INTRODUCTION:FROM BEGINNING TO BEGINNING

I was close to getting the deal. The lawyers were fretting, but that’s what they are paid for. Our due diligence was producing mountains of complex data, but that’s normal. And George, my acquisition-hungry client, was excited. He had the gleam in his eye of a connoisseur who had stumbled on a rare diamond, and he was ready to grab the trophy.

There was a problem, though. In his enthusiasm, George was getting pushy. “How low will they go?” was his mantra. For him, every transaction was about the price and nothing but the price. Meanwhile, Anthony, the seller, was stalling on the numbers.

They were a study in contrast, these two. George was a relentless type-A entrepreneur. Not yet forty, he’d built three ...

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