It Only Takes One by John Emmerling

Author:John Emmerling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Let Your Right Brain Be Your Guide

Harold Simmons is a tall, rangy, seemingly easygoing Texan who is in the business of taking over companies. Not a love-’em-and-leave-’em sort of raider, Simmons prefers to stick around and make sure his new acquisition is run more profitably than it was by the previous administration. One other thing about Simmons: He’s self-made, personally worth well over a billion dollars, and rather proud of it all.

Early on a Sunday morning, I met Simmons at his Dallas mansion. He answered the door himself in an open-collar shirt and jeans. We went into a living room that was the size of a small house and talked about creativity in the world of takeover financing. The ideas he generates are not product ideas; for example, a clever way to build a better mousetrap holds no appeal for Simmons. But ask him to think up a clever way to take over a controlling interest in the mousetrap manufacturer’s company, and he’ll come up with a dozen or so brilliant ploys. “Most companies operate with too much capital,” he says. If he noticed that the mousetrap maker was maintaining a huge backlog inventory of steel springs, and that the price of steel-spring wire was going up fast, he might buy enough stock to gain control of the company, sell off the unneeded steel wire—which is tying up capital funds—and use the proceeds to reward the stockholders with a big dividend. And get a load of this next twist: Since he is the largest stockholder in the company, his dividend might actually pay for his stock purchase. In effect, he uses the trap maker’s own money to buy the trap maker.

I asked Simmons how he got ideas. “Well,” he said, “it’s important for me to get my mind off what I’m thinking about. I give my conscious mind an easy, routine task; then my subconscious can really wander around and pick up all these creative ideas.”

“Can you give me an example?” I asked.

“I get a lot of ideas in my car driving to work,” he replied. “I put on the radio. I sing. And then these ideas, they just come to me.” Then he added with a smile, “Of course, I only work five minutes away from here. I guess if I had a longer drive—I’d probably have a lot more money.”

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