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Jay’s phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it.
I thanked Stoner and Talbot profusely and shook both their hands as they broke off. They’d been invaluable.
“I’ll tell him,” Jay said into his phone. “It’s Cartwright. They’re all here in town, and they want to meet to make an offer.”
“Now?” I asked.
Jay nodded. “Yeah.”
Jennifer nodded as well. “Doesn’t hurt to listen.”
“Okay,” I said.
Jay asked where and then hung up. “Restaurant two blocks north.”
“Did you tell them we were going to New York?” I asked him.
“No.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out we’d be making the rounds where the money is,” Syd noted.
But what were the odds that they’d picked a place to meet that close?
* * *
Dennis
Walking to the meeting,Jay and Jennifer agreed that this would most likely be the “greenmail” offer Cartwright was known for—pay him enough, and he would go away.
After asking for the Cartwright party at the reservation desk, we were escorted to a private room upstairs.
Carson Cartwright greeted us. “Glad we could meet on such short notice.”
When the obligatory hand shaking was done, I took the seat across from Cartwright, and Jay chose the seat across from his weasel lawyer, Beasley.
Jennifer took the next chair down the rectangular table, which was devoid of place settings.
A meal was apparently not part of the plan.
“You said you had something to discuss?” I asked.
Cartwright nodded to Beasley.
The lawyer opened a folder in front of him and slid a single sheet of paper across to me, and a copy to Jay. “Sorry. I only brought two copies.”
Jennifer leaned over to read Jay’s.
This was an agreement to give them a single board seat—down from their previous demand of three—and also to buy back their shares at a thirty-percent premium over today’s stock price.
It was simple corporate blackmail, as expected.
“It expires as soon as we walk out of this room,” Cartwright said. “Otherwise we’ll be at your offices tomorrow morning with our official proxy proposal. From there, the offers only get worse.”
I wasn’t rushing into anything without a discussion with my team. “Then we can talk tomorrow. I’m not entering into anything today.”
Beasley shook his head. “That’s too bad. I heard a rumor that someone suspected you had an SEC problem.”
Jay’s face reddened. “Our accounting is flawless.”
