All In

All In

SIMONA AHRNSTEDT

Translated from the Swedish
by Tara Chace

KENSINGTON BOOKS

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

 

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

 

Copyright © 2014, 2016 Simona Ahrnstedt,

First published by Forum, Sweden
Published by arrangement with Nordin Agency, Sweden

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2016933889

 

Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-1-4967-0619-5

ISBN-10: 1-4967-0619-6

First Kensington Hardcover Edition: July 2016

 

eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0620-1
eISBN-10: 1-4967-0620-X
First Kensington Electronic Edition: July 2016

 

Table of Contents

1

 

D
avid Hammar peered out the domed window of the helicopter. They were a thousand feet over the Swedish countryside and could see about twenty-five miles. He adjusted the headset that let him speak to the other occupants in a normal conversational voice.

“Over there,” he said, turning around to face Michel Chamoun, who was sitting in the backseat and also looking out the window. David pointed to the yellow Gyllgarn Castle as it came into view.

The pilot, Tom Lexington, set the course. “How close do you want me to take you?” he asked, his eyes on the destination.

“Not too close, Tom. Just so we can see it a little better.” David didn't take his eyes off the castle. “I don't want to attract any unnecessary attention.”

Green meadows, glittering lakes, and thick woods spread out before and beneath them like an idyllic pastoral landscape painting. The castle itself was built on an islet in the middle of an unusually wide river. Lively water rushed past on both sides of the islet, forming a natural moat that had at one time provided genuine protection against enemies.

Tom swung the helicopter in a wide arc.

Horses and sheep grazed in the fields below them. An avenue lined with enormous oak trees, several hundred years old, led in from the country road. The well-tended fruit trees and colorful plantings surrounding the beautiful castle were visible even from this height.

“The realtor I talked to estimated the value of the building alone at over thirty million Swedish kronor,” David said.

“That's a lot of money,” Michel noted.

“And that's in addition to the forest and pastureland. And the waterways. There's thousands of acres of land and water. That alone is worth over two hundred.” David kept listing off the assets. “There's game in the forest and countless smaller buildings that are part of the estate. And then there are the furnishings, of course, the fifteenth-century war trophies, the fancy silver and Russian porcelain, and an art collection that includes pieces from the last three hundred years. All the auction houses in the world will be fighting over them.”

David turned around in his seat. Michel studied the yellow castle they were hovering over.

“And it's all owned by the company?” Michel asked incredulously. “Not by the family?”

David nodded in confirmation. “It's unbelievable that they chose to do that,” he agreed. “That's what happens when people think they're invincible.”

“No one is invincible,” said Michel.

“No.”

Michel looked out the window. David waited as his friend's dark eyes swept over the fields. “It's a national gem,” Michel continued. “If we parcel this up and sell it all off, there'll be a real outcry.”

“Not
if
,” David said. “When.”

Because they were going to do just that, he was sure of it. They would subdivide those fertile fields and sell them off to the highest bidders. People would complain, and no one would scream louder than the current owners. He smiled faintly at the thought of them and gave Michel a questioning look. “Have you seen enough?”

Michel nodded, and David said, “Can you take us back to the city, Tom? We're done here.”

Tom nodded. The helicopter made an elegant turn and rose. They left the idyllic scene behind them and headed back to Stockholm. Highways, forests, and factories passed by beneath them.

Fifteen minutes later they entered the capital city's air-control zone, and Tom started talking to the control tower in Bromma. David half-listened to the conversation and the short, standardized phrases.

Tom Lexington was a skillful pilot. He maneuvered the helicopter with calm movements and a watchful eye. In his day job he worked for a private firm that, among other things, managed the security for Hammar Capital. He and David had known each other for a long time. David counted him as one of his best friends, and when David decided to inspect the castle from the air Tom had volunteered his piloting skills and his time.

“I appreciate your flying us,” David said.

Tom didn't say anything, just nodded almost imperceptibly to acknowledge he'd heard.

David turned to Michel. “We have plenty of time before the board meeting,” he said with a glance at his watch. “Malin called. Everything is ready,” he continued, referring to Malin Theselius, their communications director.

Michel adjusted his big, muscular, suit-clad body in the backseat. The rings on his fingers sparkled as he scratched his shaved scalp. “They're going to skin you alive,” he said as Stockholm passed a thousand feet below them. “You know that, right?”

“
Us
,” David said.

Michel smiled wryly. “Nah, you.
You're
the cover boy and the evil venture capitalist. I'm just a poor Lebanese immigrant following orders.”

Michel was the smartest man David knew and a senior partner in David's firm, Hammar Capital. Soon they would entirely rewrite Sweden's financial map. But Michel was right. David, the founder, who had a reputation for being hard and arrogant, was going to be hung out to dry in the financial press. And he was kind of looking forward to it.

Michel yawned. “When this is over I'm going to take a vacation and sleep for at least a week.”

David turned to look back again, peering at the suburbs in the distance. He wasn't tired, quite the contrary. He had been preparing for this fight for half his life, and he didn't want a vacation. He wanted war.

They had been planning this latest battle for almost a year. It was the biggest deal Hammar Capital had ever done, a hostile takeover of an enormous corporation, and the next few weeks would be critical. No one had ever done anything like this.

“What are you thinking?” David said into his headset. He knew Michel inside and out, knew his silence meant something, that Michel's keen mind was working on some legal or financial detail.

“Mostly that it's going to be hard to keep this secret much longer. Someone must have started wondering about the movements on the stock market. It won't be long before someone—a stockbroker maybe—starts leaking to the press.”

“Yes,” David agreed, because things leaked all the time. “We'll keep it under wraps as long as we can,” he said. They'd had this discussion many times. They'd polished their arguments, searched for holes in their logic, grown stronger and more cunning. “We'll keep buying,” he said. “But just a little at a time, less than before. I'll talk to my contacts.”

“The price of the shares is starting to rise quickly now.”

“I saw that,” David said. The curve of the share prices looked like a wave. “We'll have to see how long it holds financially.”

It was always a balancing act how fast you could proceed. The more aggressively a company's shares were traded, the more the action drove the price up. If word got out that Hammar Capital was the one doing the buying—then the rate would bolt. So far they had been exceedingly cautious. They had bought through reliable dummy companies and only in small quantities, day in and day out. Small transactions that were no more than a ripple on the enormous surface of the stock market. But both he and Michel realized that they were nearing a critical threshold.

“Of course, we knew we were going to be forced to go public with this sooner or later,” David said. “Malin has been working on the press release for weeks.”

“It's going to be insane,” Michel said.

David smiled. “I know. All we can do is hope we can fly under the radar for a little while longer,” he said.

Michel nodded. After all, this was what Hammar Capital did. Their team of analysts searched for companies that weren't doing as well as they should be. David and Michel identified the problems—often incompetent leadership—and then vacuumed up shares in order to put together a majority holding.

Then they went in, brutally took over, broke the company into pieces and restructured, sold, and profited. They were better at this than almost anyone else—owning and improving. Sometimes it went smoothly. People cooperated, and Hammar Capital was able to drive its agenda. Sometimes there was a fight.

“I'd still like to get someone from the owning family on our side,” David said as southern Stockholm spread out beneath them.

Having one or more of the big shareholders, some of the giant retirement fund managers, for example, on your side was critical for success in a hostile takeover this big. David and Michel had spent a lot of time convincing the managers, attended endless meetings, and run the numbers countless times. But winning over someone from the actual owning family had several advantages. In part, it would be an enormously prestigious symbolic win, especially with this firm, Investum, one of Sweden's biggest and oldest companies. It would also automatically win over a number of other shareholders who would vote in favor of Hammar Capital if David and Michel could show that they had someone from the inner circle on their side. “It would make the process a lot easier,” he continued.

“But who?”

“There is one person who actually has gone her own way in that family,” said David as Bromma Airport came into view on the horizon.

Michel was quiet for a bit. “You mean the daughter, right?”

“Yes,” David said. “She's an unknown but considered to be quite the talent. It's possible that she's dissatisfied with how the men are treating her.” Investum wasn't just an old and traditional company. It was patriarchal in a way that would make the 1950s seem modern and enlightened.

“Do you really believe you can win over
anyone
from that family?” Michel asked hesitantly. “You're not exactly popular with them.”

David almost laughed at the understatement.

Investum was controlled by the De la Grip family, and the company did billions of kronor worth of business a day. Indirectly Investum, and thus the De la Grip family, controlled close to a tenth of Sweden's GNP and owned the biggest bank in the country. Family members sat on the board of directors of close to every major Swedish company. The De la Grip family was upper-class, traditional, and wealthy. As close to royalty as you could get without actually
being
royal. And with significantly bluer blood than any member of the House of Bernadotte, Sweden's royal family. It would be unlikely for David Hammar, the upstart, to get anyone from the innermost circle—known for their loyalty—to change sides and join him, an infamous venture capitalist and corporate raider.

But he'd done it before, convinced a few family members to join forces with him. That often meant leaving a trail of broken family ties behind him, which he usually regretted, but in this case it would be a welcome bonus.

“I'm going to try,” he said.

“That's damn near insane,” said Michel. It wasn't the first time in the last year he'd uttered those words.

David nodded briefly. “I already called to set up a lunch meeting with her.”

“Of course you did,” said Michel as the helicopter started its descent for landing. The flight had taken less than thirty minutes. “And what did she say?”

David thought about the cool voice he'd gotten on the line, not an assistant's but that of Natalia De la Grip herself. She had sounded surprised but hadn't said very much, just thanked him for the invitation, and then had her assistant confirm the lunch appointment by e-mail.

“She said she was looking forward to our meeting.”

“She did?”

David laughed, tersely and joylessly. Her voice had been distinctive in that patrician way that almost inevitably triggered his disdain for the upper classes. Natalia De la Grip was one of about a hundred women in Sweden who had been born with the title of countess, the elite of the elite. He hardly had the words to express how little he thought of that kind of person.

“No,” he said. “She didn't say that.” But then he hadn't expected her to, either.