Legal Prejudice 2 - Weather The Storms

Chapter 56

Allie, Daniel and Max had taken over one of the meeting rooms to prepare for the meeting in New York. Dan had been progressing the US acquisition which was relatively straightforward while Allie finished off her other cases. She was also dealing with another client who had a similar situation as Phillips Anderson, with a UK business they were looking to divest, operating on a common IT and supplier platform as the US group. They were still weighing up their options for selling and the timing, but Max was keen for them to get in early so they could understand the value of Allie's experience.

The Aquatech UK target acquisition was complex group by virtue of a joint venture with a payment services company for an innovative digital payment platform, and a minority interest in a digital wealth platform, as well as the main company which had the aggregator website business. Allie was trying to think through and lay out all the legal and commercial options around the various companies ready to present to the Aquatech board in New York. They then had a follow up meeting with both Aquatech and the UK target company directors who were coming from London, to informally discuss the deal based on the outcome from the first meeting.

Allie had drawn out the complex structure on the large whiteboard and used flip chart paper to draw out the options around each piece. A lot would depend on how comfortable Aquatech would feel operating in a joint venture, since Allie could see they currently had no such construct in their US business. She said to Max and Daniel, "I think we can lay that out as a key decision point in the first meeting. If they're dead set against it, fair enough, but if they accept the commercial benefit of spreading the risk and are interested in that aspect, we can use the second meeting to draw out how the governance and management of the JV works in practice." Max hummed, "Yeah, that's a good angle Allie. They haven't played in this digital payment space before, so you're right, spreading the risk may be attractive.

He sat back and the door opened and Sara brought them a tray of coffees. Daniel grinned, "You must have read my mind Sara." She smiled and rolled her eyes at Allie and replied, "Or Allie messaged me and said she might die if she didn't get caffeine soon." Max laughed and as Sara left and they grabbed their drinks he said, "Okay, let's talk logistics. Flight is around eleven in the morning on Tuesday, so you guys will be able to get the girls off to Holly for school before we head for the airport. Margie will pick them up from her at five and drop them back the next day. Wednesday night Margie will pick them up, take them to your place and Susan and John are coming over for dinner. The three of us land too late in New York to do much Tuesday except get dinner and run through the presentation. Following day we'll do the two meetings in the morning, and do a soak up meeting with Aquatech over lunch. Then we'll head back to the airport, flight's around four, and we'll be back in time for you guys to see the kids before bed." Allie smiled at Daniel, "Works for me. I need to thank them for organising the girls. Rose has pirate day at pre-school too, so I'll have to make sure I leave her costume." Max pulled a face "Pirate day?" Dan laughed and said, "Okay, what about this other meeting tomorrow. How we gonna play it." Max got up and left his empty cup on the side leaning on Allie's shoulders, "On your side Allie I want you to knock some slides together with examples of some of the constructs they could use and the options they have, so the stuff you've used for Philips. He sat next to her and looked across the table at Daniel, "But up front of that I want you to do a couple of slides around the wider services, position it as a one stop shop, speed, efficiency, quality, depth of knowledge. You know what I'm aiming for." They both nodded and Daniel said, "Allie if you draft yours and fire them over I'll merge with mine and pass over to Max for review by the end of today."

Allie and Dan went back to their respective offices and worked on their parts of the presentation for the rest of the day. Allie E mailed it to Daniel and then walked across to his office. He was still tweaking his slides when she arrived and Allie said, "I just wanted us to go through how it flowed before we send it over to Max." Daniel nodded and she pulled a chair next to him at the desk. He saved his version, opened hers and copied them in and then ran through what he was going to cover and Allie picked up running through her stuff. Allie sat back satisfied, "I think that works well, let's get it over to Max so he's got chance to look over it before he leaves. We'll still have time to make any changes he wants in the morning before the meeting. Daniel clicked to share and E mailed the document to Max. He stretched and turned to Allie who was slouched languidly in the chair next to him. He caught her eye and said, "I like us working together again." Allie smiled back, "I know, I do too." Daniel checked the glass panel and leaned forward and kissed her lips then drew back and said, "Only problem is I want to do that all the time, and more." Allie laughed, "Me too. So let's get finished and go home."

Across the office Max got the slides and made a few tweaks before sending them back to Daniel and Allie and asking one of them to save it and drive the laptop at the meeting. Just before leaving for the night Allie saved it to her hard drive as well as the shared drive and putting her head around Dan's office asked him to save it to his laptop as well just in case something went wrong with hers.

The following day Daniel drove them all to the client and they went through their presentation, taking questions afterwards. The internal legal team and their acquisition project director arranged a follow up call in two weeks to give them a chance to mull over the potential options. Max couldn't help inwardly glowing as he watched the client staff who were clearly expecting a dry lawyer hard sell, sitting up, transfixed by Dan and Allie. He noticed they'd picked up each other's best traits. Allie had learned how to link themes together so the presentation wasn't just a list of disjointed options and ideas and Daniel had picked up Allie's ability to translate legal options to commercial impacts. The close relationship between the three of them meant the meeting ran seamlessly with no hesitation around who would take a question, and Allie drew confidence from having Max and Dan either side of her.

When they'd left John Price the head of legal at the client said to the acquisition lead Dale Pearson, "Wow, that wasn't what I was expecting. Your contact was right, they are seriously slick." Dale raised his eyebrows, "Yeah, it's my brother in law who dealt with them at Phillips. They won't use anyone else now. When the girl, Allie lost her husband, they actually delayed a deal until she came back. He reckons what they said in that programme was bullshit and she was crazy about the husband." John smirked, "Well she's definitely with that guy Daniel now, see the way they were looking at one another? Fuck me Dale, no-one I've worked with has ever looked at me like that! And that accent!" Dale laughed and clapped him on the back, "No offence John but you don't look like him. Anyway, let's book an hour in the next few days to go through how we want to play it."

Outside, walking back to Daniel's car Max was feeling very satisfied. He knew even if the divestment didn't go ahead the client wouldn't forget them in a hurry, and baring a miracle would be using their services in the near future. He opened the back door for Allie and jumped in next to Daniel saying, "You two, great job. I swear you get better every time we do one of these things." Daniel swivelled and winked at Allie before turning back to Max saying, "Does that mean you'll take us for lunch because I'm starving. We need to work on the New York meetings this afternoon, and you know I don't do my best work on an empty stomach." Max roughed up his hair as Allie laughed saying, "Yeah, come on, I reckon you've earned it."