‘Let’s go around the table and see what people think,’ said Silverman in his chairman’s role. ‘Who’s in favour of talking to Champion Starsat? Guy, I take it, is a no.’
‘Definitely not.’
‘And David?’
‘Yes.’
‘Henry?’
Henry Broughton-Jones paused. He was smiling. You could almost see the greed around his lips. He wanted more, I could tell he wanted more, and Guy was offering it.
‘I think we should tell them we mean no,’ he said. ‘I have a very good feeling about Ninetyminutes. I think we would be selling it just before it takes off.’
‘Ingrid?’
I looked at Ingrid hopefully. I knew she had common sense. I could see I was going to lose this one, but it would be nice to have her on my side.
‘I agree with Guy,’ she said. ‘If we stay independent, we could well end up with a higher valuation. Besides, I like this company as it is. I don’t want to work for Champion Starsat.’
I was disappointed. Why was Ingrid supporting Guy and not me? Was it because... No, I’d drive myself crazy thinking like that. But if Ingrid was sleeping with Guy, then should I expect future disagreements to go this way?
‘Well,’ said Silverman. ‘For myself, I think there’s a right price for everything, even Ninetyminutes. But if the Chief Executive and the lead financial backer don’t want to sell, then that’s pretty conclusive to me. I’ll tell Jay.’
‘If they start up a site, we’ll cream them,’ said Guy, rubbing his hands.
I left the room in a foul mood.
31
The bubble was bursting.
We didn’t realize it immediately. To start with it looked like a temporary correction, a pause for breath while the market regained its strength to climb even higher. Within a few days of launch lastminute’s shares slipped under three pounds, well below the issue price. Thousands of individual investors were sitting on a loss. And NASDAQ, the American high-technology stock exchange, fell steadily as the month progressed.
Guy and I didn’t notice, and although the people at Bloomfield Weiss must have done, they didn’t tell us. At least, not at first. We embarked on our roadshow. Amsterdam went well, as did Paris, and the fund managers almost bit our hands off in Frankfurt. We had practised our presentations to death in front of our PR firm. Guy did an excellent job of extolling Ninetyminutes’ prospects, and I swallowed my pride and did my best to come across as a safe pair of hands. Sanjay was there to answer any technical queries. It was clear from the questions that not all the potential investors understood the intricacies of the Internet, but most of them knew something about football. And they understood, or thought they understood, that if you bought shares in markets that just kept on going up and up, you were bound to make money.
We arrived in cold, grey Edinburgh tired but euphoric. We were beginning to believe not only our own story, but Bloomfield Weiss’s as well.
Things started to go wrong in Scotland. We had breakfast at the Caledonian Hotel with some big investors who asked difficult and rather cynical questions about when we would ever make a profit. As the day progressed, the questions became harder. I found them particularly tricky, because I usually agreed with the questioner. How could a company that had been going for less than twelve months and was making no money be worth two hundred million pounds? How indeed.
Our smooth Bloomfield Weiss banker was looking worried. This involved not just a frown, but a stoop of the shoulders and a tendency to scurry off to make a call on his mobile at every pause. I was amazed how he was able to shed this demeanour for the few minutes he was introducing us, when he became transported by excitement over Ninetyminutes and its future.
Even Guy noticed things were going badly after the last afternoon session. He pulled the banker to one side. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Edinburgh fund managers are always awkward. They’re notorious for it. They’re just trying to live up to their reputation as canny Scots.’
‘Oh, come on. There’s more to it than that. There must be.’
The banker sighed. ‘Possibly. The market’s a bit shaky. Lastminute was off another twenty p yesterday and the NASDAQ was down again. Have you seen today’s Financial Times?’
‘No.’
The banker handed it over. Articles about investors being let down by lastminute’s share price collapse. About fund managers angry with the greed of their investment-banking sponsors. About how companies due to come to market in April were considering waiting to see what happened. And worst of all, an article about us. According to Lex, the Financial Times’s, back-page comment piece, we were a promising company but at two hundred million pounds we were wildly overvalued.
The Scots had read the papers. They didn’t like us any more.
‘Why didn’t you show us this earlier?’ I demanded, angry that I hadn’t picked up the FT myself that morning.
‘I wanted to wait until you’d done your presentations,’ the banker said. ‘Didn’t want to dent your confidence. These roadshows are all about confidence.’
‘So what do we do now?’
The banker frowned more deeply. ‘We carry on. We’ll win them round, you’ll see.’
When we got back to the hotel Guy and I stopped off at the bar for a quick drink. The banker ran off to make calls. The euphoria of the previous few days had worn off: we were tired and we were worried.
The banker returned. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid.’
‘What?’ said Guy, scowling.
‘I was just talking to the syndicate desk in London. They don’t think they can place the deal.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means we’ll have to pull it.’
‘You’re not serious? We can’t do that!’
‘If we can’t sell the shares, we can’t do the deal.’
‘But we need the cash! You promised us the cash. You said we could definitely raise forty million pounds.’
‘And that was a perfectly fair assessment at the time that we said it. But market conditions have changed. If we go ahead with this deal it’ll be a very public flop. That will be bad for all of us.’
‘But the Germans loved us!’
‘I spoke to Frankfurt. They’re getting second thoughts. And the problem with the Germans is they all get second thoughts together.’
‘So what do we do?’ I asked.
‘We wait. This is just a temporary thing. All bull markets pause for breath. In retrospect this will be seen as a great buying opportunity. Things will turn around in April, you’ll see.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Guy said. ‘I don’t like this at all.’
‘Believe me, neither do I,’ said the banker.
‘Do we have any choice?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid not.’
Guy looked at me. Then he turned to the barman. ‘Two beers,’ he said.
The banker left us to it.
We had to put everything on hold until we knew we could get the IPO away. The uncertainty was immensely disruptive for the business, and for Guy’s frame of mind. We all watched the stock market closely. Things didn’t turn round in April. NASDAQ’s slide became a tumble. On the fourteenth of April it fell ten per cent on the day, reaching a level thirty-four per cent below what was now being seen as the all-time high of March. Lastminute’s shares were now down below two pounds. More significantly, the founders had been transformed from heroes to hate figures in less than a month. All those speculators who had fallen over themselves to fill their boots with lastminute shares could not be relied upon to do the same with ours.