We told Bill to take the rest of the day off. Jack was, I can report, noticeably encouraged. Tam also. For my own part I just crashed, with a few wistful reflections on my rocky
non-seduction. But if we pulled off our little scam, she might be more inclined to take me seriously.
As Shakespeare said, Lord, what fools these mortals be. I realized the true extent of Matsuo Noda's reach on Monday, just after noon. I was still home when Tam called from the office uptown to inform me of the latest developments. I was so busy on the phone just then, planting merger rumors with a few friendly columnists, that I was almost annoyed to take time out for her call. However, she quickly captured my attention.
First, the revisions on DNI's acquisition program were in full swing. Noda had started purchasing those healthy semiconductor outfits on the new list.
Then she went on to say that an additional set of buy orders had just gone out over the wire. Noda had been on his satellite hookup to Tokyo all morning, and he'd now finalized official authorization for a minor expansion, so to speak, in DNI's program. Apparently Tokyo had agreed with him that his portfolio should include a certain high-grade issue to achieve better overall "balance."
She didn't say much more, for obvious reasons, but we both had a strong hunch what must have happened. If anything was bugged, for chrissake, it wasn't my apartment. That's B-movie stuff. It had to be my phone.
Matsuo Noda had just kicked off a new buy program to the tune of three and a half billion. For what? More high-tech stragglers? Not precisely. One company, and in an amount intended to stay safely just below the Securities and Exchange Commission's Form 13-D mandatory reporting. Twenty-five million shares of IBM, roughly a full four percent of Big Blue.
It was a massive variation of the "Pac-Man" takeover defense: you eat anybody you think wants to eat you. Noda's message to us was loud and clear: he could buy the USA anytime he wanted. Dai Nippon was unstoppable.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
