Free Be Careful What You Wish For by Simon Jordan

this deal, and told me to calm down and let them get on with their jobs, but he assured me that they would extend all courtesies.
    Then I discovered a hole in the stock to the tune of £700,000 and had to call in a favour with a wholesaler to get a million pounds’ worth of stock and to arrange to pay him after the completion of the sale.
    121 wanted a demonstration of the computer system and on the day they turned up it only bloody crashed. I made the decision to go ahead with the demo, but I had to create an illusion of it working using a back-up system, a mobile phone and a guy who would know what store I was logging into in advance. After going through this routine of what pre-arranged store I was logging into, my in-house IT guy, Suresh, downstairs, would log into the said store and I would illustrate how transactions were going in Liverpool, Newcastle, Dundee, Croydon. It was smoke and mirrors, but I pulled it off – they loved the real-time system and went back to their headquarters raving about it.
    We were reaching the end of May and 121’s due diligence and legal meetings were still ongoing. Their legal people were getting right up my nose and Andersen’s were invaluable at keeping things together.
    Briggs’ absence caused unnecessary concern with 121, who thought the deal would break down because he was not on board. I showed John Barton the confidential agreement between Andrew and myself so he understood there was no issue in the sale, just Andrew being tetchy about the differences in what we were both getting. John understood immediately and brought some order to the fraying nerves at both ends.
    121 now started to chip at the price. They had discovered that the contract for the Time Computers concession was not being renewed and attached a £10 million valuation to it. That was nonsense and they knew it; they had seen the volumes we were shifting weren’t that great. So a £10 million reduction was a try-on. They also had a raft of adjustments, which caused much argument and nearly broke the deal on a daily basis.
    More pertinently, I had decided that I was going to buy Crystal Palace Football Club and as much as I had tried to keep it under wraps, John Barton was aware of it. He tried to knock the price down to £65 million, we horse-traded, negotiated and beat each other up until we eventually settled on the final sale price of £77.8 million.
    Right in the middle of this I had to fly to America as I was best man at my best friend Walter’s wedding. I was writing a speech for that, whilst juggling calls between lawyers and accountants representing my sale of PPS for £78 million, and another set of lawyers and accountants for my purchase of Crystal Palace Football Club, which I was buying with money I didn’t even have yet.
    On returning from America I discovered our cash flow was completely shot to pieces. I pushed to close before the shit really hit the fan. David Goodman finally agreed a figure of £1 million for the licence, not the IPR and no software support contract.
    Adding insult to injury two of my directors refused to sign standard non-compete agreements. That was it for me. I had held this thing together by duct tape, whilst they had taken the foot off the pedal. These two difficult sods were about to get more money than they had ever seen and they were arguing about the ability to sell accessories or some such crap in the future. I took both of them outside and said they either signed or they would get fuck all. Let’s say it had the desired effect.
    121 were cooling and I sensed the deal was falling away. I suggested we complete on Monday 18 June in a hotel in Borehamwood and drove there first thing Monday morning. 121 were sticking on wanting the IPR for the software and a maintenance agreement.
    Even so, we couldn’t complete the paperwork, as Andrew’s lawyers were not ready. The following day we tried to sign the completion paperwork again. Andrew had signed a power of attorney