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“Well, he’ll be in Witten next week, won’t he?” There was a board meeting scheduled early next week, before everyone scattered for the holidays.
“That’s the thing...”
He glanced at her to find her looking at him intently. “What’s the thing?”
“Mr. Benz, even though we don’t like each other, I feel as though I can trust you.”
“I wouldn’t say that we don’t like each other.”
“We have both said exactly that on more than one occasion.”
“Yes, but we didn’t mean it. Or we came around to not meaning it.” He paused. “Or at least I did.” When she didn’t respond, hesaid, “Remember the truce we called last time we were in Riems? Let’s do that again.” He needed to know what was happening with Morneau here.
“Another truce,” she echoed, as if she were turning the matter over in her mind.
“Yes.”
“Except maybe without the kissing this time?”
He was startled. He’d thought they had silently agreed never to speak of that incident. But also amused, because it was clear from her grin that she was teasing him. This boded well for getting her to open up to him about what she was doing visiting two generations of Hausers. “Without the kissing,” he agreed. “I shall endeavor to restrain myself this time,” he added, deadpan.
“As will I. All right. Daniel Hauser is selling his shares in Morneau to Noar Graf.”
“What?” The Morneau board was small, and, he would have said, stable. Two of its five members were the king and the princess, the princess having inherited her mother’s shares. The other three seats had been in the dukedom of Aquilla, the Müller family, and the Hauser family for generations. The Hausers had helped shape Morneau for nearly as long as the company had been in existence.
Matteo was so shocked, he turned on his blinker and pulled into the parking lot of a cheese factory on the outskirts of Riems. Once safely parked, he turned to Ms. Delaney. “Can he do that?”
“Apparently he can. Most private companies have shotgun clauses in their board contracts, but not Morneau.”
“Shotgun clause? I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a clause that specifies if a board member wants to stepdown or sell out, they must first offer their shares to the other members of the board. It’s meant to keep the interests in a private company close. If you could just sell your shares to anyone . . .”
“Chaos would break loose.”
“Potentially.”
“I suppose we don’t have these types of clauses because we traditionally haven’t needed them.”
He waited for her to say something snarky about an overreliance on tradition, but she merely said, “Yes.”
“The CEO has always been an advisory member of the board, but not a voting one. And not vested,” he said, his brain grasping to try to make sense of why Noar would be trying to buy in.
“That’s right.”
“Doesn’t it seem suspicious that if Noar is looking to acquire shares, or if Daniel is looking to sell shares, neither has thought to mention it, given that there is a companywide overhaul underway?”
“It does.”
The way she was responding calmly and briefly to his thinking-out-loud statements made him think she had a theory about what was happening. She had just opened up to him. He decided to give her more reason to do so. “I don’t usually publicly criticize people.”
“You leave that for behind closed doors.”
He wasn’t sure if that was a question, and if it was a statement it wasn’t a flattering one. “I don’t usually publicly criticize people, but Noar Graf is a raging egomaniac, and I detest him.”
She burst out laughing.
“What, pray tell, is so amusing?” Once again, the way her face lit up made his start to echo hers. It was supremely annoying.
