender should most definitely continue their partnership with Siren, Jonah mentions that the website has already outcompeted OnlyFans on membership and views, which he sees as a clear indicator of the huge profits that they will earn through the partnership. However, Whitney is strictly against continuing with this partnership, for he wants Tender to have a clean image, especially now that the company is gaining serious traction in the market, and is keen on dropping the pornographic associations that his company has among users. Whitney also wants to protect the start-up from regulatory changes, as the British government is in talks to pass an online security bill that will require users to prove their age while browsing the internet. This will not only dry up the market of websites like Siren, but maintaining association with such websites will also indirectly make Tender seem to have an anti-government stance. Therefore, Whitney is adamant about ending the partnership, and when he is unable to convince his friend about the same, the CFO himself takes action and ends the deal with Siren together with a non-executive director on Tender’s board, Ferdinand.
Despite being informed of this development, Jonah does not agree with the change and wants to assert control over the situation as the CEO. What remains constant to him, though, is the belief that he and his best friend, Whitney, can sort things out without any serious problems. What Jonah completely misses out on seeing is that the cutthroat industry that he is a part of does not allow for any such friendships or selfless bonds. He is absolutely shocked when Whitney welcomes him into the office building a couple of days later and walks him straight into a sudden board meeting. Whitney Halberstram basically invokes the board to fire Jonah on account of multiple disciplinary objections against him. Jonah is allowed to hold on to his shares, being the cofounder, but he is immediately fired from Tender, with Whitney taking on the position of the interim CEO. This betrayal, as Jonah understandably considers it to be, is sure to have some serious repercussions, with the bereaved cofounder possibly going to Harper, or perhaps Jim Dycker, to burn Whitney down.
Is Rishi Ramdani still in the show?
After his marriage broke down and he was fired from Pierpoint, both because of his own horrid decisions, Rishi Ramdani continues to play a part in Industry, although not in any official capacity. In season 4 episode 1, Rishi is seen visiting a wake at a local pub in London and befriending two individuals without really telling them who he is or how exactly he knew the deceased. This is because Rishi is here simply to try and get hold of information from one of them, a man who works in the office of Jennifer Bevan, a newly promoted Labour Party minister. Bevan happens to be one of the central figures who has been calling for the online safety bill, and it is already known that she will be a key speaker in the upcoming debate at the legislative assembly.
Rishi first tries to find out whether the man he has been targeting knows about Bevan’s upcoming speech, and when it is confirmed, he sneaks off with the man’s phone and takes photographs of the email detailing the speech. A number of things are clear from the script of the speech, starting with the fact that the politician will try to propose the bill not as an attempt to curb freedom of expression, but more as a means to protect children from getting exposed to vile and violent content like pornography. Bevan is directly about to mention the name of Siren, a website that claims to be just a platform for individual content without the restrictions of more popular social media platforms but is actually just a pornographic site. This information is crucial to Rishi, for he is actually working for Harper, gathering data for her in the most unlawful and unethical manner. It is not like Rishi works for Harper’s current company, but he is simply being used by Harper to get hold of information, possibly as she is exploiting the frantic moments of intimacy the two had earlier shared, making him believe there might be more such moments if he complies.
Why is Harper already under pressure at her new office?
The reason why Harper is in search of specific information about Jennifer Bevan’s speech is because she has been planning to short Siren, predicting how the company, and many other similar ones, will get affected by the online safety bill. As she was appointed to work for Otto Mostyn back at the end of season 3, Harper now heads the shorting department at the trading firm under Mostyn Asset Management. But she is also frustrated by the lack of action in this new role, as she can hardly get the green light to go after funds as aggressively as she wants, which is why she is all the more invested in the Siren situation, planning to use it as a chance to impress her boss and get back to being a formidable trader in the industry.
But her decision to hold on to Siren stocks for her clients starts acting against her, as one of the important clients, the Lily Laura family office, puts in a redemption request to withdraw their invested funds from Mostyn Asset Management. The investors are seemingly disappointed at not being able to make projected profits from short situations, and they now want to sever ties from the fund. This is terrible news for Harper, as Mostyn will definitely question her for her inability to hold on to clients, but how she reacts is even worse. Harper sends an email to all her clients stating that she is gating the fund, meaning that no investors can withdraw their money or put in redemption requests for an indefinite period of time.
Such an email makes the situation for Mostyn Asset Management look even worse than it actually is, and another important client, James Ashford (back from season 3), personally visits the office to withdraw his investment and even ends up having a heart attack there. Harper is soon ordered to meet with her boss, and Otto Mostyn makes it very clear that she is not to take such brash decisions by herself anymore. He reveals that he had hired Harper simply to use her as a puppet, as the face of the shorting department of his fund, and did not actually want her to play any significant role. He is also irritated at her trying to short companies that are owned by friends and family members, all of whom he wants to keep in hand. It is evident that Otto has been shoring up his position in the House of Lords through his fund and his investments, and he does not want to upset the balance at present only because of Harper’s over-enthusiasm.
Is Eric Tao back again?
Despite Otto Mostyn’s clear warning to Harper, she does not seem scared or cornered into doing whatever he wants her to do, or rather, what he does not want her to do. Instead, Harper gets back in touch with an old friend/foe, Eric Tao, who has been enjoying a retired life in the United States of America. But as is evident from the phone call, he has not really been enjoying this new life much, and Eric has retired simply because no bank or company in the industry was ready to give him a job after his firing from Pierpoint. Therefore, when Harper now asks him to return to London, suggesting that she is going to hire him, Eric immediately agrees and leaves everything behind in the US to arrive in England the very next day. This confirms that Eric and Harper are going to team up once again, and it will be interesting to see what their partnership results in this time around.
What are Yasmin and Henry Muck up to?
Industry season 4 episode 1 also features Yasmin Kara-Hanani and Sir Henry Muck, although not very prominently, as they mostly stay limited to the subplot for this week. Yasmin seems to be adjusting well to her new role as the wife in an aristocratic family, as she hosts an important party at the estate. Whitney Halberstram has a connection with the Muck family, which is why he is seen speaking to Yasmin over the phone, seeking help from her. Yasmin agrees to introduce Whitney to the Labour politician, Jennifer Bevan, since the new Tender CEO wants to get acquainted with her and seemingly ask for the government’s support. Yasmin does all of this with the promise that her husband, Henry, will be allowed to be a part of Tender operations, since he (or his family) has ownership stakes in the start-up. But Henry Muck, who Yasmin claims to be sick as he has caught a terrible cold, seems to be even more out of control of his life than before. Henry is seen taking drugs and playing the piano all by himself, isolating himself from society, and we are bound to see more of him and the problems that he will evidently end up creating for Yasmin.
