'Nat's totally committed to her company now' Actually, I'd known this, for Natalie Morgan had succeeded Susie as Scottish Businesswoman of the Year, after succeeding James Torrent, her late uncle, as head of the office supplies giant that bore his name. 'You should keep your eye on her, Oz,' he added, quietly.
I looked at him, surprised. 'Why? She doesn't fancy me, does she?'
Ewan gave a deep theatrical chuckle. 'Far from it. She hates you, actually.'
Surprise turned to astonishment. 'Me? What have I done to deserve that? Come to think of it, I seem to recall saving her life once.'
'That counts for nothing. She blames you for getting involved in that business in the first place. Don't ask me why, but she does.'
I shrugged. 'I can live without her love.'
'I'm sure you can, but that's not why I say you should keep an eye on her. She's a very ambitious lady, and she is not content simply to run her company in its present form. She wants to use it as a base for expansion by acquisition, and one of her main targets is the Gantry Group.'
I whistled. 'Is it now? She's wasting her time then. Susie has a controlling interest in the business, and I can tell you now, selling out ain't in her plans, or in mine.'
'There are minority shareholders, though, aren't there?'
'Yes, but very much a minority.'
'Nonetheless. I don't know a lot about company law, but if a significant offer came in, your wife might be told that she had an obligation to all the shareholders to accept.'
'Who'd tell her?'
'The courts, possibly.'
'Do you know this is going to happen?' I asked him.
'Not at all,' he insisted. 'I know that the thought has crossed Nat's mind, that's all, because she told me. Talk to Susie, Oz. If I were you I might be thinking about buying out the minority interests and taking the company private again.'
I could see the logic in that, and the sense; I even knew how it could be financed. But then I thought of Jack Gantry, and his newly recovered interest in the Group, and realised that it wouldn't be as easy as it sounded.
Twenty.
To say that Susie did her nut when I told her about Natalie Morgan's ambitions would be akin to describing the Eiffel Tower as a big television aerial. I've seen her angry before, but her reaction was one of sheer unbridled fury.
'The bitch,' she yelled. 'That arrogant, conceited, jumped-up twat!' I was glad that I'd delayed telling her until Ethel had taken Janet off to bed. 'She thinks she's going to take over my company? In her fucking dreams she is! She's a bloody glorified photocopier sales girl and she thinks she can turn me over? Let her try, that's all. Let her bloody try.'
'What are you going to do about it then?'
That silenced her for a while. 'Nothing,' she said finally. 'Nothing that I'm not doing already. I'm going to build up the Gantry Group until it's absolutely invulnerable, and until no conceivable offer could ever match the company's potential.'
'How about buying out the minorities?'
'And hamstring myself financially? If I did that I'd wind up working for venture capitalists, and that is something I'll never do. It's an option I rejected when we went public. No, my love,' she said, tight-lipped. 'I'd go in the other direction first. I'd make a hostile bid for her.'
'Torrent's big, Susie. You'd have to do the deal with shares; you'd lose personal control of an expanded business.'
'I know,' she conceded. 'And there's another consideration. I don't want to be a photocopier sales girl.' I was pleased to see that her brain was starting to work again. 'Just because Natalie Morgan thinks that diversification is the way to go, doesn't mean that it is. So let the bitch come, and let her try to swallow me. She'll choke.'
It was a while before the subject was raised again over our dinner table. Her anger abated, and her judgement restored, Susie did a couple of typically well thought out things. She hired a firm of investor relations consultants to raise the profile of the business in the City, and she filled the vacancy on the board created by Joe's death by appointing Sir Graeme Fisher as non-executive chairman of the company.
Fisher is said to be Scotland's only genuine billionaire, having built his fortune, along with a formidable reputation for plain speaking, in the direct insurance business. He once said, famously, that he did not know a single Scottish company, other than his own, of which he would consider becoming a director, and so, when Susie sweet- talked him into joining the board of the Gantry Group, the announcement made the front page of the Financial Times, and was reported in every other business newspaper in the UK.
Graeme Fisher's appointment was as big a surprise to me as it was to the rest of the country. Susie didn't discuss it with me at all. I could tell that she was up to something, and for a while I worried that she had changed her mind about having a go at taking over Torrent. She told me eventually, though, five minutes before she told Gillian Harvey and Gerry Meek at a board meeting, held on a Saturday morning to fit in with my filming schedule.
Mathew s Tale was in its early weeks of shooting and was going well; I loved my part, finding that I could associate with him better than with any character I'd ever played, better even than Andy Martin in the Skinner movies. Make-up was a bit of a bugger, since 'Mathew' had a war wound, a sword-cut across his face sustained when fighting against Napoleon, and that had to be put on every morning. It was worth putting up with that, though, for the sheer pleasure of working on the project, and the great luxury for a film actor on location of being able to commute from home.
When Susie broke the news of her coup, my first reaction was to take a small huff that I hadn't been consulted. That cut no ice; my wife told me firmly that this was a decision for her alone, without being coloured by anyone's personal prejudices. Gerry Meek's first reaction was nervousness; our new chairman had been backed in his own business by a very high-powered finance director and he was worried that he might try to introduce him. Gillian Harvey wasn't worried at all; on the contrary, she was both astonished that Susie had pulled it off, and dead chuffed by the personal cachet that serving on a board chaired by Fisher would bring her within the bank.
The appointment was formalised there and then. On the following Saturday morning, at another board meeting, I had my first experience of Sir Graeme Fisher's famous plain speaking.
Our new chairman was a slightly built man in his late sixties, totally bald and with piercing blue eyes. At first sight, it occurred to me that he would have made a perfect James Bond villain. This was confirmed when he spoke. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, in an unreconstructed Lanarkshire accent, 'I want to make one thing clear from the outset. I'm not here as a figurehead. I've agreed to chair this business because I believe that it has potential and can go on to achieve a mass not far short of the company with which I've been associated until now. I hope I don't need to tell you that it's my job as chairman to represent the interests of all the shareholders and to ensure that they achieve maximum value for their investment in this business.' He looked at Susie through those unblinking blue eyes.
'That means, Miss Gantry, that I don't give a damn about the size of your shareholding, and that I will not allow you to pursue policies which I believe may be holding the company back. This is a publicly quoted company, and I will not let it play by private company rules.'
This was too much for me. 'Excuse me, Sir Graeme,' I interrupted, 'but I was under the impression that last week we appointed you as chairman, not managing director.'
He didn't even look in my direction. 'I'll come to you in a minute, Mr. Blackstone.' I wanted very much to reach across and twist his head round to face me… and then maybe twist it a bit further than that… but for Susie's sake I sat there like a scolded schoolboy.
'You may not like what I'm saying to you, Miss Gantry. You may even think you've made a terrible mistake and be tempted to correct it at once. If that is the case, of course I'll go at once. However, I don't need to tell you
