The Hawker 700B descended through the clouds over Lac Leman for a southwest approach into Cointrin International Airport which is on the northern outskirts of Geneva hard against the French Border. Myself, Pete, the CFO of my company, and a management trainee named "Joe" were the only passengers.
A week ago, David, the CEO of the company that I worked for called me in Paris where I was attempting to finalize the purchase of a French company in our line of business, but his call wasn't to check on my progress, but rather to inform me that they had noticed some unusual movement in our company's stock that might signal that someone might be interested in mounting a hostile takeover of us.
I had convinced him that if that was true and we weren't being targeted by a corporate raider like Carl Ichan, then I thought that one of two companies located in Europe was most likely involved. I had asked him to send my personal assistant Meredith over with two of our management trainees and I said I would set up a temporary office in Paris and try to ferret out what might be happening. David had agreed and said he would send one of our three corporate jets.
Four days ago the plane landed at Le Bourget outside of Paris and in addition to the people that I'd asked for there were two in addition. The first was Merideth's husband Ralph who had just retired from his job as a county supervisor and was coming to keep Merideth company. The second was Pete, who wanted to be near the action when we started to make contacts and sift through information. I didn't know how long Pete planned to stay, but I appreciated him coming. He had a great mind for all things finance and not only did he have his own network of helpful contacts, but he was someone that I felt comfortable playing the myriad of "what ifs" with.
We had two appointments scheduled, a luncheon meeting with a Geneva banker, and an evening dinner with a friend of mine who had retired last year, but before that, he was someone who had his fingers on the pulse of what was going on with European businesses across the continent. I didn't think that either was likely to have the answer to the who and why questions we had, but I was hopeful they could direct us to others who could.
Vic executed his normal soft landing and I marveled at his ability to make the wheels of the Hawker just caress the runway every time. He taxied us to the private terminal operated by Signature Aviation and once inside he gave me a card with the number where I could reach him. Vic had flown F-15s for the Air Force, but he lamented that he was too late for Vietnam and too early for whatever was next. He was the chief pilot for our modest three-plane fleet and frankly, I was a little surprised that he himself had volunteered to fly over. When I asked, he smiled and said that he was getting tired of flying over Iowa cornfields and thought that the Alps would be a welcome change of scenery.
We called for two cabs and when they arrived, I put Joe in one and Pete and I crawled into the other. I had given Joe the mission of profiling the Swiss company that was one of my suspects. He was off to an appointment with a woman who was a research analyst who worked for a large broker. She followed our industry closely and I knew that she had written several reports on the company and Joe was charged with picking her brain. There were at least two others that I was aware of and he would be speaking with them too over the next several days. I also told him to seek out and contact former employees or anyone else that he might come across. I gave him ten thousand Swiss Francs to use if it would tease out information. Joe's eyes had widened when I put the cash in his hands and I think it dawned on him for the first time that there were business techniques not taught at the Wharton School of Business.
Our other management trainee, Matt, had been sent on a similar mission to check out the German company that I considered a possible suitor. I had wondered what qualification Matt had to be sent over to help, but I soon discovered that while he was from Wisconsin, he was actually born in Germany and spoke the language. He and his family had emigrated to the United States when he was fourteen. I had set up two appointments for him, but he had similar instructions to use his own initiative. We'd see if the trainees were good for anything, that was for sure.
When Pete first arrived, one of my questions was, exactly how had we discovered the "unusual" movement in the company stock? Pete had laughed and mentioned the name of a young woman who worked for him. She had been reviewing the company's stock register when she saw that there were purchases every single day for 14 days from a broker in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each was for the exact same amount, 1,286 shares. When she multiplied that number by fourteen, it was almost exactly 18,000 shares all of which were held in a "street name" so the identity of the actual purchaser was hidden. It appeared to her that someone had commissioned the broker to quietly purchase those shares over a period of time, but then out of laziness or incompetence, the broker had just initiated an order for one-fourteenth of the amount each day rather than randomizing the purchases. This prompted her to look for other "street name" purchases and she found a broker in Oakland, California who had bought over 20,000 shares, but had done a better job of timing the purchases and varying the amounts
In all, she discovered that over 50,000 shares had been accumulated over the last two months which was close to two percent of the company. I was impressed and suggested that the young lady was due a bonus. Pete nodded and told me that he'd already taken care of that.
