Advance

"I went off to a Christmas cruise in the Caribbean with about ten pounds of Paramount internal data to study. The bidding process had given each side the ability to top the other with a three-week pause between bids, and I was prepared for Viacom to raise the stakes. Which they did. Over the next months the bids went from $62 a share to $95, and the transaction now approached $9 billion. We both had to raise more equity. Redstone got Blockbuster to inject $500 million into Viacom, and we got Advance, the parent company of Condé Nast, as well as BellSouth, to come in with us. It was a grueling process, and the media followed each bid as if it were the longest horse race in history. At one stage, when Viacom had the leading bid, *New York* magazine put me on the cover with the headline MOGUL IN A MESS."

"Our investor group began falling apart. Donald Newhouse, the head of Advance, called and said his family was uncomfortable the price was getting this high and wanted out. I argued with him, saying that if he did so, we’d be finished. I assured him that if he stayed in and we won, we’d take him out and pay him off after it closed. He finally agreed, but said he wouldn’t do “one penny more.” We were still the high bid when Tom Sherak, my old head of distribution at Fox, called—as a “friend”—to say, “I just talked to Sumner, and I think he’s really finished. You’ve won. You’ve driven him crazy.” Of course, Sumner had put him up to it; he just wanted to fake weakness."