"Oh come on Larry," yelled Sebastian, exasperated, "Twelve hours ago we had a deal on the table and you were happy with everything. Now you're pulling the rug out from under us, I mean what the fuck, what the actual fuck Larry?" Sebastian was shouting into a sphincter-shaped speakerphone in the centre of a massive conference table in Mayfair; London. As Sebastian continued to loom over, and yell into the table's asshole his team of analysts, lawyers and corporate financiers, busied themselves by generating dashboards, highlighting paragraphs and worriedly swapping bits of paper with each other. Some had been working in that room for thirty-six hours straight and there was an acrid smell of sweat, Kamboucha energy drinks, and takeaway lingering about. Nobody cared.
A catering bot; a large bin shaped robot with large covered wheels, carefully pushed a trolley with four ice buckets into the conference room. Each filled with three bottles of 2024 Dom Perignon. An excellent vintage. Sebastian mouthed, "Get it the fuck out," at Gemma, a young analyst standing nearest to it, and gesticulated his right arm as if rapidly throwing a barrage of darts at her face. This was no time for Champagne, victory was not yet secured. It was bad luck for it to be here. She filed the tablet she was working on under her arm pit and pressed a few buttons on the bot's touch screen. It quickly reversed itself out of the room.
"Sebastian, nobody wants to pull the rug," the asshole replied, "we just need some more time to finalise the schedules around executive compensation." One of Sebastian's colleagues held a note up in front of him. A crisp piece of white copier paper with Stalling for a better price? scrawled on it in Sharpie. Sebastian responded by pushing his tongue into his bottom lip, and bulging his eyes out. The international sign language for, "Yes obviously dickhead!" while managing to still mouth the words, "No shit!" His colleague, a conscientious recent grad called Craig, skulked off to a corner of the room. Sebastian paced up and down the middle quarter of the table scratching his head. Contemplating the options for his next move.
Everything was riding on this. If Sebastian could pull it off it would bring a tsunami of much needed cash into the struggling firm and by extension his own bank account. It would also make him the toast of the London Private Equity community for five minutes and no doubt open doors to bigger and better jobs, with bigger and better Private Equity firms. Sebastian was loyal, always staying true to whichever company valued his loyalty the most.
He looked around the room at the scared, desperate faces of the execs and associates staring back at him; people looking to him for leadership in this moment of crisis. The men and women of Vortex Capital, a mid-tier Private Equity company, known for deploying very little actual capital and returning even less to its investors needed this deal. If he didn't come through there would be at least half a dozen fewer Range Rovers on the road and a couple of estate agents in the Cotswolds might actually shoot themselves. Everything hung in the balance.
Sebastian loomed over the speaker phone, palms placed either side of it, as if expecting to be able to see Larry out the other end, "Listen Larry, we've both known each other a long time. Why don't you stop playing games for two minutes and tell me what the problem is, here?" The speaker phone beeped. The other end had been muted. Sebastian turned his head to the left and stared into space while he waited. The phone beeped again, a different voice this time.
"Seb it's Melinda."
If there was one thing that Sebastian Horatio De Palma hated more than being called Seb, it was being called Seb by Melinda White. She was a slick talking New Yorker who, thanks to the undisputed talent of her plastic surgeon, was either an old looking thirty or a young looking sixty year old. Sebastian estimated her tits to be no more than a couple of years old, however. She used the stair master in her office for at least an hour everyday and could almost certainly beat the shit out of any man she wanted. Sebastian hated her for how threatened and emasculated she made him feel. He desperately wanted to fuck her but feared, that if it ever became a possibility, he'd bottle it. "Hey Mel," he shot back.
"It's Melinda, thanks." Sebastian scrunched up his face and clenched his fists as he fought the urge to counter; but this was not the time to go toe to toe with the Deal Principle from PJW Preston over her blatant nickname power-play bullshit. He'd have to wait; she'd won this round but the slight had been noted, cataloged and archived for easy retrieval at some future date. "We've got some concerns around the deferred revenue figures beyond Q4 of next year. Our clients have instructed us to hold back until we can get some reassurances from you of how real those figures are." Sebastian felt himself sink into the floor.
Just then the door opened and Marcus Brembrum, Vortex's CEO and founder walked in. A suave silver fox of a man in his early sixties. Impeccably dressed with a million watt smile. He shone it around at a few people around the room, then stood himself to the side of the door, crossed his arms, and made a play of not wanting to be a nuisance to anyone. He'd obviously come in to witness the final moments of the battle before victory was declared, but instead, Vortex's Wellington, had walked in on the final bloody horror of utter defeat. Brembrum's expression hardened as he read the room; his gaze met Sebastian's while he stood prostrate over the table.
Now the audience was complete.
Sebastian felt himself sinking deeper into the floor. He looked back at his boss and mentor. He wished he'd give him the smallest of nods reaffirming the belief Brembrum had in his young protege, some indicator that Sebastian was worthy of the trust and responsibility that Brembrum had placed in him. Brembrum had been the closest thing Sebastian had, had to a father figure and the idea of disappointing him, caused him physical pain. Brembrum looked calmly into Sebastian's eyes and through glistening veneers mouthed, "What the fuck Sebastian?" as his face cracked.
Sebastian knew he was standing at the precipice of a gargantuan cluster fuck and needed to do something immense to avoid being swallowed up by it. Breaking Brembrum's gaze he slowly rose; stood tall; took a large intake of breath and prepared his counter. "I see Melinda," said Sebastian calmly, "Didn't you cover that in the due diligence?"
"We did, yeah but we just had something comeback that concerns us and we want more clarity before moving ahead," Sebastian could tell from Melinda's tone she was off the start line and charging down the hill at him picking up speed, "It seems that a large portion of Avanti Systems' future revenue is coming from other companies in Vortex's portfolio, so we are questioning the validity of these contracts," she was getting into her stride, "We accounted for at least seventy-five percent of the next eight quarters' revenue to companies that you own Seb. That is a sizeable portion of the valuation," she was breaking into a gallop now, swords drawn lances down, "Given the circular nature of these transactions, our client would like to propose that we strike this revenue from the deal sheet and proceed at a price net of unrealised income," Her cavalry just hit Sebastian's lines and smashed through; bodies thrown, limbs ripped, faces smashed, any advantage Sebastian had was lost. He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. They'd been rumbled.
Of course Melinda was right. They'd pumped Avanti's books with orders from all the other companies in Vortex's portfolio to massively inflate the price. It made it look like Avanti had a product worth buying rather than a substandard and buggy piece of software, at least two generations behind, that most clients hated using. When PJW approached them to buy Avanti, one of Vortex's biggest dogs, everyone jumped on it as a way to offload it. It was Sebastian's idea to push this as far as it would go by getting every other company in the portfolio to commit to ten year contracts. This was bad. Brembrum looked on in disappointment, "Daddy, don't be angry…" Sebastian snapped out of it.
Sebastian knew he needed to do something audacious and bold if there was to be even the slightest hope of un-fucking this, "OK Melinda, you know what," He stepped into the breach and put his balls on the block waiting for the hammer to drop, "Let's just forget the whole thing," Sebastian looked at Brembrum. His disappointment had turned to incredulity in a nano second.
"Excuse me?" Replied Melinda.
"We have other offers Melinda," lied Sebastian, "Parties on a deadline looking to acquire Avanti and they are ready to press the go button as soon as we call, so let's not waste each other's time anymore than we have to, and just walk away from this one."
Brembrum bounded over to the opposite side of the table and hit the mute button, "What the fuck are you doing Sebastian, we have no other buyer. Let's just eat shit on this one and get rid of fucking Avanti," he spat as he spoke.
"She won't be happy with us just eating shit Marcus. She smells blood," said Sebastian. "This deal is as good as dead."
"You're lying," said Melinda. Sebastian un-muted the phone.
"I'm not Melinda; so unless you want to read about how one of your client's biggest competitors picked up Avanti and its proprietary AI cyber-security engine for a song next week, you close now or we're walking away." There was a long pause.
"Hold on," the phone beeped as Melinda muted her phone. Sebastian stared at Brembrum; Brembrum stared back. Minutes passed. A mood of terror hung in the room like fog. The phone beeped and Melinda came back on.
"OK but we want twenty points off the price."
"No way 5 points max," replied Sebastian instantly.
"10"
"Deal." Sebastian inhaled as quietly as he could, Brembrum put his hands to his face and then to the sky, thanking God for deservedly making him several million pounds richer in that moment. The fog in the room lifted suddenly but everyone contained themselves.
"OK, I'll get Larry to finalise everything," and with that Melinda signed off and muted the phone.
The room erupted. Brembrum walked around the table and patted Sebastian on the back, looking to the room as it clapped wildly at Sebastian's display of deceit and downright unethical practice. Sebastian moved to hug Brembrum, but the older man pushed him off with a smile, stepping back to continue applauding from a distance.
"Where's the Champagne?" hollered Sebastian finally joining the vibe of the room. The bot wheeled the trolley back into the room while its occupants descended on it like a pack of jackals onto a carcass.
"Where shall we go to celebrate?" Bellowed Brembrum as the corks popped and the Dom flowed.
"We have a space booked at Savage Garden from six Sir," informed Gemma, glancing at Sebastian. Was she making eyes at him or was that disdain?
"Excellent, excellent," bellowed Brembrum, "We'll see you all down there later," he told the room. Now turning to address Sebastian, "Well done my boy, well done, that was a bold play, a bold play," he shook Sebastian's hand wildly and then walked off to heap praise on some of the others.
Sebastian exhaled and let the adrenalin ease away. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. After a win like this, most of the team would head to the bar and get hammered on the firm's tab. Sebastian scrolled to a nameless app on his phone. A simple black square icon, no logo, no name it required a face ID and a ten digit code to activate. Sebastian navigated it's bare interface and booked an appointment for later that evening.