The Percentages Men:
Chapter Eighteen
Jack says he’s happy with it. When he saw that sentence in Neville’s email, Dan knew for certain he had made the biggest mistake of his life. His hopes for the next day, his plans for the future, his dreams of a new life in La Serenissima – they all seemed to perish with those six words.
It was nine o’clock at night. He was sitting at his desk in his little study at home, staring at the screen of his laptop, staring at those words in the email, as if transfixed. He was desperate to act, to rewrite Neville’s report before it was too late, but panic had set in. He couldn’t think. He felt unwell. It had been a bad day. A bad night. In fact, it had been a bad six months, ever since that mad moment when he lost his temper and decided to change the game, to trust in fate, to gamble.
It was those visits of Jack’s to what he called the “remote” offices that had done it for Dan. Back at the SNHC, the ex-military General Manager – Major-General Fucking Disaster, he was nicknamed by the staff – used to circulate a ten-page report to all the senior managers after each of his site visits. Jack’s reports were similar in length, but sent in an email only to Dan. At first, Dan would respond good-naturedly to the points contained in the emails; they were trivia to him, but obviously important to Jack. But as time went on the tone of the emails grew more strident, more autocratic, more demanding; the trivia transformed into instructions to Dan. Gone was the concept of he and Dan working in partnership. Jack was demonstrating that he was no longer the Managing Director in name only, that he had assumed the full mantle of the position, that he was now firmly in charge.
Naturally, Dan complained to Neville about Jack’s increasingly aggressive and interfering behaviour.
“I’ll have a word with yer man and get him to wind his neck in,” Neville promised, but nothing changed.
And then one night at his home, at about the same time as tonight, while he was in the middle of writing a report that was needed for the next day, Dan received another lengthy, abusive email from Jack. It was the last straw. He snapped. It took him less than a minute to decide what to do. He picked up the phone and spoke as calmly as he could to Neville.
“I’m sorry to say that I’ve come to the end of my tether with Jack. I’ve just received his latest missive after his trip to Winchester. He wants me to fire Hamish this time. The guy’s fuckin’ loony tunes, Neville. I’ve just to ignore the fact that Hamish pulls in several hundred grand in turnover every year.
“Anyway, here’s a proposal for you to think about. I’d like to pull back from the operational side and let Jack have what he’s always wanted, which is complete control of the executive teams. Let him fuckin’ get on with it. I’d prefer to concentrate on strategic matters. There’s a hundred things I’ve been itching to do from a strategic point of view, but have never had the time. Developing a much-needed database to help the executives put together shit-hot tenders, for a start. I could have a new title – I’m thinking of Director of Strategy.
“But knowing that the sale of the company is really the most important item on our agenda at the moment, I could also work in parallel to help you make the case to David Green at Cresta – prepare reports on your behalf, that sort of thing. And if the Cresta deal falls through, I could help you search for other potential buyers. All on the quiet, of course.”
There were no objections from Neville. He agreed readily to Dan’s proposal. Too readily, maybe, Dan thought afterwards. With Dan no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the company, perhaps Neville could envisage a quieter life for himself, one in which he wouldn’t have to listen to Jack’s constant griping about the executive teams. Dan didn’t know if that was the case. Nor did he care – he just wanted to be away from the man’s suffocating megalomania.
Dan also thought afterwards that he had possibly taken too big a risk in yielding his operations role to Jack. But his fears were lessened when he remembered that the executive teams practically ran themselves. Only months earlier, Vicky and Geoff had been promoted to the posts of Regional Director South and Regional Director North respectively, with Vicky becoming responsible for the teams in the south of England and Wales and Geoff managing the rest of the teams in the north of England and Scotland. The new posts had been created to ease the growing burden on Dan, acting as a buffer between him and the daily demands of the teams, and were now occupied by two very capable and reliable pairs of hands.
And then, of course, there was the other factor that minimised the risk – the sale of the company. By that time, Neville had succeeded in developing a good rapport with David Green. The man definitely was interested in buying MSUK, adding the company to his group’s portfolio. Neville was certain an offer from Cresta was imminent; an offer, moreover, that would match, if not exceed, his minimum selling price of four million pounds. With any luck, therefore, the teams wouldn’t have to suffer Jack’s dictatorship for too long.
But luck deserted Dan on this occasion. His gamble didn’t pay off. He wasn’t prepared for the sheer speed and ferocity of Jack’s vindictiveness. Nor was he prepared for Neville’s utterly cowardly behaviour. Worst of all, he hadn’t anticipated the true extent of Jack’s business incompetence.
Within a day of receiving the news about Dan, Jack instructed all the Research Directors across the UK to attend an emergency meeting in Glasgow the following week. It turned out to be less of a meeting and more of a lecture by Jack, most of which he devoted to decrying Dan and criticising Dan’s style of management. He also took the opportunity to abolish with immediate effect the operation of personal turnover targets, claiming he had always believed they were impractical. Dan became aware of all this, not because any of the Research Directors contacted him afterwards, but from a note of the proceedings that Jack typed and emailed to him the next day.
Following that email, Dan was removed from the circulation list of all communications within the company. The only information he was “permitted” to receive were the quarterly financial reports prepared by Shelley. But those reports, as well as always being late, were retrospective only, containing no financial projections for the months ahead. Denied the full picture of how the company was actually performing, Dan quickly sought Neville’s help. Instead of remedying the matter there and then, however, Neville suggested a meeting with Jack, with him acting as referee. Dan duly turned up at the boardroom in Glasgow to find Jack seated at the far end of the table, with Neville, his “minder”, sitting close by and with his laptop open in front of him, as if to provide added protection.
Dan chuckled to himself at the sight of Jack cowering in a corner. Aye, he must have heard about the fight in the lift with Jimbo. Now the big streak of shite is scared I’m going to thump him as well.
But he wasn’t chuckling when he left the boardroom less than ten minutes later. He did confront Jack about his exclusion from important communications. Even though it was delivered from behind a laptop screen, Jack’s response was emphatic.
“It’s as simple as this, Dan. By excluding yourself from the company’s operations, you automatically excluded yourself from any communications about those operations. What and how the executives are doing is no longer any of your business. We were sailing along, doing well together, and then, unaccountably, you decided to abandon ship. You only have yourself to blame for this.”
Dan could see things clearly now The man was miffed, angry, still stinging from the hurt of being rejected. The idea of anyone actually deserting him was unbearable. You poor, deluded cunt, he thought.
“Is that it then?” he addressed Neville. “Are you just going to sit there and let him do this without saying a word? You know that I have as much right to the information as he has. You need to remember I’m the guy, not him, who put your company into profit and made it ripe for sale.”
“I do remember that, Dan. And I’m more than grateful,” Neville said meekly. “But on this occasion I have to agree with Jack. You really have excluded yourself. But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t continue to work together, especially on the business of selling the company.”
When Dan got up to go, he noticed with relish a small shudder escape from Jack. But he left the room quietly, still unable to fathom the Svengali-like hold that Jack seemed to have over Neville.
Cut off from the company’s day-to-day business and without any pressing work to do, Dan decided to take a holiday – a long holiday. He and Alma rented an apartment in Venice for six weeks. During their stay, they used the local shops and cooked and ate in the apartment, living like Venetian citizens, rather than tourists. The extended holiday was a test-run for them, to see if they could adapt to life in Venice. And it was a resounding success from that point of view.
Dan brought his laptop with him and had broadband installed in the apartment, thus enabling him to work quietly away on those strategic matters whenever he and Alma were not out exploring Venice’s nooks and crannies. He also received regular phone calls from Neville to keep him abreast of the good progress that was being made on the potential sale of MSUK to Cresta plc. So he wasn’t surprised on his return to learn that Neville had received a formal offer from Cresta. What did surprise him – and Neville and Jack – was the size of the offer. Three consecutive years of consistently high profits, together with a solid fund of reserves, had persuaded David Green that MSUK was worth six million pounds. Six million pounds! Dan’s shareholding would entitle him to eleven per cent of that figure, almost two-thirds of a million, an incredible sum to retire on. It was a dream come true for him. And he had worked so hard for it. But for Dan McKay, life was never that simple. Nor was it ever that kind. There was a sting in the tail – a whole mess of stings, in fact.
To begin with, the offer was subject to the outcome of a process called due diligence, in which an army of lawyers and accountants hired by Cresta would undertake a thorough investigation of MSUK’s assets and books to ensure that the company actually was what it purported to be. That qualification didn’t worry Dan too much, but the next one did.
Only half of the six million would be paid upfront on the date of the sale. The remaining half would not be payable until the end of the next two trading years and only then if the company’s accumulated profits over the two years matched or exceeded a level set by Cresta. If the profits fell below that level, the payment would be reduced proportionately. If there were no profits at all in the two-year period, there would be no further payment.
Then there was the method of payment. Only half of any payments due would be settled in cash. The other half would come in the form of shares in Cresta plc, and those shares could only be sold on the stock market with Cresta’s prior permission, through stockbrokers appointed by Cresta and after at least a year had elapsed.
The terms of the offer confirmed to Dan that David Green was a very shrewd operator. The amount of hard cash Cresta would have to find was kept to a minimum, the shares issued to the sellers would be kept under tight control and there would be a built-in safeguard in case MSUK turned out to be less profitable than its recent track record indicated. And if the latter safeguard had to be employed, Cresta potentially could end up purchasing the company at the bargain price of three million pounds.
That last scenario was the real danger as far as Dan was concerned. His share of the sale halved to one-third of a million, only half of which would be in cash. If the worst did come to the worst, however, one-third of a million was still a substantial sum to retire on, wasn’t it? Even better than Jimbo’s pay-off for his twenty per cent shareholding. As for the shares from Cresta, he could hold on to them for a good while, see what happened. Stock market shares went up in value, didn’t they? And when the two years were up, anything over and above the initial payment – well, that would be a bonus, wouldn’t it? But after hearing the next piece of news from Neville, Dan saw any prospective bonus simply melt away.
Jack had declared that he didn’t want to leave the company when it was sold. After discussions with David Green, it was agreed he could stay on indefinitely as Managing Director. And Neville could remain as Chairman for a temporary period. The pair of them must really have turned on the bullshit to get the man to agree to that, thought Dan. He couldn’t have chosen a more incompetent duo to take the business forward. Perhaps he’s not so shrewd, after all.
Much worse news was to follow, news that would put even a half-price sale in jeopardy. A number of executives, Vicky and Geoff included, phoned Dan in confidence to warn him of a worsening financial situation. New project wins across the teams had virtually dried up in recent months. Turnover was falling fast. Blaming the downturn on the so-called Credit Crunch, Jack had ordered all the teams to reduce their prices immediately.
The financial crisis that had erupted in America the previous year had found its way across the Atlantic and was currently dominating the news in Britain. But the way Dan understood things, the crisis (or Credit Crunch, as the media had dubbed it) affected the willingness of banks to lend and the ability of both companies and individuals to obtain credit. In his view, it was highly unlikely that the budgets of organisations in the public sector, which now accounted for the large majority of MSUK’s clients, were affected at all. It was much more likely that the downturn had resulted from a loss of motivation among the teams, that loss having resulted, in turn, from the withdrawal of turnover targets, coupled with Jack’s authoritarian rule. Dan knew from those confidential phone calls to him that some executives were already looking for new jobs. He couldn’t blame them; he would have done the same in their position. No, this was a classic case of the Grandmaster Bullshitter allotting blame to everyone and everything, rather than to himself. And what could be more convenient and more topical to place blame on than the vaguely defined phenomenon that was the Credit Crunch?
But far more concerning to Dan was the price decrease instructed by Jack. With alarm bells ringing, he put in an urgent call to Neville.
“Do you remember years back? That phrase Jimbo always used – chasing turnover to pay the staff?” he asked during the subsequent exasperating conversation with Neville. “Well, that’s exactly what Jack will be doing. Achieving turnover for the sake of it. But not making any profit. And profit is what the company needs to make.”
“Look, Dan, I hear what you’re saying. But Jack’s in charge. He knows what he’s doing, giving the executives a good kick up the arse. Let him get on with it, while we concentrate on selling the company. We’re so fuckin’ close now, so we are.”
“If we let him get on with it, Neville, you won’t have a fuckin’ company to sell.”
Neville’s trademark silent response had signified the end of that particular conversation. That was back at the beginning of November, some two months after Dan decided to relinquish control of the executive teams. The last set of quarterly financial accounts he had seen confirmed that at the end of September, halfway through the financial year, the company was doing very well, having already made a substantial profit in the six-month period. Since the next set of quarterly accounts, reflecting the position at the end of December, would not be available until some time in January or even February, he would have a long wait to find out what damage Jack’s mismanagement was inflicting. Meanwhile, the due diligence process was drawing to a close, with nothing untoward having arisen so far. Meantime, too, a meeting between David Green and Neville to finalise the terms of Cresta’s offer was looming.
Later in November, Dan came up with a plan for the running of MSUK once it had been sold. It was his last-ditch attempt to ensure that the company turned a profit during the next two years. It entailed both Vicky and Geoff reporting direct to Neville and joining him and Jack on the Senior Management Team, two sensible voices to stave off the worst of Jack’s excesses when it came to key decisions. He emailed details of the plan to Neville. He also met Vicky and Geoff secretly in his home, when he informed them of the imminent sale, swore them to secrecy, set out his plan for the revised management of the company and encouraged them to open a dialogue with Neville as soon as the sale was announced to the staff. But it was all to no avail. Neville didn’t respond to his email. And not long after, Vicky and Geoff each reported that Neville had suddenly stopped communicating with them. Dan suspected that Neville had revealed the plan to Jack, who had probably advised him in no uncertain terms to stay away from the pair of upstarts.
By early December, Dan had never felt so worried, frustrated and helpless in all his life. And he knew that the accumulating stress was affecting his health. He suffered from high blood pressure, something he only discovered a couple of years earlier, almost by accident. The medical profession knew what factors aggravated high blood pressure, such as stress and smoking and too much salt, his doctor had explained at the time, but they still didn’t know what caused it in the first place. It was more than likely hereditary, he added. Since then, Dan had been taking medication to control the problem. But one morning while shaving he suddenly felt exceptionally weak, turned grey, was violently sick and took to his bed for the rest of the day. Dan was a man who never fell ill, so he didn’t need much encouragement from Alma to see the doctor. By the time he did, however, he was fine again. Having learned about the impending sale of the company, his doctor simply advised him to relax as best he could over the Christmas and New Year holiday; the source of his stress would soon be gone.
Now here he was in his study on a freezing night during the first week of February – and the stress was mounting again. That meeting between David Green and Neville was due to be held the next morning. As requested by David, Neville would bring along a report on MSUK’s latest financial position. But the quarterly accounts were late again. Shelley had promised to email them to Neville at some point that day. Neville would then draft the report for David and run it past Jack and Dan before finalising it.
Waiting for Neville’s draft to come through, Dan had been on tenterhooks from first thing in the morning. He was a smoker. Although he had cut down significantly since learning of his blood pressure problem, he had smoked a lot of cigarettes that day, frequently climbing the stairs from his study on the lower level of the flat to have a cigarette at the back door and then coming back down to check his inbox for the umpteenth time. When he returned from the last such trip, Neville’s email was there. He opened the attachment. He had feared the worst and this really was the worst. It was catastrophic. Not only had the company recorded a substantial loss in the three months to the end of December, but Neville’s report predicted little improvement in the months ahead. He had nothing positive to say, nothing about any measures the company was taking to pull back the situation. It was almost as if he was saying, “My company is in terminal decline, David. It’s not worth buying.”
Neville was a notoriously poor report writer. It wasn’t for the first time that Dan had completely rewritten one of his drafts. He would need to do that again now, but he was running out of time, beginning to panic and feeling dizzy. Then he remembered Neville’s covering email, which he read again. Jack says he’s happy with it. Those words hit him like a sledgehammer. How could Jack be happy with it? Unless… unless Jack didn’t want the sale to go ahead. Had that been his game all along? Keeping quiet when the subject was discussed, nodding at all the right times, pretending to go along with the plan, but secretly hoping it would never go that far. What was it Neville once told him Jack had said? It’s what gets me up in the morning. Of course! His empire. He would lose control of his empire. And so… and so when the prospect of a sale became highly likely, he deliberately sabotages its chances of success. The reduction in prices? Perhaps not stupidity, after all. Could it really be the case? Was he really not interested in the money from the sale? And declaring at the last minute that he wanted to stay on as MD. Was that just a smokescreen? Or his fall-back strategy? To hang on to his empire, even though he would have to answer to a higher level in Cresta.
Dan realised too late. Too many questions. His brain bombarded by questions. Then the tremor came. It began at his feet, rushed up through his body and into his head.
“Oh, no!” he cried, sensing what was about to happen.
A fireball exploded in his head. Pain. Pain so excruciating and violent it propelled him out of his swivel chair and onto the floor. He crawled towards the open door of the study. But he could only reach as far as the narrow space between the end of his desk and the wall, where he remained wedged.
It felt like an eternity until Alma appeared at the door. She had heard him cry out and had hurried downstairs. He could hardly lift his head to look at her.
“I think I need some help, hen,” he gasped.
It was nine o’clock at night. He was sitting at his desk in his little study at home, staring at the screen of his laptop, staring at those words in the email, as if transfixed. He was desperate to act, to rewrite Neville’s report before it was too late, but panic had set in. He couldn’t think. He felt unwell. It had been a bad day. A bad night. In fact, it had been a bad six months, ever since that mad moment when he lost his temper and decided to change the game, to trust in fate, to gamble.
It was those visits of Jack’s to what he called the “remote” offices that had done it for Dan. Back at the SNHC, the ex-military General Manager – Major-General Fucking Disaster, he was nicknamed by the staff – used to circulate a ten-page report to all the senior managers after each of his site visits. Jack’s reports were similar in length, but sent in an email only to Dan. At first, Dan would respond good-naturedly to the points contained in the emails; they were trivia to him, but obviously important to Jack. But as time went on the tone of the emails grew more strident, more autocratic, more demanding; the trivia transformed into instructions to Dan. Gone was the concept of he and Dan working in partnership. Jack was demonstrating that he was no longer the Managing Director in name only, that he had assumed the full mantle of the position, that he was now firmly in charge.
Naturally, Dan complained to Neville about Jack’s increasingly aggressive and interfering behaviour.
“I’ll have a word with yer man and get him to wind his neck in,” Neville promised, but nothing changed.
And then one night at his home, at about the same time as tonight, while he was in the middle of writing a report that was needed for the next day, Dan received another lengthy, abusive email from Jack. It was the last straw. He snapped. It took him less than a minute to decide what to do. He picked up the phone and spoke as calmly as he could to Neville.
“I’m sorry to say that I’ve come to the end of my tether with Jack. I’ve just received his latest missive after his trip to Winchester. He wants me to fire Hamish this time. The guy’s fuckin’ loony tunes, Neville. I’ve just to ignore the fact that Hamish pulls in several hundred grand in turnover every year.
“Anyway, here’s a proposal for you to think about. I’d like to pull back from the operational side and let Jack have what he’s always wanted, which is complete control of the executive teams. Let him fuckin’ get on with it. I’d prefer to concentrate on strategic matters. There’s a hundred things I’ve been itching to do from a strategic point of view, but have never had the time. Developing a much-needed database to help the executives put together shit-hot tenders, for a start. I could have a new title – I’m thinking of Director of Strategy.
“But knowing that the sale of the company is really the most important item on our agenda at the moment, I could also work in parallel to help you make the case to David Green at Cresta – prepare reports on your behalf, that sort of thing. And if the Cresta deal falls through, I could help you search for other potential buyers. All on the quiet, of course.”
There were no objections from Neville. He agreed readily to Dan’s proposal. Too readily, maybe, Dan thought afterwards. With Dan no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the company, perhaps Neville could envisage a quieter life for himself, one in which he wouldn’t have to listen to Jack’s constant griping about the executive teams. Dan didn’t know if that was the case. Nor did he care – he just wanted to be away from the man’s suffocating megalomania.
Dan also thought afterwards that he had possibly taken too big a risk in yielding his operations role to Jack. But his fears were lessened when he remembered that the executive teams practically ran themselves. Only months earlier, Vicky and Geoff had been promoted to the posts of Regional Director South and Regional Director North respectively, with Vicky becoming responsible for the teams in the south of England and Wales and Geoff managing the rest of the teams in the north of England and Scotland. The new posts had been created to ease the growing burden on Dan, acting as a buffer between him and the daily demands of the teams, and were now occupied by two very capable and reliable pairs of hands.
And then, of course, there was the other factor that minimised the risk – the sale of the company. By that time, Neville had succeeded in developing a good rapport with David Green. The man definitely was interested in buying MSUK, adding the company to his group’s portfolio. Neville was certain an offer from Cresta was imminent; an offer, moreover, that would match, if not exceed, his minimum selling price of four million pounds. With any luck, therefore, the teams wouldn’t have to suffer Jack’s dictatorship for too long.
But luck deserted Dan on this occasion. His gamble didn’t pay off. He wasn’t prepared for the sheer speed and ferocity of Jack’s vindictiveness. Nor was he prepared for Neville’s utterly cowardly behaviour. Worst of all, he hadn’t anticipated the true extent of Jack’s business incompetence.
Within a day of receiving the news about Dan, Jack instructed all the Research Directors across the UK to attend an emergency meeting in Glasgow the following week. It turned out to be less of a meeting and more of a lecture by Jack, most of which he devoted to decrying Dan and criticising Dan’s style of management. He also took the opportunity to abolish with immediate effect the operation of personal turnover targets, claiming he had always believed they were impractical. Dan became aware of all this, not because any of the Research Directors contacted him afterwards, but from a note of the proceedings that Jack typed and emailed to him the next day.
Following that email, Dan was removed from the circulation list of all communications within the company. The only information he was “permitted” to receive were the quarterly financial reports prepared by Shelley. But those reports, as well as always being late, were retrospective only, containing no financial projections for the months ahead. Denied the full picture of how the company was actually performing, Dan quickly sought Neville’s help. Instead of remedying the matter there and then, however, Neville suggested a meeting with Jack, with him acting as referee. Dan duly turned up at the boardroom in Glasgow to find Jack seated at the far end of the table, with Neville, his “minder”, sitting close by and with his laptop open in front of him, as if to provide added protection.
Dan chuckled to himself at the sight of Jack cowering in a corner. Aye, he must have heard about the fight in the lift with Jimbo. Now the big streak of shite is scared I’m going to thump him as well.
But he wasn’t chuckling when he left the boardroom less than ten minutes later. He did confront Jack about his exclusion from important communications. Even though it was delivered from behind a laptop screen, Jack’s response was emphatic.
“It’s as simple as this, Dan. By excluding yourself from the company’s operations, you automatically excluded yourself from any communications about those operations. What and how the executives are doing is no longer any of your business. We were sailing along, doing well together, and then, unaccountably, you decided to abandon ship. You only have yourself to blame for this.”
Dan could see things clearly now The man was miffed, angry, still stinging from the hurt of being rejected. The idea of anyone actually deserting him was unbearable. You poor, deluded cunt, he thought.
“Is that it then?” he addressed Neville. “Are you just going to sit there and let him do this without saying a word? You know that I have as much right to the information as he has. You need to remember I’m the guy, not him, who put your company into profit and made it ripe for sale.”
“I do remember that, Dan. And I’m more than grateful,” Neville said meekly. “But on this occasion I have to agree with Jack. You really have excluded yourself. But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t continue to work together, especially on the business of selling the company.”
When Dan got up to go, he noticed with relish a small shudder escape from Jack. But he left the room quietly, still unable to fathom the Svengali-like hold that Jack seemed to have over Neville.
Cut off from the company’s day-to-day business and without any pressing work to do, Dan decided to take a holiday – a long holiday. He and Alma rented an apartment in Venice for six weeks. During their stay, they used the local shops and cooked and ate in the apartment, living like Venetian citizens, rather than tourists. The extended holiday was a test-run for them, to see if they could adapt to life in Venice. And it was a resounding success from that point of view.
Dan brought his laptop with him and had broadband installed in the apartment, thus enabling him to work quietly away on those strategic matters whenever he and Alma were not out exploring Venice’s nooks and crannies. He also received regular phone calls from Neville to keep him abreast of the good progress that was being made on the potential sale of MSUK to Cresta plc. So he wasn’t surprised on his return to learn that Neville had received a formal offer from Cresta. What did surprise him – and Neville and Jack – was the size of the offer. Three consecutive years of consistently high profits, together with a solid fund of reserves, had persuaded David Green that MSUK was worth six million pounds. Six million pounds! Dan’s shareholding would entitle him to eleven per cent of that figure, almost two-thirds of a million, an incredible sum to retire on. It was a dream come true for him. And he had worked so hard for it. But for Dan McKay, life was never that simple. Nor was it ever that kind. There was a sting in the tail – a whole mess of stings, in fact.
To begin with, the offer was subject to the outcome of a process called due diligence, in which an army of lawyers and accountants hired by Cresta would undertake a thorough investigation of MSUK’s assets and books to ensure that the company actually was what it purported to be. That qualification didn’t worry Dan too much, but the next one did.
Only half of the six million would be paid upfront on the date of the sale. The remaining half would not be payable until the end of the next two trading years and only then if the company’s accumulated profits over the two years matched or exceeded a level set by Cresta. If the profits fell below that level, the payment would be reduced proportionately. If there were no profits at all in the two-year period, there would be no further payment.
Then there was the method of payment. Only half of any payments due would be settled in cash. The other half would come in the form of shares in Cresta plc, and those shares could only be sold on the stock market with Cresta’s prior permission, through stockbrokers appointed by Cresta and after at least a year had elapsed.
The terms of the offer confirmed to Dan that David Green was a very shrewd operator. The amount of hard cash Cresta would have to find was kept to a minimum, the shares issued to the sellers would be kept under tight control and there would be a built-in safeguard in case MSUK turned out to be less profitable than its recent track record indicated. And if the latter safeguard had to be employed, Cresta potentially could end up purchasing the company at the bargain price of three million pounds.
That last scenario was the real danger as far as Dan was concerned. His share of the sale halved to one-third of a million, only half of which would be in cash. If the worst did come to the worst, however, one-third of a million was still a substantial sum to retire on, wasn’t it? Even better than Jimbo’s pay-off for his twenty per cent shareholding. As for the shares from Cresta, he could hold on to them for a good while, see what happened. Stock market shares went up in value, didn’t they? And when the two years were up, anything over and above the initial payment – well, that would be a bonus, wouldn’t it? But after hearing the next piece of news from Neville, Dan saw any prospective bonus simply melt away.
Jack had declared that he didn’t want to leave the company when it was sold. After discussions with David Green, it was agreed he could stay on indefinitely as Managing Director. And Neville could remain as Chairman for a temporary period. The pair of them must really have turned on the bullshit to get the man to agree to that, thought Dan. He couldn’t have chosen a more incompetent duo to take the business forward. Perhaps he’s not so shrewd, after all.
Much worse news was to follow, news that would put even a half-price sale in jeopardy. A number of executives, Vicky and Geoff included, phoned Dan in confidence to warn him of a worsening financial situation. New project wins across the teams had virtually dried up in recent months. Turnover was falling fast. Blaming the downturn on the so-called Credit Crunch, Jack had ordered all the teams to reduce their prices immediately.
The financial crisis that had erupted in America the previous year had found its way across the Atlantic and was currently dominating the news in Britain. But the way Dan understood things, the crisis (or Credit Crunch, as the media had dubbed it) affected the willingness of banks to lend and the ability of both companies and individuals to obtain credit. In his view, it was highly unlikely that the budgets of organisations in the public sector, which now accounted for the large majority of MSUK’s clients, were affected at all. It was much more likely that the downturn had resulted from a loss of motivation among the teams, that loss having resulted, in turn, from the withdrawal of turnover targets, coupled with Jack’s authoritarian rule. Dan knew from those confidential phone calls to him that some executives were already looking for new jobs. He couldn’t blame them; he would have done the same in their position. No, this was a classic case of the Grandmaster Bullshitter allotting blame to everyone and everything, rather than to himself. And what could be more convenient and more topical to place blame on than the vaguely defined phenomenon that was the Credit Crunch?
But far more concerning to Dan was the price decrease instructed by Jack. With alarm bells ringing, he put in an urgent call to Neville.
“Do you remember years back? That phrase Jimbo always used – chasing turnover to pay the staff?” he asked during the subsequent exasperating conversation with Neville. “Well, that’s exactly what Jack will be doing. Achieving turnover for the sake of it. But not making any profit. And profit is what the company needs to make.”
“Look, Dan, I hear what you’re saying. But Jack’s in charge. He knows what he’s doing, giving the executives a good kick up the arse. Let him get on with it, while we concentrate on selling the company. We’re so fuckin’ close now, so we are.”
“If we let him get on with it, Neville, you won’t have a fuckin’ company to sell.”
Neville’s trademark silent response had signified the end of that particular conversation. That was back at the beginning of November, some two months after Dan decided to relinquish control of the executive teams. The last set of quarterly financial accounts he had seen confirmed that at the end of September, halfway through the financial year, the company was doing very well, having already made a substantial profit in the six-month period. Since the next set of quarterly accounts, reflecting the position at the end of December, would not be available until some time in January or even February, he would have a long wait to find out what damage Jack’s mismanagement was inflicting. Meanwhile, the due diligence process was drawing to a close, with nothing untoward having arisen so far. Meantime, too, a meeting between David Green and Neville to finalise the terms of Cresta’s offer was looming.
Later in November, Dan came up with a plan for the running of MSUK once it had been sold. It was his last-ditch attempt to ensure that the company turned a profit during the next two years. It entailed both Vicky and Geoff reporting direct to Neville and joining him and Jack on the Senior Management Team, two sensible voices to stave off the worst of Jack’s excesses when it came to key decisions. He emailed details of the plan to Neville. He also met Vicky and Geoff secretly in his home, when he informed them of the imminent sale, swore them to secrecy, set out his plan for the revised management of the company and encouraged them to open a dialogue with Neville as soon as the sale was announced to the staff. But it was all to no avail. Neville didn’t respond to his email. And not long after, Vicky and Geoff each reported that Neville had suddenly stopped communicating with them. Dan suspected that Neville had revealed the plan to Jack, who had probably advised him in no uncertain terms to stay away from the pair of upstarts.
By early December, Dan had never felt so worried, frustrated and helpless in all his life. And he knew that the accumulating stress was affecting his health. He suffered from high blood pressure, something he only discovered a couple of years earlier, almost by accident. The medical profession knew what factors aggravated high blood pressure, such as stress and smoking and too much salt, his doctor had explained at the time, but they still didn’t know what caused it in the first place. It was more than likely hereditary, he added. Since then, Dan had been taking medication to control the problem. But one morning while shaving he suddenly felt exceptionally weak, turned grey, was violently sick and took to his bed for the rest of the day. Dan was a man who never fell ill, so he didn’t need much encouragement from Alma to see the doctor. By the time he did, however, he was fine again. Having learned about the impending sale of the company, his doctor simply advised him to relax as best he could over the Christmas and New Year holiday; the source of his stress would soon be gone.
Now here he was in his study on a freezing night during the first week of February – and the stress was mounting again. That meeting between David Green and Neville was due to be held the next morning. As requested by David, Neville would bring along a report on MSUK’s latest financial position. But the quarterly accounts were late again. Shelley had promised to email them to Neville at some point that day. Neville would then draft the report for David and run it past Jack and Dan before finalising it.
Waiting for Neville’s draft to come through, Dan had been on tenterhooks from first thing in the morning. He was a smoker. Although he had cut down significantly since learning of his blood pressure problem, he had smoked a lot of cigarettes that day, frequently climbing the stairs from his study on the lower level of the flat to have a cigarette at the back door and then coming back down to check his inbox for the umpteenth time. When he returned from the last such trip, Neville’s email was there. He opened the attachment. He had feared the worst and this really was the worst. It was catastrophic. Not only had the company recorded a substantial loss in the three months to the end of December, but Neville’s report predicted little improvement in the months ahead. He had nothing positive to say, nothing about any measures the company was taking to pull back the situation. It was almost as if he was saying, “My company is in terminal decline, David. It’s not worth buying.”
Neville was a notoriously poor report writer. It wasn’t for the first time that Dan had completely rewritten one of his drafts. He would need to do that again now, but he was running out of time, beginning to panic and feeling dizzy. Then he remembered Neville’s covering email, which he read again. Jack says he’s happy with it. Those words hit him like a sledgehammer. How could Jack be happy with it? Unless… unless Jack didn’t want the sale to go ahead. Had that been his game all along? Keeping quiet when the subject was discussed, nodding at all the right times, pretending to go along with the plan, but secretly hoping it would never go that far. What was it Neville once told him Jack had said? It’s what gets me up in the morning. Of course! His empire. He would lose control of his empire. And so… and so when the prospect of a sale became highly likely, he deliberately sabotages its chances of success. The reduction in prices? Perhaps not stupidity, after all. Could it really be the case? Was he really not interested in the money from the sale? And declaring at the last minute that he wanted to stay on as MD. Was that just a smokescreen? Or his fall-back strategy? To hang on to his empire, even though he would have to answer to a higher level in Cresta.
Dan realised too late. Too many questions. His brain bombarded by questions. Then the tremor came. It began at his feet, rushed up through his body and into his head.
“Oh, no!” he cried, sensing what was about to happen.
A fireball exploded in his head. Pain. Pain so excruciating and violent it propelled him out of his swivel chair and onto the floor. He crawled towards the open door of the study. But he could only reach as far as the narrow space between the end of his desk and the wall, where he remained wedged.
It felt like an eternity until Alma appeared at the door. She had heard him cry out and had hurried downstairs. He could hardly lift his head to look at her.
“I think I need some help, hen,” he gasped.