Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin [281]
Lloyd Blankfein, at a client dinner Sunday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington for the International Monetary Fund weekend, made eye contact with Gary Cohn, and they both walked to the corner of the room.
“Hank just called,” Blankfein said in a hushed tone, “and told me I have to be at Treasury tomorrow at three p.m.”
“For what?” Cohn asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What did he tell you?” Cohn said, confused.
“I pushed him, trust me, I pushed him,” Blankfein replied. “The only thing he told me is I’d be ‘happy.’”
“That scares me,” Cohn said.
“I knew it would really warm the cockles of your heart,” Blankfein said with a laugh.
Ken Lewis was in his kitchen at his home in Charlotte on Sunday night, getting ready for dinner, when Paulson called.
“Ken,” Paulson said with no introduction. “I need you to come to Washington tomorrow for a meeting at three p.m.”
“Okay,” Lewis said. “I’ll be there. What’s this about?”
“I think you’re going to like it,” Paulson said, so vaguely that Lewis knew not to follow up.
At 7:30 a.m. on Monday, October 13, 2008, Rob Kindler was sitting in a conference room at Wachtell Lipton. He looked like hell, unshaven and still in his vacation khakis and flip-flops. He hadn’t slept in at least a day. He had come to Wachtell to personally pick up the check that he understood Mitsubishi would be delivering. With John Mack in Washington, it was left to him to complete the deal. He was somewhat anxious, for even though Mitsubishi had agreed to all the terms of the deal, he had never seen a physical check with nine zeros on it. He didn’t even know if it was possible. Maybe it would come as several checks?
Kindler was expecting a low-level employee from Mitsubishi to deliver the final payment when he learned from Wachtell’s receptionist that a contingent of senior Mitsubishi executives, dressed in impeccable dark suits, had just arrived in the building’s lobby and was on its way upstairs.
Kindler was embarrassed; he looked like a beach bum. He ran down the hall and quickly borrowed a suit jacket from a lawyer—but as he was buttoning the front he heard a loud tear. The seam on the back of the jacket had ripped in half. The Wachtell lawyers could only laugh.
Takaaki Nakajima, general manager for the Bank of Tokyo–Mitsubishi UFJ, along with a half dozen Japanese colleagues arrived, for what they thought was going to be a deal-closing ceremony.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Kindler said apologetically to the bemused Japanese. “If I did, I would have had John Mack here.”
Nakajima opened an envelope and presented Kindler with a check. There it was: “Pay Against this Check to the Order of Morgan Stanley. $9,000,000,000.00.” Kindler held it in his hands, somewhat in disbelief, clutching what had to be the largest amount of money a single individual had ever physically touched. Morgan Stanley, he knew, had just been saved.
Some of the Japanese started snapping pictures, trying their best to capture the eye-popping amount on the check.
“This is an honor and a great sign of your faith and confidence in America and Morgan Stanley,” Kindler said, trying to play the role of statesman in his disheveled state. “It’s going to be a great investment.”
As the Japanese group turned to leave, Kindler, grinning from ear to ear, tapped out a BlackBerry message to the entire Morgan Stanley management team at exactly 7:53 a.m.
The subject line: “We Have The Check!!!!!!”
The body of the message was two words:
“It’s Closed!!!!!!!!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Secretary Paulson’s office. Please hold,” Christal West said into her phone from outside Hank Paulson’s office.
It was only 8:00 a.m., but she was already overwhelmed with calls. Paulson’s decision to invite the “Big 9” Wall Street firms to Washington, without giving them any hint of what the agenda might be, wasn’t going over particularly well.
“Nick Calio just called me,” she typed in an e-mail