Digicel

"Cable & Wireless’s offer of US $ 3.1 billion was $ 1 billion above Digicel’s—thus easily ruling Digicel out—and $ 175 million richer than Liberty Global’s offer. Cable & Wireless’s proposal was enticing—a premium of 12.5 times forecasted EBITDA for the next year. Risley wanted to accept but Paddick felt he could milk a few more drops from Cable & Wireless’s new CEO. He called Bentley on a Saturday and though he didn’t name the second-place bidder, offered enough clues to identify it as Liberty Global. Bentley would have expected Paddick and Risley to choose Liberty Global if it came down to a close contest, given that Malone was a Columbus shareholder. So Paddick told Bentley he had to sweeten Cable & Wireless’s offer. It was a bold play: Paddick claimed he needed space between Cable & Wireless and Liberty Global even though Cable & Wireless was already the highest bidder—by nearly $ 200 million."

"“I was just trying to get more money,” Paddick told me. “I had a guy [Bentley] who was basically sitting there going, ‘Holy shit, I can spend the next ten years rebuilding my piece of crap network while Digicel and Columbus and others continue to pick away at me... or I can go acquire the biggest thorn in my side who have all brand-new fibre-based networks.’ He just had to have this deal. You could smell it a mile away. So I was just basically squeezing the blood out of the turnip at that point.”"