Jonathan Taylor: Meyer-Hofmann AG

The second letter was even more intriguing. It was a job offer from a company Michael had never heard of, a company called Meyer-Hofmann AG. The world of IT was still very familiar, and he knew all the major players. Meyer-Hofmann was not one of them. Job offers in the IT industry were nothing new; if anything, it was surprising that this one did not come via one of the headhunting agencies that constantly bombarded him with offers. What set this offer apart was the nature of the job and the brazen use of money to get his attention. The salary was £250.000 a year before bonuses, more than double his present income, despite his recent successes. The job description was not without appeal either. Meyer-Hofmann boasted that it owned interests in many of the most important companies in the world. Their portfolio included many German household names, including Daimler, Bayer, Adidas, and Infineon. All the companies, German or otherwise, were multinationals. His job would be to set up a new IT department within Meyer-Hofmann with the goal of analysing and optimising the manufacturing processes within these companies. His research had confirmed Meyer-Hofmann’s holdings and shown them to have assets in excess of one billion dollars, which put them in the top five holding companies in the world. But what was strange in his eyes, was that the very nature of a holding company is a company that doesn’t have any operations, undertakings, or other business activities. Instead, it owned assets in the form of companies, brands, and commodities.

So why would Meyer-Hofmann want to set up an IT department? He intended to ask them.

Lisa Jarvis stepped out of the board room of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Leeds and took a moment to compose herself. She too had just received a job offer; hers, however, was without options or pay raises.

She had been instructed to move to the Munich office. After five years with the company, this was a slap in the face, whichever way they spun it.

They had tried to convince her that it was a big deal that she had been personally requested, and this would be a springboard to bigger and better things. But for Lisa, bigger and better things were waiting in London, not Munich. She had been with the company since leaving University and had achieved remarkable success. After starting as an accounts manager in Hull, she was now a senior associate in Leeds, and the normal progression would have made her a junior partner in London. Her main concern was that, at some level, the company had decided she was not the right material for promotion. The job was not, however, her only concern; she had to somehow explain this to her husband and had no idea how. An internal dialogue was racing in her mind.

Michael’s successes have opened the floodgates on the job front for him, and I was sure we were destined for the capital. Maybe I should just quit and find another job? PricewaterhouseCoopers is not the only firm of accountants in the world. This is bollocks! How could they do this to me?

Her mind was in overload, and her indignation towards her employer grew with every passing minute.

I worked so hard for those ungrateful bastards, and now they let some arrogant German company ruin everything. Meyer-Hofmann, who the fuck are they? They may well be one of PricewaterhouseCoopers biggest clients, but what does that have to do with me? I have never even worked on their accounts! she fumed to herself.

Lisa left the office and headed to her favourite bar, after deciding she needed a drink. The Smokestack was one of the rising number of trendy watering holes in Leeds City Centre. She also knew that, there, she would find a shoulder to cry on, someone with whom she could share her sense of injustice. It was a typical November afternoon, and as she left the office, she had to pull up the collar of her black woollen overcoat to protect her from the bitter wind. A cold northern drizzle forced her head down and her eyes towards the dirty flagged pavement as she made off in the direction of Briggate.

The man had been waiting for her since his appointment at her offices that morning.

She hadn’t seen him, though she had walked straight past him. He smiled to himself, pleased with his ability to blend into the background.

Maybe I should do more of this type of work for the company. It is good fun, and I have an aptitude, but I am probably getting a bit old for it.

Curiosity more than anything else had encouraged him to follow her.

What kind of a woman was she? How would she react to the news? You could learn a lot about a man by getting to know his woman. She was certainly very pleasing on the eye!

Lisa’s svelte figure would complement any clothing, and she made office chic look like high fashion. Her hair was cut into a short blonde bob—it was not her natural colour, but it suited her nonetheless. She walked with confidence, and although the weather had forced her to adopt a bent posture as she battled with the November wind, it could not hide her natural grace.

She could have been a dancer or gymnast; our man has made a catch there,’ he thought to himself. Looks and brains.

He smiled and followed at a respectable distance, careful not to draw attention to himself, casually looking into clothes shop windows as he went. Stopping in front of a shop full of bright colours and risqué slogans, he slowly scratched the side of his face, an annoying patch of psoriasis beneath his right ear egging him on. As he watched her dance and skip between the puddles, he found his interest growing.

Maybe his doubts were unfounded.

He had been against this new capture from the start, but the rest of the board was convinced they needed Jarvis.

Either way, I am going to get to know Jarvis and his family better. Pulling his black woollen scarf tighter around his neck, he peered up into the cold, grey soup that was Yorkshire weather and took off in pursuit.

Arriving at her destination, Lisa shoved against the brown door and clattered up the old wooden stairs to the first-floor bar, where she immediately saw her friend sitting in the window booth. Lisa had met Jo Saddler on her very first day at the firm, and they had hit it off immediately. For a long time they had double dated, but since Jo’s separation from her long time boyfriend, their socialising had limited itself to lunch at The Smokestack. The normal course of business would be to listen to Jo’s gripes about the world, followed by a watered down version of the Jarvis’s success story, but today was different. It was obvious that Jo already knew what had happened; you couldn’t keep that type of secret in a firm like PricewaterhouseCoopers. Open offices and intrusive secretarial staff led to gossip and news being reported before it had even been decided. The women greeted with a casual kiss to both cheeks before Lisa slid onto the leather bench seat opposite her friend.

“How are you?” Jo started.

“I don’t know,” Lisa replied, still flustered. “I just don’t understand it! It’s mad. I’ve never worked for that company before, and now they can’t function without me? It’s crazy, Jo!”

“I know, I know. Have you talked to Brendan about it?”

Brendan Johnson was a senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Lisa’s boss. He had mentored her since her arrival at the firm and, up until this morning, had always supported her.

“He was in the boardroom,” Lisa said, looking down at her lap, visibly hurt by her boss’s failure to watch her back. “He didn’t say a thing, just sat there and played with his bloody iPhone.” She spat the words out.

“It certainly is a shock; the whole office is talking about it. Wendy thinks that the orders came from the London office and that the guys here had no part in the process. Apparently, it was just as big a shock for them as it was for you.”