The Samurai Strategy Part 32

Let me tell you my first impression of Matsuo Noda's scenario. It was legal, it was legit, and it was--as Joanna's teenage niece used to describe notable phenomena--totally f.u.c.king awesome.

What's more, he wanted me to stay on as tail-gunner. The truth? I felt the disorientation of a kid who'd been fooling around in the Soap Box Derby suddenly being handed a slot in the Indianapolis 500.

The most astonishing part of all was, I had the feeling he just might pull it off.

You're right. I should have said no, not on your life, this is way out of my league, never in a million years. . . .

Instead I said I'd think about it.

Good, he said. Why didn't I stick around till Monday and get a feeling for the operation?

I didn't shake his hand. I just walked out and poured myself a cup of green tea from the huge urn there in the middle of the floor. Walton, you idiot, how did you get yourself into this?

Which is when I spotted a sporty looking lady way across on the other side of the floor, over by the climate-controlled NEC mainframe.

Something about her seemed vaguely familiar. Definitely not DNI staff.

Wearing jeans, dark hair in a nice designer cut, handled herself like a mover. Not to mention a world-cla.s.s bottom inside those tight, shapely Calvins. From all appearances she actually seemed to be second-in- command. She was reading the riot act to Tanaka about something to do with the computer, had the self-important little f.u.c.ker bobbing and weaving. Who was that? Hadn't seen her around here before.

Well, now, no time like the present to head on over and check into this. A fellow _gaijin_. Could be she'll explain what in h.e.l.l's going on. Is Noda real?

Suddenly she turned around, saw me, and stopped. I stopped. We both just stood there trying to remember. She hit pay dirt first, but I was only microseconds behind.

Want to know my first thought, my very first thought? Matsuo Noda, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, you're even smarter than I'd given you credit for.

You've hired the best, the very best.

"Is this how you pick up your women these days, Matt? Given up on vegetable stands?" She was walking toward me wearing a smile. I tried to grin back. "How are you, Matthew? Good to see you've still got your hair. Well, most of it."

"Tam Richardson, I don't believe this. Now I know it all is a dream.

Please tell me you were kidnapped. None of this is really happening, right? It's just a very big, very bad dream. We'll all wake up tomorrow and go to the beach."

"Welcome aboard, partner." She stuck out her hand. "It's going to be a wild trip."

"No kidding." I looked her over as I took her hand. Nice and warm. Time had treated her well. Very well. "How long have you known Noda?"

"Less than a month." She was checking me over too. Wonder how I was doing. "How long have you been helping him?"

It occurred to me that we both should have been using that cla.s.sic hooker response when the guy asks his young companion how long she's been in her particular field of endeavor and she replies, "Long enough to know better."

"Few months now. Noda is pretty impressive." I tried to sound casual.

"Not to mention persuasive."

"That he is."

"Well, let's have a toast to winning this." I turned to the urn. "How about some tea, Professor?"

"Love it."

"Tam, let's just hope these guys don't suddenly decide to eat us alive." I pa.s.sed it over. "What do you think our chances of survival are?"

That one startled her. I got the impression she was half thinking the same thing. Then she managed a thin laugh.

"We'll eat them first if they try."

"You still talk tough. I always told you you should have been a lawyer."

But she was right. Once the cards are dealt, you play to win.

Which is exactly what I planned to do. Since my own part was still down the road, that weekend I just sat in their offices watching spellbound as Noda and Dr. Tamara Richardson reviewed the data and put together the financial details. Next, a lot of coded telexes were sent out to pile up somewhere in Tokyo with instructions for routing of the funds.

After I'd digested his opening move, I did have occasion to ask the boss a few pointed questions. Such as, wasn't he at all nervous that Wall Street might rebound before he could get rolling? He replied, correctly as usual, that the total collapse in the financial markets would last for a while. Even though the dollar was still down for the count (over forty percent), he figured only the most intrepid foreign speculators would go plunging into the American stock market looking for bargains. As for American investors, most of them, including the inst.i.tutions, were still in shock. He rightly forecast that the herd mentality of the Street hadn't been repealed. War stories of '87 were going around and n.o.body wanted to make the textbooks as a fool. Better a little profit forgone than more money lost. The mutual fund managers, most of whom had been caught with their pants at half-mast, were devoting their energies that weekend to composing creative explanations.

Events Monday proved him to be essentially on target. There was an eerie quiet over the financial landscape. Everybody was waiting for somebody else to try breathing life back into the corpse.

Then a few a.n.a.lysts noticed something peculiar. Anonymous buy orders were coming in, more and more, for stocks in the sector hardest hit, high tech. Maybe it was bargain hunters, but the buyers weren't any of the "growth" mutual funds that might have been expected to lead the action. In fact, many of those hotshot managers were relieved to part with some of the dogs they'd ridden down that long, lonesome decline of the week before.

Gradually the prices of certain securities began to edge up

in this early thin trading, enticing more and more holders to "sell on strength." What issues? First off, anything to do with computers. Of course there weren't all that many hardware manufacturers left around by then, after the shakeout and mergers of the mid-eighties, but somebody was buying heavily into the few that remained. They were also actively purchasing little software outfits. Those stocks had taken a heavy beating over the past week, so prices were at an all-time low for most.

Other industries they started to nibble at were telecommunications, aeros.p.a.ce, biotechnology. They seemed to be looking for outfits with substantial R&D operations: the focus was on creativity, growth sectors, the sunrise industries.

Of course, what this mysterious new buyer was really doing was snapping up outfits loaded with labs and Ph.D.'s. Dr. Richardson and my new client Matsuo Noda had DNI acquiring companies short on competent management and market share but long on research, innovation--the one thing we were still halfway good at. Looked at differently, what Dai Nippon was really buying was underused brainpower, the American smarts currently going to waste thanks to inept corporate management.

Explanations began to sprout all over the place--from the "Heard on the Street" column in the Journal to Dan Dorfman, a guy with a bloodhound's nose for Wall Street shenanigans. But the hard truth was n.o.body could put it together. Who could have? The play was too ambitious even to imagine.

You guessed it. With the trillions and trillions now at its disposal, j.a.pan was about to take charge of America's future.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The task ahead can be described very simply. I was going to help Dai Nippon acquire controlling stock positions in a bevy of ineptly managed American high-tech companies, and she was going to be in charge of turning them around. I was DNI's takeover artist; Tam was the fix-it expert. That probably sounds a bit ambitious on everybody's part, but after watching the Dai Nippon juggernaut for a couple of days I knew one thing for sure: we'd have plenty of heavy backup.

Why did I agree to ride shotgun for Matsuo Noda's "Save America"

project? Because, if he meant what he said, such a program was long overdue. American industry was in trouble, and it was hurting a lot of good, hardworking people who didn't deserve to be hurt. Worse still, this wasn't some random act of G.o.d. It was largely the result of self- serving corporate management. Most occupiers of the executive suites these days were too busy merging and acquiring and leveraging to do what stockholders thought they were paying them for: building industry and creating American jobs. (Well, maybe that's an overstatement; they had kept Drexel Burnham's junk-bond cowboys working overtime.) In the mid-eighties, American corporations were spending two and three times more on mergers and acquisitions than on research and development. Most industrialists here no longer cared to try making anything as old- fashioned as compet.i.tive products; they preferred to make deals and sell imports. The net result was that America, the world's major economic locomotive, was veering off the track and seriously in danger of taking everybody else in the world along with it.

That's where Matsuo Noda came in. Part of the arrangement he'd made with the j.a.panese inst.i.tutions putting up the funds was that he would be given proxy to exercise all voting rights. Face it, he had a pretty impressive performance record overseeing the long-range planning and investment of well-run corporations. So after I'd helped Dai Nippon acquire control of a long list of poorly managed companies, he and Tam Richardson were planning to move in, clear out the deadwood, and lay down priorities for restructuring. She was Dai Nippon's technical director for all U.S. operations, which meant she was going to head up the team on the newly evacuated floor just above the financial section-- Noda's management samurai.

Enough theory. Here's how it actually went. On Friday the story was finally broken by The Wall Street Journal, a little squib in "What's News," with a short two-column a.n.a.lysis on page 3. The piece revealed that all the heavy new activity building in the high-tech sector of the market represented buys being coordinated by a new j.a.panese investment concern.

This sudden, unexpected program of foreign investment was heralded at first as a salubrious omen, refuting those doomsayers who were claiming the world had lost confidence in the U.S. In fact, if anything it was proof that overseas enthusiasm was actually increasing. j.a.pan's previous practice of focusing on debt instruments was at best pa.s.sive investment. But buying heavily into a sector of the economy that appeared weak was something else entirely. It was a rousing endors.e.m.e.nt of America's prospects.

To be fair, there was still a modest case to be made in that direction.

Our high-tech sector wasn't all struggling high fliers operating out of some one-story cinder block on Route 128 or the Washington Beltway.

America had plenty of solid industry in high tech--computers, aeros.p.a.ce, office machinery--and American laboratories and universities were the envy of the world. The problem lay with the downside. We'd lost our lead in electronics, drugs, scientific instruments, plastics, communications equipment . . . it's a long list. In fact, America's overall trade balance in high-tech products had actually gone negative, shrunk from a twenty-five billion dollar surplus as recently as 1980.

The ignored question, therefore: Given the direction things were headed, why were the j.a.panese suddenly supposed to be so impressed?