"Very good." He leaned back. Was he really that far ahead of me?
"While that's happening, you 'sell' the stock acquired thus far to one of the dummy outfits we've set up, in return for debt paper. Which puts DNl at arm's length and untouchable. After that, you lend that dummy corporation the rest of the millions or billions necessary to acquire a controlling interest in the company, taking back as collateral more junk bonds at absurdly usurious rates. That makes it a financial leper, but you don't care: you're merely lending yourself the money. This paper corporation is all that can be touched when the acquired company's poison bonds flip over. So instead of being convertible into the stock of some cash-rich corporation, the way they were intended, those flip-bonds are going to give their holders a piece of some offshore phone booth with zero assets and enough debt to choke a horse. They're worthless paper. And you're in the clear."
He smiled. "Which means our program can proceed on schedule?"
"Dai Nippon will be totally insulated from their poison pills. Like the guy who sells his house and boat to his company and then lets it file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to protect his personal assets from creditors. Nobody can lay a glove on you."
"Mr. Walton"—he leaned back, a twinkle in his dark eyes—"that's exactly why I knew you were right for us. You have an intuitive grasp of tactics."
"If you do this, there're going to be a lot of unhappy, unemployed lawyers in this town."
"Most regrettable. Some of them might even have to go out and find productive work." He rose and shook my hand. "You've destroyed the prospect of years of legal roadblocks in a single stroke. It's elegant."
It was. Sun Tzu and Miyamoto Musashi would definitely have approved. But there still had to be more. An unexpected opening is not enough in itself; it needs an equally deft follow-up. Bushido, the Way of the Sword, teaches that you should first surprise your antagonist, and then you must confound him. Both the initial attack and the carry-through are crucial to success. Among other things, that meant Noda's mechanism for calling a board meeting of the companies he'd be acquiring had to be instantaneous, without the usual niceties.
"This setup should do the job, but only if it's used with finesse. Otherwise the whole system gets buried in paperwork."
"What do you mean?"