How Not To Negotiate A $6.1 Billion Deal

摘要

On May 15 of last year, the investor Carl Icahn hosted a dinner at his Midtown Manhattan penthouse. The invitees, along with Icahn's son, Brett, were Jeff Jacobson, chief executive officer of the copying giant Xerox Corp., two of Jacobson's top lieutenants, and Jonathan Christodoro, a former managing director from Icahn Capital who served on Xerox's board. Icahn's company is Xerox's largest investor, owning almost 10 percent of its stock. Jacobson, a 30-year veteran of the printing and copying industry, was only five months into his tenure as CEO. Like his predecessor, Ursula Burns, and her predecessor, too, he was charged with reversing the company's long slide from global dominance. He'd spent a decade at Eastman Kodak Co., which had failed spectacularly to do just that.According to a memo Jacobson wrote the following day and testimony he would later give, Icahn was 30 minutes late to the gathering, which lasted more than three and a half hours. "The discussion centered around Icahn and Christodoro's view that the industry 'was a piece of shit' and the Xerox business was not driving value," Jacobson wrote. Icahn, unimpressed by Jacobson's long-range financial projections, said that he was sorry he'd ever invested in the company and that he wanted out. Xerox needed to find a buyer, or Jacobson had to go. "If I could not have it sold, then he would push to have me removed and he would replace me with 'one of the two guys' sitting with me," Jacobson wrote.