started the whole party rolling in Singapore and Bangkok Friday night before I went home for the weekend.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“No,” Kyle insisted. “Why now?”
“Because the deal was completed a week ago. A month ago. There was no need to do anything more. No need to wait any longer.”
“You start this deal over six months ago, then you miss half the meetings and let the deal stall until a month ago. Now you suddenly decide you’re going to jump back in and the deal can’t wait another month.”
“I should have let it fail?”
“You should have waited.”
My instincts warned me not to respond and risk being towed into the current of Kyle’s antagonism.
Kyle tightened his elbows into his sides. Loading for punches. “Do you know the drain on our treasury position yesterday?”
“I can guess.”
“Are you sure you can guess that big?”
“Then you tell me.”
“Our treasury department’s been flooded all night with emails and SWIFT messages from Bangkok Commercial Bank requesting settlement on the bond issue no later than March tenth. That’s three weeks. How much do we need?”
I leaned forward to demonstrate that I was immune. “Come on, Kyle. Don’t act like some cop came out of a speed trap and surprised you with a traffic ticket. You know that this Bangkok Commercial Bank deal has been our primary focus for the last couple of weeks. We’ve gone through ten meetings on strategy, hundreds of hours of crunching the numbers and working out the margins.”
“How much of the bond issue did you buy?”
“More than expected.”
“How much?”
“The whole issue.”
“So, Paris, you’re telling me we need a hundred million?”
“I’m telling you we need a hundred million.”
“And we don’t have the cash.”
“But we’ve got a lot of it.”
“How much?”
“A lot more than you think we have.”
“How much is that?”
“Most of it from a single deal I put together in Singapore. And I think I can pull together a syndicate of a few more smaller players in Singapore and Hong Kong for the rest.”
“No. How fucking much?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then you’ve just bankrupted this firm. We close our doors in less than a month.”
“We – ”
“Get out. Get the fuck out. Just get the fuck out.”
I made a performance of drawing a breath, exhaling in overly tried patience; articulating that I was winning because Kyle was losing his temper.
“Before I went to Bangkok,” I announced conspicuously, “we agreed I was going to run with this one.” I opened my palms, concentrated on sprinting ahead of Kyle’s next outburst. “When I came back from Bangkok – ”
“That wasn’t – ”
“And reported on the preliminary negotiations, we agreed to run hard with it.”
“What we planned – ”
“And I have.”
“That’s an understatement! Paris, we talked buying on a best-efforts basis. About paying maybe twenty million, tops. From our own capital. And dialling for dollars to syndicate another twenty or thirty million. But only taking what we could pay for or pre-sell in syndication. Not a penny more.”
“And paying for the rest of the offering by using the financing from Singapore.”
“Agreed. You were supposed to be bringing on Bank of South Asia in Singapore to back us up with the additional mezzanine financing.”
“Which I have.”
“But we were going to broker the deal. Not buy it outright. We didn’t expect to buy the entire bond issue and have to pay for the whole damn thing sight unseen. Now we’re expected to settle up on a hundred million with Bangkok Commercial Bank. By March fuckin’ tenth.”
I waited.
In the diameters of discord and uneasy quiet that persisted between us, it seemed that we were breathing in unison. To break the grip of Kyle’s anger and accusation I found myself expanding my chest and holding my lungs full.
“Paris, our treasury people are fielding all kinds of flack about where do we expect to get that kind of capital. Even if we sold off everything we owned in a fire sale, and leveraged that right to the hilt, we could barely raise half that much. Am I missing something? Was I not listening when you told me about how some rich uncle just died last week and left you a spare hundred million?”
I measured Kyle’s rhythm, tried to interrupt it at a weak link. “That’s not the important thing this minute.”
“If it’s not, I’d sure as hell like to know what is.”
“The important thing is that we got the entire issue with no competition and no interference. And because we cut the competition out of the market, we got the deal at a much better price. A lot more profit for us. That’s the important point.”
“Except now we can’t pay for it.” Kyle hesitated. Sniffed savagely. “And that’s the sure-as-shit important point!”
I listened to the heat pumping into the room and to the wind scouring the wide windows. Over Kyle’s shoulder the city skyline wobbled in the ashen winter light.
Kyle struck swiftly, lowering his voice, levelling his tone, thrusting the allegation in his words. “You’ve been on shaky ground this past half year. Since …”
“Since what?”
“Since you damn well know what.”
“Let’s,” I stated, “keep my personal life out of this.”
“Okay then,” Kyle conceded in lemon tones, “let’s keep it to your performance around here.”
“Where the numbers speak for themselves.”
“Sure. On your own you’ve produced as much income for the firm as the rest of us combined.”
This
