Due Diligence: A Thriller
Page 3
“Motherfucker.”
“Well?” said Bernard.
“You’re killing me here. This is the judgment of Samuel.”
“Solomon,” said Bernard. “And it’s not.”
“What? What’s not? What the fuck are you talking about, Fischer?”
Bernard sighed. “Who do you want, Phil? Holding or Levi?”
“Give me the first one,” said Menendez grudgingly.
“Rob Holding? He’s the one you want?”
“No, he’s not the one I want. He’s the little fuck you’re forcing me to take.”
“Rob Holding it is,” said Bernard. “He’s on extension 4327. I’ll pull him off what he’s doing. You want to tell him or shall I?”
“You tell him,” said Phil. “Tell him to be in my war room at eight o’clock.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tonight!”
“Where’s your war room?” asked Bernard.
“I don’t know yet. If he can’t find it by eight o’clock, it’ll just show what a fuck he is.”
“You want me to tell him that?”
“If you like,” retorted Phil Menendez, and slammed the phone down.
Bernard Fischer put down his phone. His office, like the offices of the other VPs, was separated by a glass partition from the bullpen where the analysts and associates sat at their computers. There were about forty of them out there, gazing seriously at computer screens, punching at keyboards, or talking into phones. Bernard knew that he must have met Rob Holding a few weeks back during the induction program for new analysts when he had given a talk on staffing. He looked around the bullpen. There were a number of faces he didn’t recognize. He had no idea which one belonged to the rookie he had just assigned to Phil Menendez. Rob Holding was just a name on a staffing sheet.
Bernard Fischer ticked it off, writing Phil Menendez alongside it. “Rob Holding,” he murmured as he wrote, “may God have mercy on your soul.”
5
The Beneventi Cement Company was a midsize cement manufacturer headquartered in Turin, Italy. According to the annual report on the screen, it had just had a pretty poor year. A damn poor year. The Beneventi Cement Company, thought Rob with a wry smile as he copied the key figures into a spreadsheet, would be lucky to issue another annual report if it kept going like that.
Rob Holding had never heard of the Beneventi Cement Company before and he was unlikely to hear of it again. Its name just happened to be on a list of 214 cement manufacturers that someone in the bank had e-mailed to him. The same person, whom Rob had never met, had also e-mailed the spreadsheet into which Rob was supposed to enter the main data on every company on the list after downloading their financial accounts from the Net. Rob didn’t know why he was doing this. Apart from the fact that he had been told to.
Rob was six-one with dark hair, a good physique, and a winning smile. He came from a middle-class family in Pittsburgh. Rob had an older sister, Sherryl, who got hitched to a real-estate guy who took her to Arizona. That was fine with Sherryl. She couldn’t wait to get out of Pittsburgh. Life had gotten hard for the Holdings, as it had for a lot of families across the Rust Belt. Rob’s father had been a technical draftsman at an auto-parts manufacturer. He lost his job back in the late nineties when the company closed down and hadn’t held a steady job since. Rob’s mother was a schoolteacher, a big believer in the role of community. Kind of a Hillary Clinton disciple. It was only with gritted teeth that she had been able to bring herself to vote for Obama after he beat Hillary to the 2008 nomination, and she still hadn’t recovered from the disappointment. She had devoted her entire career to the public-school system. Year by year, she got more distressed at what she saw.
His mother had instilled something in Rob. Some part of her idealism had rubbed off. Or maybe it was seeing his father lose his job when he was barely forty-five, right in the middle of what should have been the most productive years of his life. Rob had an itch in him to do something, to make a difference. He just hadn’t worked out what it was yet.
Of the two children in the family, Rob was the gifted one. He didn’t have any money to back him, but he had enthusiasm and drive. He worked nights to get through Penn State, then found himself with a part scholarship to law school at Columbia, graduating fourth in his class. Out of law school he joined Roller, Waite & Livingstone, a major Wall Street law firm, and after a couple of years he was about ready to think about paying off some of his debt. But this wasn’t the thing for him, he already knew that. Contracts, bid documents, offerings documents for major corporations. After the initial buzz of getting a job at a firm of that caliber, the shine wore off. He looked at the Roller Waite partners and knew he didn’t want to be like them in another ten years, even the ones he liked. Whatever it was that he wanted to do, this wasn’t the place to do it. In the meantime, he had worked alongside a bunch of investment bankers on deals where Roller Waite was doing the legal work. The investment bankers were sharp, energetic. The kind of people who got things done. They were the ones who called the shots. He got to know a couple of them who had started out as lawyers before making the switch. They told him to do an MBA. He began to think about it. Six months later, he was out of Roller Waite. Now, two years on, he had an MBA from Cornell, a load more debt, and had interviewed with just about every investment bank on Wall Street.
Dyson Whitney wasn’t his first choice. Like everyone else, Rob had imagined himself with a job at a Goldman Sachs or a Morgan Stanley. But recruitment on the Street was low and there were plenty of guys Rob knew, good guys, who hadn’t even gotten an offer. Besides, you didn’t necessarily finish up where you began. Work hard, do well at Dyson Whitney, and in a couple of years, who could tell where he might end up?
It was about six weeks since he had started at the firm, along with eight other new joiners. Bernard Fischer had given them a talk during their induction week, and although Bernard may have forgotten the names of the inductees, they remembered him. They remembered the things he told them. As analysts, they would be assigned to teams working on deals and other transactions. They wouldn’t have much choice over their assignments, at least not for the first year or two. Between projects, MDs and VPs would get them to help out on pitches or marketing materials they were preparing. Bernard warned them that the pressure to get this stuff done might be just as great as the pressure during a live deal. They shouldn’t be under any illusions. Didn’t matter what they had done before. At this point, Bernard had paused and looked long and hard around the room. “Two of you,” he said, “have law degrees. I’ve read your profiles. We’ve got a particle physicist and a neuroanatomist here. You know what? Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what you were told during recruitment. The reality is, no one cares. You’re the grunts, the dogsbodies. The only criterion anyone will apply is your ability to get stuff done. Do that, and people might want to use you. Keep your utilization up, and you might just survive long enough to give this same talk to someone else one day.”
If that was supposed to be intimidating, it had the opposite effect on Rob. He didn’t mind hard work. Throw it at him! How else could you learn? Hard work was what he was here for.
On his first morning at his desk, a voice had called up and told him to put together a chart of Argentinian and Chilean exchange rates against the dollar, yen, and euro since 1990. After Rob sent it off, he never heard another word about it. Then there was a press search to produce profiles of the board members of a housewares chain in the Midwest. There was a search for companies that were comparable to a half-billion-dollar wine producer in New Zealand. Rob e-mailed that to an associate who sat not far away from him, and he figured it might have something to do with a real deal that someone was trying to execute. But the associate didn’t tell him what it was for. That was how it worked. No one told him anything. He wasn’t staffed on a deal, so it seemed that people just threw stuff at him. Half the time, someone would call up and tell him to drop what he was doing and start on something else.
The new analysts hung together, comparing notes. Only three had been staffed on genuine fee-generating transactions. The deals weren’t flowing, people said. Without deals, there was no way to get your utilization up. A couple of the analysts were real doommongers, saying they’d all be fired if things didn’t pick up soon. Rob didn’t know how seriously to take that. Apparently, there’d been a round of firings of associates a few months earlier.
He just wanted to get himself staffed on a deal. Any deal. Didn’t matter how big or how small. Didn’t matter what kind of company. Heavy goods manufacturing or ladies’ lingerie—he didn’t care. He just wanted to get the chance to show what he could do. In the meantime, he knew, his best bet was to do the work he was given as quickly and as well as he could. Although this latest thing … 214 cement companies, without even knowing what it was for. That was enough to put a dent in anyone’s enthusiasm.
He typed in the figures from the Beneventi report. When he was done, he typed the next company name into Bloomberg, trying not to think of all the names that remained.
“Rob?”
He looked up. It was Steve Pippos, peering down at him over the divider that separated their desks.
“You ready?”
“What for?”
“The photo. Didn’t you get my e-mail?”
Rob didn’t know what he was talking about. “When did you send it?”
“Ten minutes ago. Come on, they’re looking for people to feature on the website. They want to put up fresh photos with biographies.” Steve grinned. “They said they wanted some mean-looking mugs, so obviously I thought of you.”
Rob smiled. At least it would get him away form the cement manufacturers for a few minutes.
“Come on. Let’s go. They’re taking the photos in facilities.”
They went down a couple of floors and had the shots taken.
“You know,” said Rob as they were coming back up in the elevator, “some of the new guys are saying if we don’t get staffed on a deal pretty soon, we’re gonna get fired.”
Steve nodded. “Probably.”
“Really?”
Steve grinned. “They just hired you. They’re not going to fire you. They just fired a bunch of associates. They’re thinking a couple of years ahead. You’re the guys who are going to replace them when business is good again.”
“Yeah, but how long do they wait? What if there’re no deals?”
“There’s always a deal eventually. How long since you started?”
“Six weeks.”
“I went ten weeks before my first deal. Then I was on one after the other for eight months solid.”
“But what if there isn’t one?”
“You’ll get staffed, don’t worry. And when you do, you won’t know what hit you.”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t care how many all-nighters I pull.”
“No?” Steve laughed. “Be careful what you wish for.”
They got back to their desks. The list with the names of the entire world’s cement companies was lying just where Rob had left it. The message light on his phone was flashing.
Rob hit the button for his voice mail. He heard Bernard Fischer’s voice. A moment later, he broke into a grin.
6
The door opened and in marched a short, stubby, bristling man with a close-shaven head, like a cloud of aggression blowing into the room. He slammed the door behind him.
“I’m Phil Menendez!” he announced. “Sammy, I know. I’m guessing you’re Cynthia. That makes you Rob.” Phil didn’t pause for confirmation. “All right, listen up, you jerkoffs. I’ve just spent the last hour with Pete Stanzy. Any of you know Pete? Sammy, you do, right? You two? Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know you, either. Doesn’t know you now and won’t know you later. Show the Shark a team where the MD doesn’t know the name of the analyst at the end of the deal and the Shark’ll show you a team that’s done its job. Okay, here’s the deal.” Phil grabbed a marker and turned to a whiteboard. “Louisiana Light,” he said, and wrote it up. BritEnergy, he wrote underneath it. “Okay. We are buying them. You ever heard of them? You, Cynthia?” He stabbed at the whiteboard with his finger. “You ever heard of this operation?”
Cynthia, a thin blonde of around thirty, frowned.
“Jeez!” growled Phil. “I told Fischer. I told him you’d be fucking useless.”
There was a knock on the door. Phil opened it irritably.
“I got a printer here,” said an office guy, glancing around the room and taking a good long look at the whiteboard.
“Later!” said Phil, and he slammed the door again. “Okay! Secrecy! Top level.” He erased the names from the whiteboard. “Nothing’s said or taken out of this room. Is that clear?”
Sammy, Cynthia, and Rob nodded.
“Shredder! You got no shredder, Sammy!”
“We’ll be getting one,” said Sammy calmly. He was a tall red-headed guy with clear blue eyes.
“You get a fucking shredder in here!”
“We’re getting one, Phil.”
Menendez glared at him suspiciously. Sammy didn’t bat an eye. There were four desks crammed into the war room, but that was about all. The rest of the equipment was yet to arrive.
“Okay, listen.” A cunning gleam came into Phil Menendez’s eye. “This is a genuine motherfucker of a deal. Understand? We’re talking ten, eleven billion.”
Menendez paused. Rob glanced at Sammy and Cynthia to see their reaction. Cynthia’s jaw had dropped. Sammy frowned for an instant, then resumed his deadpan expression.
“And there’s more,” said Menendez.
“What?” asked Cynthia.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Menendez turned to Sammy. “Okay, we need all the usual stuff on this one. And no screwups, Sammy. You understand me? No fuckups. The Shark’ll kill you. This is too big.”
Sammy nodded.
“First review’s on Monday. Pete and I will be going down to Baton Rouge. We’ll want the basics—valuation grid, first cut of the integrated financials, decision-maker analysis. You know the drill.”
The words flew over Rob’s head.
“The rookie’ll do the football field. She can cut the model. Sammy, you take the decision makers and the other stuff and make sure these guys don’t fuck up.”
Sammy nodded.
“Okay, what’ll we call them? Huh? Code names.” Menendez snapped his fingers rapidly. “Come on, we need code names for these guys. Our guys start with an L. What about Leopard, huh? Big fucking leopard going hunting in the jungle.” Menendez laughed. “I like it. Huh, what do you think?”
“Sure,” said Sammy.
“All right. What about them? Something with a B.”
“Bat,” said Cynthia.
Menendez stared at her as if he’d just been hit in the head with a fence post. “What the fuck? Bat? What the fuck’s a bat?”
“A bat’s one of those—”
“I know what a bat is!” Menendez shook his head in amazement. “Bat! Some shitty little bat! You think a leopard’s gonna eat a fucking bat? A leopard’s not gonna get out of bed for a bat. Jesus, what the fuck do you think we are?”
“What about Buffalo?” said Rob.
Menendez looked at him. “Buffalo. Not bad. A big juicy buffalo our leopard’s gonna sink his teeth in. The Shark likes it. Okay. Leopard and Buffalo. Project code? Don’t worry, Pete and me’ve got a name already. Project Forty.” Menendez grinned, just waiting for someone to ask him why.
“Why?” asked Rob.
“Don’t you worry.” Menendez looked at his watch,
then glanced around the room, as if seeing it for the first time “What the fuck is this, Sammy? This is a war room? This is a jerkoff. You haven’t even got a phone.”
“The phones are coming,” replied Sammy.
“When? Come on. Get to work!”
“Phil, we’re not set up. We’ll get the room set and we’ll do some work planning, and then I think we should go home and get a good night’s sleep. We’re going to need it.”
“Sleep?” demanded Menendez, spitting the word out. “You expect the Shark to care if you want sleep?”
Sammy didn’t reply. His gaze didn’t falter.
Rob watched him.
Menendez snorted in contempt. Then he turned around and walked out.
The door shut loudly, leaving a portentous silence in the room.
“He’s going to murder us,” said Cynthia quietly.
Sammy glanced at her. Cynthia was a third-year analyst, up for promotion to associate at her next review. Originally from London, she had an MBA from Northwestern and had been in the States for six years. The rumor in the bullpen was that Cynthia had been lucky to survive her last review a few months back and needed a great review this time around, or it would be her last.
“Who’s this ‘shark’ he kept talking about?” asked Rob.
“That’s what Phil likes to call himself,” said Sammy.
Rob looked at him in disbelief.
Sammy nodded. Deadpan.
“He’s going to fucking murder us,” murmured Cynthia again.
Rob was inclined to agree with her.
“Don’t worry about Phil,” said Sammy. “All he cares about is the work gets done. Do that and you’ll hardly have to talk to him. That’s my job.”
“This is a big deal, right?” said Rob.
“Sounds like it. That doesn’t matter. What we have to do is the same whether it’s eleven billion or eleven million. Just treat it like a regular deal.”
“What was that stuff Phil was talking about when he said there’s more?”
Sammy shrugged. “That’s just Phil blowing off.”
“You think there’s stuff we don’t know about this deal?”