Andrew
I’d not made it to a night out with my close circle of friends for weeks. When I was in the midst of a turnaround, things were often far too busy and demanded enough focus and dedication that I couldn’t do anything but work and sleep. So I’d been looking forward to tonight.
“Tristan,” I said, taking a seat at the Mayfair pub we always ended up in when it was Beck’s turn to choose our venue. “Gabriel.”
“Do you want me to get you a drink?” Gabriel asked.
I shook my head. The barmaid here knew my order. She’d bring my drink.
“So you’re here but not drinking?” Tristan asked. “What use is that?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t drinking.”
On cue, the barmaid approached and put down a pint in front of me. “The Benediktiner Helles,” she said.
She’d remembered.
“Thanks,” I said, picking it up and taking a sip.
“How do you do that?” Tristan asked. “How do you get people to do what you want them to do without even asking? Are you a wizard in your spare time?”
“I don’t have spare time,” I replied.
“That doesn’t answer my question—”
“What’s happening?” Dexter said as he took a seat. “What’s Tristan moaning about? Beck, can you get me a Guinness please, mate?”
And like so often with Tristan, he never got an answer to my question because he was too impatient and way too easy to distract.
As everyone gathered around our table, I cleared my throat. “So, I need your help.”
Silence skirted around the group. It was rare that I came to our nights out with a problem to solve or an issue to mull over. I liked to be the one solving problems. Generally, I didn’t like a committee to weigh in on my dilemmas. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. The ball of lust that had gathered in my gut when Sofia came into my office with her blouse undone was proof of that. I’d had iron-clad walls between my life in the office and my life outside the office since I’d been fired at twenty-five from my first job. Back then, I’d let my personal life and my professional life collide. I’d made sure it hadn’t even come close to happening since. The fact that I’d even noticed Sofia as anything more than bread was a sure sign I wasn’t my usual, focused self. Listening to her on Friday sounding off about me in Noble Rot had made me realize I had a real problem. Far from smothering the desire I’d felt earlier that day, her smart mouth had reignited it. My iron walls were rusty. I needed a reset from my best friends. They would help me regain my laser focus on Verity.
“As you all know, my grandmother died just before Christmas and it’s brought things to a head for me.”
“With Verity?” Gabriel asked.
I nodded. “It’s never been easy for me to watch it morph into such a worthless publication but now, with my grandmother gone, all that’s left of her is her legacy. And her legacy is Verity. I can’t stand by and watch it warp and corrupt.”
“It’s like they’ve slapped some emulsion on the Mona Lisa and started drawing stick men on it,” Tristan said. He was nothing if not passionate on my behalf, which I appreciated.
“So, I need to do something about it.”
“Great idea,” said Tristan. “You’re going to buy it?”
Why did he leap to the wrong conclusions so often? Precisely because he leapt. The man needed to learn patience. “No, of course I’m not going to buy it. It’s not my skill set. I don’t run companies. I restructure them. I want to find someone else to buy it. Someone with the same kind of skill and passion and determination that she had. I need someone with an investigative journalist’s background to build Verity back into what it was.
“I’ve approached Bob Goode a thousand times and offered to turn it around, but he just won’t have it. It needs a new owner. And I’d still be completely happy to go in with my team and do the restructuring and transformation piece.”
“With someone else’s money,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, I always do turnarounds with someone else’s money.”
“Right, but this isn’t just any turnaround,” Beck said. “And you’re looking at restoring a legacy, not putting a business back in the black.”
“Verity can operate at a profit. There’s no doubt about that.”
“It will be a challenge,” Tristan said. “Magazine publishing isn’t a cash-rich business anymore.”
“It never was.” What the hell did Tristan know about magazine publishing?
“Have you not thought about buying Verity yourself?” Beck said. “There’s no one more passionate about the publication, and that’s what you need when you have such an uphill struggle ahead.”
“As I said, that’s not what I do. I restructure and turn around. I don’t run businesses for the medium and long term,” I said.
“I struggle to see how you’re going to convince someone to buy it,” Beck continued. “Private equity investors might see an opportunity in it, but not if the goal is to turn it back into a highbrow magazine with super-expensive running costs.”
That was true. A traditional private equity investor would drive it deeper into the gutter. “So we need a trade buyer,” I said. “Someone who already knows the business.”
“Like Goode,” Tristan said, ever the irritant.
“Look,” Gabriel said, resting his hand on my shoulder. “If you were sitting in my seat now, you would look me right in the eye and tell me to get a grip. No trade buyer has pockets deep enough to do the transformation you want to do. No private equity house has the willingness. If you’re serious and you want to act quickly, you need to buy Verity yourself, turn it around in the way only you can, then stick a manager in. After that, maybe you’ll be able to find a trade buyer.”
He was right: if I was sitting in his shoes now, that’d be exactly what I’d say.
Irritation prickled at my hairline. I should have been able to see it before bloody Tristan. Before Gabriel. But that’s why I’d come tonight. I needed people who knew me to tell me what I already knew.
“Right,” I said. I pushed back my stool and stood.
“You’re leaving?” Gabriel asked.
“You’re just using us for our minds and then dumping us like cheap wine?” Dexter asked.
I didn’t respond. I had my answer and my focus back. There was no time to waste. I needed to come up with a plan and act on it. I went over to the bar, dropped a hundred quid to cover my drink and ensure that next time, I wouldn’t need to ask for what I wanted either. And I made my way out.
They knew I loved them. I didn’t need to kiss them all goodbye.