Michael Ridpath: See No Evil

The bankers from Bloomfield Weiss had come to advise him on perhaps his boldest move so far, at least since he had taken over the Herald in the late 1980s. The Times was for sale. Its owner, Laxton Media, had bought the paper from an Australian group at the turn of the millennium, the only real-world property in a string of internet acquisitions. The canny Australian had taken cash, not shares, and since the dot-com boom had turned to bust, Laxton Media had limped along under the burden of its borrowings, holding out for an unrealistically high price for what had become the crown jewel of its portfolio. But pressure from creditors was building, and there were rumours that Laxton was close to an agreed sale to Beckwith Communications, a private company owned by Sir Evelyn Gill. Gill already owned the tabloid Mercury, but he had made no secret of the fact that he wanted to own a world-class property like The Times.

But so did Cornelius.

Three men came into the room. The first, and by far the most striking, was a tall, elegant black man of about fifty. He held out his hand to Cornelius.

‘Benton, how are you?’ Cornelius said, shaking it. ‘I hope you don’t mind meeting at my house. It’s not that I don’t trust the Herald people, I do completely, but the more secrecy we can preserve, the better.’

‘Not at all,’ Benton replied in a deep, rich American accent. ‘I do love these Nash terraces. And what a wonderful view of the park!’ He moved over to the window. From his first-floor study, Cornelius could indeed see over the hedges into Regent’s Park, dotted with office workers and tourists enjoying the May sunshine. Benton scanned the room. Computer, printer, telephone and filing cabinets were carefully blended in with the paraphernalia of a gentleman’s library: bookshelves holding leather-bound volumes, decanters of liquid in tints of amber and gold, sturdy but comfortable chairs and tables, a globe, some lithe bronzes and, scattered among shelves and alcoves, three or four replicas of old racing Bentleys. ‘Is that really a Wyeth?’ Benton asked, moving over to a picture of a pair of young boys wading through the long grass towards a wooden farmhouse on the brow of a hill. ‘I don’t remember that from the last time I was here.’

‘I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your eye for good art, Benton,’ Cornelius said. ‘We bought it last year.’

‘Does it remind you of where you grew up?’

Cornelius snorted. ‘Oudtshoorn is so dry it’s almost desert. And they farm ostriches there. This was actually painted near our farm in Pennsylvania.’ He paused. ‘But there is something. The American wagon trains heading west; the Boers trekking over the veld. And the freedom to run around barefoot in the fields. I don’t do much of that any more.’ He smiled, and then turned to shake hands as Davis introduced the other two bankers, younger, smaller, more intense men. ‘Now. Have a seat, gentlemen.’

They took their places opposite Cornelius and Edwin, the sunshine from the large window bouncing off the polished table between them.

Cornelius began, peering over his half-moon reading glasses at the bankers. The spectacles appeared tiny on his broad strong face and he used them more as a prop to look over than an aid to see through. ‘We think we have an opportunity to snatch The Times from under Evelyn Gill’s nose, if we can move quickly enough.’ He paused to let the excitement build. He was talking about a deal, and a deal meant fees, and fees were what got these Bloomfield Weiss bankers excited. ‘Edwin is pretty sure Gill is offering seven hundred million for The Times and the Sunday Times .’

‘That’s a full price,’ Benton said.

‘Yes. But it’s not as unrealistic as the billion plus Laxton were talking about a few months ago. We think they’re under pressure to do a clean, quick deal, which is why they are suddenly talking to Gill at the lower price. If we’re going to shut him out I suggest we offer eight hundred and fifty. Cash. And we leave the offer open for seven days only. Laxton can take it or leave it.’

‘They’ll want to take it,’ Benton said.

‘I think they will,’ Cornelius said. ‘And I don’t think Gill will be able to get hold of an extra hundred and fifty million in a week. But the big question is, can we get hold of that much money?’

Benton glanced at his colleagues. Cornelius knew it was they who would run the deal, but none the less it was good to see Benton Davis still around. Cornelius had always liked the man, ever since he had agreed to travel down to South Africa during apartheid to help with the acquisition of the Herald, the deal that had moved Cornelius up into the big league. For a black American, that had taken courage and some independence of mind.

The shorter and chubbier of the two, an Englishman called Dower, answered. ‘I think we can, just. You have a hundred million of cash in Zyl News. We should be able to raise five hundred million in the bank-loan market fairly comfortably. That leaves three hundred and change we would need to raise from a high-yield bond issue.’

‘Three hundred and change?’ Cornelius said. ‘Don’t you mean two hundred and fifty?’

Dower shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Benton smiled. ‘Fees, Cornelius, you mustn’t forget the fees.’

‘That much? That’s over fifty million pounds!’

‘At least that much,’ Benton said. ‘It’s not just for us, it’s for the banks, the lawyers, the printers, the accountants.’ He shrugged. ‘OK, most of it’s for us, but if we can get a deal like this away, we deserve it.’

‘Fifty million is outrageous,’ said Cornelius, scowling. But he knew and the Bloomfield Weiss bankers knew that if they could pull off this deal Cornelius would be happy to pay. ‘Could you get a junk-bond deal that size away?’

‘Junk bond’ was market slang for ‘high-yield bond’, a bond that paid a high rate of interest to investors because there was a high risk that the issuer would go bust. Even in its most prosperous moments Zyl News had always been in the high-risk category.

‘At the moment, I think so,’ Dower said. ‘You’ve been issuing in the junk market for, what, twenty years? You’ve seen it go through good times and bad during that time. Well, we’ve been through a bad patch, but it looks like we’re coming out the other side. Since we’re funding a UK acquisition, we’d probably do a sterling deal. There’s demand out there from the European fund managers, and not much product. The forward calendar looks thin: we only know of a couple of deals of any size coming to the sterling market and neither of them is in the media space.’

‘I haven’t missed an interest payment yet,’ Cornelius said with defiant pride.

‘That’s true. But this is going to be tight.’

Cornelius glanced at Edwin. ‘We know,’ Edwin said. ‘But Laxton have been mismanaging the paper for the last five years. There’s plenty of duplication between The Times and the Herald. We think we can squeeze eleven million a year out of things like pre-press, advertising, newsprint, duplicated editorial services and getting rid of a layer of management. We plan to invest some of those savings in improving the editorial quality of the newspaper. We’re sure we can increase circulation and win readers back from the competition. We’ve got a lot of ideas.’

‘Good ideas,’ Cornelius said. ‘You know there’s nothing I like to buy better than a badly managed paper. I’ve done this before.’

‘You’ll need to convince the banks and the investors,’ Dower said. Then he smiled. ‘But I’m sure you can manage that.’

Cornelius grinned. Investors loved him. So did bankers. No matter how high the targets he set himself, often written down in black and white in bond documentation and loan agreements, he met them. Always. It was true that at the price they were planning to pay, The Times would be a challenge. But it was one of the few truly classy newspaper properties in the world: there was the New York Times, of course, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times perhaps, Le Monde, Le Figaro, not many more. At seventy-two, Cornelius was nearing his last deal. Zyl News already owned over eighty newspapers in America, Britain and Australia, the two largest being the Philadelphia Intelligencer, which he had bought in the early eighties, and the Herald, but it lacked a flagship title. If he could snatch The Times from Evelyn Gill then Zyl News would be one of the two or three leading players in the world. He glanced at the petulant face of his son and heir, who was glaring belligerently at the investment bankers, and the warm glow of anticipation cooled. Then what would happen? That was another problem he would have to deal with.