Rouse

"Stokes sensed Rouse was a man he could talk to, so he telephoned him. He knew that few are as susceptible to the promise of the easy dollar as the sharp operator. Stokes used a high-finance version of the old car-buying routine of flashing a wad of cash to whet a seller’s appetite: he offered Rouse’s company an eye-catching figure — he thinks it was $100,000 — to give him an option to buy its shares in Canberra TV at whatever price the final recommended offer was. It wasn’t hard to persuade Rouse that Rouse was the smartest man in the room and that it was natural that people would give him money for nothing."

"To make sure there were no last-minute hitches or double-crosses, Stokes had quietly sewn up options on other shares as well as Rouse’s. Newspaper reports the next day — 11 April 1980 — indicated that he had stitched together a majority shareholding of 51.6 per cent. It was enough for total control, once all the documents were signed and sorted."