Ted Ashley

"When he was done, Ted Ashley and I made the presentation of the Kinney offer. At first, our discussion was a litany of numbers, the dollars and cents we would pay for the stock, and the promising financial potential we saw in the studio’s future. This was a typical investment banker’s strategy: stick with us; we’ll make you rich, and then even richer. But, rather untypically, after I had waved the golden carrot, I proceeded to brandish a very sharp stick. I announced that we had taken it upon ourselves to alert the SEC to Commonwealth’s financial shenanigans. And, in another uncommonly aggressive tactic, we had also shared our analysis of the Commonwealth balance sheet with its large institutional shareholders. This was not the way we generally conducted business at Lazard, but the deal was not our usual sort of deal, nor were we up against the usual sort of principals. On behalf of our clients, we could, when it grew necessary, become fiercely pragmatic. Rozet was furious. As he stormed out of the meeting, he paused to shove his face directly up against mine and shout that he would sue me. But it was too late. I knew that Charles Allen and Bernie Cornfeld were too sophisticated and too practical to tie their futures—and capital!—up in a teetering corporation. They would have no choice but to negotiate the best deal they could with Kinney. Which, in short order, they did."

"In the three years since my aborted collaboration with Steve on the Avis deal, I had worked with his corporation, Kinney, as it began cautiously to dabble in the entertainment business. First, I had advised Kinney in its prescient acquisition of the National Periodical Publications, the owner of the comic strip “Superman.” At the time, buying a comic book franchise seemed more a whimsy than a business strategy, but Steve astutely appreciated the true strength of a superhero’s commercial potential. Next, I helped Kinney, in a corollary strategic move, acquire a talent agency, Ted Ashley’s Ashley Famous."