Herb

"The next morning I went to Hirata’s hotel for the magic number. If the offer was in the fifties, I feared Lew would walk. After our good mornings, Hirata made a brief, expressionless statement. I swiveled to the translator. “We will make an offer,” he said, “of sixty dollars a share.” I pushed for more: “This will close much faster if we go in at sixty-five dollars and hold our ground.” Early on, I’d warned Hirata that in dealmaking I represented both sides—which is how deals get done—and that I’d squeeze him if necessary. I was squeezing now. Hirata shook his head. “We would like to offer sixty dollars,” the translator said. I pushed no further. Every offer had some give to it, and any deal could close if the bid-ask spread was within 10 percent. Lew would be hard-pressed to reject sixty-six dollars a share, nearly double the stock’s price before the Journal leak. Throw in five dollars for WOR, and we were close to the floor Herb and I had submitted two months earlier. A sixty-dollar bid was a savvy calibration, the lowest figure that would safely keep things moving."

"Herb was accessible to everyone but the press and the social set. He rose before 5:00 a.m., had dinner at 6:00 p.m. sharp, and was in bed by 9:00. One time I was at his Wyoming ranch when a phone call made me half an hour late to the cookhouse. Three courses were lined up at my place setting. Herb looked at me and said, “When I say 6:00, I mean 6:00.” He was smiling, but I took his point. Herb was a model of integrity. After Sumner Redstone broke a promise and engaged another investment bank, he sent Allen & Company a token check for $1 million. I was in Herb’s office when it arrived. He took out his scissors, cut the check into tiny pieces, and returned them to sender. Herb was supremely loyal. He never forgot a birthday and gathered old college pals to dinners and on biking trips. After one friend got sent to Leavenworth for a white-collar crime, Herb visited him twice a year."

"Though we sat on opposite sides of the table, Herb and his associates mentored me throughout. Enrique Senior walked me through the art of valuation, Paul Gould was my deal-point tutor, and Herb himself schooled me on how to keep the process moving. He could herd the most difficult people without cracking his whip or indulging his own ego. And because I had the highest regard for Herb’s probity, I never worried that he would try to put anything over on us."

"We’ve never done the long-range planning that is customary in many businesses. When planning became big in the airline community, one of the analysts came up to me and said, “Herb, I understand you don’t have a plan.” I said that we have the most unusual plan in the industry: Doing things. That’s our plan. What we do by way of strategic planning is we define ourselves and then we redefine ourselves."