Hirata

"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."

"In the afternoon we met with finance, sales, marketing, and research. At 5:30, closing time, Hirata took me aside and said, “I want to show you something.” Leaving his translator behind, he led me up to the executive floor. We passed down a long corridor to a locked door, which opened into a room the size of a walk-in closet. Hirata pointed to the stacked, plastic-bound volumes on the floor. I picked up one from Morgan Stanley, a signed letter from the head of its investment-banking division clipped to its cover. There were dozens more like it, multiple copies of proposal books from the top investment banks in New York, London, Paris, and Frankfurt. The letters asked for the privilege of guiding Matsushita through the wilds of the movie business. They listed their services, each one with a fee. They charged for everything but continental breakfast. Hirata’s smile grew wider as I leafed through them, and I understood: CAA was the only one to forgo a fee letter. In all our dealings in Japan we never had a written contract. Our attitude was, We know you will do the honorable thing. For an old-fashioned businessman like Hirata, that gesture was definitive. Despite his limited English and my nonexistent Japanese, we were going to trust each other."

"Then Hirata turned to me and said, “You know, we are interested in learning what it would take to acquire a motion picture studio. We would like to know what you would charge to help us.” I had had my answer planned for weeks. “We’ll charge you nothing,” I said, “unless the job we do makes you happy. If you’re not happy, we’d like only our expenses—no fees.” Hirata said, “And if we’re happy?” “If you’re happy?” I looked him in the eye. “We’d like you to hire a Brink’s truck loaded with gold and send it to our office.”"