And what would happen? It would be impossible for me to continue working at Ninetyminutes. It would make it difficult for Guy to run the company properly, especially if the French police decided to investigate further. I might screw the whole thing up. I’d certainly have to find another job, perhaps back in banking, or even worse, accountancy. And I would have lost Guy as a friend. Despite what Owen had done, that mattered.
I decided to keep my word.
Eventually I went to sleep. I was at my desk by eight thirty the next morning, ready for everything that Ninetyminutes could throw at me.
Part Four
30
March 2000, three months later, Clerkenwell, London
‘A hundred and eighty million! You think Ninetyminutes will be worth a hundred and eighty million?’
The American woman held Guy’s incredulous gaze. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Pounds or dollars?’
‘Pounds.’
‘Wow.’
I shared Guy’s sentiments. We were in the Ninetyminutes boardroom with Henry Broughton-Jones and two representatives from Bloomfield Weiss, a big US investment bank that was hot on technology in the States and was trying to transfer those skills to Europe. We had been besieged by bankers over the previous two months. They all wanted to take Ninetyminutes public through an IPO, or initial public offering. This would involve listing our shares on the London Stock Exchange and the Neuer Markt in Frankfurt and raising money from the investing public and institutions. We had decided to appoint Bloomfield Weiss to guide us through the process.
The two investment bankers were about our age. One, the banker, was a smooth Brit with oiled-back hair and a permanent frown: he acted as the front man. The other, the well-groomed American woman who also wore a permanent frown, was an analyst. She had a record of boosting new-economy shares in the US and was beginning to do the same thing on this side of the Atlantic.
‘How do you come up with that number?’ I asked. ‘Last week you were talking about a hundred and thirty million.’
‘This market’s hot,’ said the analyst. ‘The smart US investors who’ve made a killing on the Internet in the States over the last twelve months have started looking over here for opportunities. Individual investors in the UK have gotten the internet bug, volumes are going through the roof, they’re all trading stock tips on electronic bulletin boards. Lastminute.com is coming to market in a couple of weeks with a valuation of three hundred and fifty million. Everyone’s clamouring for stock. A hundred and eighty million for you is doable. Very doable. Maybe we’ll get more.’
‘And how much new money can we raise?’
‘I think we can go for forty million. We want to leave some investor demand untapped so the stock goes up on the first day. It’s important to get upward momentum. These days investors are buying stocks that are going up simply because they’re going up. It becomes a virtuous circle. And one that we want to get started.’
‘But none of my forecasts show we’ll ever be able to make enough profits to justify those kind of numbers,’ I said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the banker. ‘We’re not allowed to show the investors your forecasts anyway. Don’t worry. These guys are smart. They know what they’re doing.’
‘Are they? It doesn’t sound smart to me.’
The banker’s frown deepened. ‘You’ve got a great story to tell, David. And you’re going to have to tell it many times. You’ll have to believe it. You’ve got to get with the programme or get off the bus.’
‘Come on, Davo, get with the programme!’ said Guy, poking just a little fun at the mixed American metaphors dropping so pompously from the mouth of the British banker.
‘David, we’re the sellers here,’ Henry said. ‘The higher the price we sell at, the more money we make. It’s as simple as that.’
‘He has a good point,’ said the analyst, matching her colleague’s frown. ‘We need management’s commitment to make this thing work. We’re going to be taking you to see investors right across Europe in three weeks’ time. Investors can smell uncommitted management.’
‘Oh, I’m committed to make Ninetyminutes work, all right,’ I said, offended. ‘I’m just not committed to a valuation of a hundred and eighty million quid.’
‘That’s fine, Davo,’ Guy said. ‘Let Bloomfield Weiss worry about the valuation. You and I will worry about the company.’
‘All right,’ said the banker. ‘Our current thinking is that we start off in Amsterdam on the twentieth of March, then Paris on the twenty-first and Frankfurt on the twenty-second. We’ll go on to Edinburgh the following day, and then down to London...’
Ninetyminutes had recovered from its pre-Christmas wobble. Sanjay had taken Owen’s place and, together with Dcomsult, he had retailing up and running again in a matter of days. We shipped a respectable quantity of clothing before Christmas. The millennium came and went without blowing up our computer systems and we hit the New Year running. The German site was on-line by the beginning of March with the French site due to join them by the end of April. We bought a small company based in Helsinki that specialized in Wireless Application Protocol or WAP technology. Eventually this would allow people to check our website from their mobile phones for the latest football scores and news. And the visitor numbers kept on going up and up. Advertisers loved this, and we had no trouble signing them up.
This wasn’t enough for Guy: the more we achieved, the more he wanted. He had plans for even more rapid expansion. More advertising, more marketing, opening up several more European offices, a big ramp-up of the retailing operations. All this would need money. But now that didn’t seem to be a problem.
The IPO got everyone excited. Orchestra Ventures was enthusiastic about the idea: although they wouldn’t be able to sell any of their own shares immediately, they would be able to mark them up to show a huge profit on their books. Bloomfield Weiss liked it because of the fees they could charge everyone. Guy liked it because it would give him as much cash as he could spend.
And I liked it because it would make me a multimillionaire.
It was a very strange feeling. Of course, I had gone into all this with the vague idea of making a lot of money. And, in theory, when Orchestra Ventures had committed their initial investment the value of my stake had increased considerably. But at that stage survival was all I was worried about. In a few weeks my shares would be worth silly money. Of course, it would all be paper profits, but at some time in the future I should get my hands on real cash. What would I do with it? Buy my own Cessna 182? Buy a house on the Corniche? Send my children to Broadhill? It would change my life. I would be a wealthy man, just like Tony Jourdan. Somehow, despite my ambition, I couldn’t imagine that.
I realized that the money had little meaning for me in what it could buy. But it would mean a lot to me to know that I had made it.
Not just me. There was a smile on everyone’s face. Everyone had some kind of stake in the firm, everyone was going to make money. There was a huge amount of work to be done and no time to celebrate, but the place hummed with suppressed excitement. People put in sixteen-hour days and never seemed to get tired.
To my relief, there was no sign of Owen.
The IPO required a massive amount of preparation, especially on the accounting systems and the legal documentation. There was a prospectus to be written and checked and rechecked. Much of this work fell on me. Mel was a great help, and we spent long evenings together going over obscure points.