Nick

"Upon arriving, the lawyers’ office felt like a morgue. I met Nick, Mike, their key lieutenant Ted Gazulis, their lawyers, Hovey Kemp and Jim Piccone, and several other executives of the company. They were dejected, watching this deal they had worked so hard on wither on the vine. There was a lot of frustration that a terrific opportunity for the company and its financial partners would fall apart because of an eleventh-hour surprise from Goldman Sachs. I went on to offer my thought that HS was at a disadvantage by committing to a deal with Amoco before having all the money in hand. This allowed Goldman Sachs to push the company up against one deadline after another, resulting in a real negotiating handicap. Having talked with Richard and sensing that the likes of John Snyder wanted in, I felt this transaction had so much value that we couldn’t allow it to fall apart because of Goldman Sachs. I felt that our downside would be covered, so moving forward would be a judicious risk to take. I have to say, though, that Ted Gazulis remembers it differently. He recalled, “I saw black smoke coming out of your ears. You were hopping mad that Goldman was going to either steal or torpedo the deal!” Maybe his recollection has some merit to it. Anyway, I told the team that NGP was prepared to cover the purchase price of the deal and then work out a refinancing without the deadline time pressure on all of us. I put on my best face and said, “Instead of putting up $ 15 million, how about NGP speaks for the full $ 30 million, so we can close it, and then we can work out a refinancing plan without the deadline pressure?”"

"In 2001, many years after I had left the board, HS was about to announce a sale of the entire company to Kerr McGee for about $ 2 billion. The night before the announcement, Nick called me at home to let me know and to thank me once again for playing a large part in the original formation of the company. In fact, the first well that the company drilled on the Amoco acreage was named the HSR-Hersh. When they told me that they were naming the well after me, I was petrified. I never was a fan of naming wells after people. Thankfully, the well was a decent producer."

"There was a sort of Pax Romana after the franchise wars. Franchises were largely claimed, so a period of relative peace and stability followed, with nearly 60 percent of the country subscribing to cable-TV service. When Nick and I agreed on a deal, the rest of the players understood that they were lucky to get in on it. Certainly we had to be fair—not unlike a family sitting at a meal—and everyone bought in."

"Stunned, he put the phone down. He did not believe what he had just heard, nor did he want to believe it. Surely it was not true. But what if it was? He did not feel as though there were any problems in his marriage. He and Katherine by then had three children—Ben, eight, Sophie, seven, and Nick, five. Outwardly, with their Takapuna home, a beach house north of Auckland, another house in Hawaii, any domestic help they wanted, a helicopter and, most importantly, all the family healthy and well, theirs was the very definition of a family that had it all. By any standards they led an enviable lifestyle. Now Heatley wondered if he knew anything at all. He had often been absent from his children’s lives—at work before they got up and sometimes still at work or at a dinner when they went to bed. Perhaps he did not know about his wife’s life, either."