The Fourth Estate

* * *

“He’s left us with virtually no alternative,” E.B. replied. “I’m going to have to find a third party who’s willing to buy your shares in the Star, and preferably before Armstrong’s forced to dump his.”

“Why go down that route?” asked Townsend.

“Because I have a feeling that Mr. Armstrong is in even worse trouble than you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“My eyes never left him, and once the speeches were over the first thing he did was to head straight for this table.”

“What does that prove?”

“That he had only one purpose in mind,” replied E.B. “To sell you his shares in the Star.”

A thin smile appeared on Townsend’s face. “So why don’t we buy them?” he said. “If I could get my hands on his holding, I might…”

“Mr. Townsend, don’t even think about it.”

39.

Financial Times

1 November 1991

NEWSPAPER GROUPS’ SHARES IN FREE FALL

By the time Townsend boarded the plane for Honolulu, Elizabeth Beresford was already halfway across the Atlantic. During the past three weeks he had been put through the toughest examination of his life—and, like all examinations, it would be some time before the results were known.

E.B. had questioned, probed and investigated every aspect of every deal he had ever been involved in. She now knew more about him than his mother, wife, children and the IRS put together. In fact Townsend wondered if there was anything she didn’t know—other than what he had been up to in the school pavilion with the headmaster’s daughter. And if he’d paid for that, she would doubtless have insisted on being told the precise details of the transaction.

When he arrived back at the apartment each night, exhausted, he would go over the latest position with Kate. “I’m certain of only one thing,” he often repeated. “My chances of survival now rest entirely in the hands of that woman.”

They had completed stage one: E.B. accepted that the company was technically solvent. She then turned her attention to stage two: the disposal of assets. When she told Townsend that Mrs. Summers wanted to buy back her shares in the New York Star, he reluctantly agreed. But at least E.B. allowed him to retain his controlling interest in the Melbourne Courier and the Adelaide Gazette. He was however made to sell off the Perth Sunday Monitor and the Continent in exchange for keeping the Sydney Chronicle. He also had to sacrifice his minority interest in his Australian television channel and all the non-contributing subsidiary companies in Multi Media, so that he could go on publishing TV News.

By the end of the third week she had completed the striptease, and left him all but naked. And all because of one phone call. He began to wonder how long those words would haunt him:

“Would it be too much to ask the figure you have in mind, Mr. Townsend?”

“Yes, Ambassador. Three billion dollars.”

E.B. didn’t have to remind him that there was still the contingency plan to be considered before she could move on to stage three.

However many times they wrote and rewrote the press release, its conclusion was always the same: Global Corp was filing for Chapter Eleven, and would be going into voluntary liquidation. Townsend had rarely spent a more distasteful couple of hours in his life. He could already see the stark headline in the Citizen: “Townsend Bankrupt.”

Once they had agreed on the wording of the press release, E.B. was ready to move on to the next stage. She asked Townsend which banks he felt would be most sympathetic to his cause. He immediately identified six, and then added a further five whose long-term relationship with the company had always been amicable. But as for the rest, he warned her, he had never dealt with any of them before he set about raising the three billion for the Multi Media deal. And one of them had already demanded their money back, “come what may.”

“Then we’ll have to leave that one till last,” said E.B.

She began by approaching the senior loan officer of the bank with the largest credit line, and told him in detail of the rigors she had put Townsend through. He was impressed and agreed to support her plan—but only if every other bank involved also accepted the rescue package. The next five took a little longer to fall into line, but once she had secured their co-operation, E.B. began to pick off the others one by one, always able to point out that to date every institution she had talked to had agreed to go along with her proposals. In London she had appointments with Barclays, Midland Montagu and Rothschilds. She intended to continue her journey to Paris, where she would see Crédit Lyonnais, and then flights were booked for Frankfurt, Bonn and Zurich, as she tried to weld each link in the chain.

She had promised Townsend that if she was successful in London she would phone and let him know immediately. But if she failed at any stage, her next flight would be to Honolulu, where she would brief the assembled Global delegates not on the company’s long-term future, but on why, when they returned to their own countries, they would be looking for new jobs.

E.B. left for London that evening, armed with a case full of files, a book of plane tickets and a list of telephone numbers that would allow her access to Townsend at any time of the day or night. Over the next four days she planned to visit all the banks and financial institutions which would, between them, decide Global’s fate. Townsend knew that if she failed to convince just one of them, she wouldn’t hesitate to return to New York and send his files down to the thirteenth floor. The only concession she agreed was to give him an hour’s notice before she issued the press release.

“At least if you’re in Honolulu you won’t be doorstepped by the world’s press,” she had said just before she left for Europe.

Townsend had given her a wry smile. “If you issue that press release it won’t matter where I am,” he said. “They’ll find me.”