Page 248 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

what had been omitted was a premium that accounted for the
value of the combined company. With Humana under its umbrella,
MRI would become the biggest executive search firm in the world,
and according to the banker that made the acquisition more
valuable.
‘Leave it with me,’ he said.
We agreed a deal that gave him a percentage of anything he got
me above the original offer. I was happy with the deal I already
had, but if he could get me more then I was happy for him to share
any upside of what I wasn’t expecting to get.
MRI were a little thrown when we went back to the negotiating
table, and the chief exec called me up wanting to finalise the deal
directly. I had to refer him to Robinson Humphrey, and when they
restarted the negotiations it soon became clear just how much MRI
wanted Humana. By the end of the negotiations, their offer had
increased by 50 per cent. Some of that was to be in shares, but I
told them that my religion was very strict on what kinds of
transactions were permissible and that the offer had to be in cash.
I played dumb and told them to make me an offer I could
understand. It wasn’t true, of course, but their knowledge of Islam
was next to non-existent and they came back and matched their
offer in cash. Doug decided to take the shares and joined the MRI
board. The banker took his fee and we were all happy. I should
rephrase that: we were ecstatic.
Although I had been wealthy for a long time, my wealth had
been in assets not cash. For the first time in my life my bank
balance reflected my status as a millionaire and I found that quite
exciting, even though I had received some very good advice from
my fellow forum members at YPO that I shouldn’t touch the cash
for a year. I had been talking to them for a while about the
possibility of floating Alexander Mann and what that would mean
for my personal wealth. Between them they had a lot of experience
of selling businesses and becoming cash rich: with the Humana

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