The Successor by Stephen Frey

Author:Stephen Frey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Investment bankers, International business enterprises, Corporate culture, Suspense, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345480620
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2007-01-15T10:00:00+00:00

“THIS IS ALL GOING TO work out very nicely, isn’t it, Victoria?”

Lloyd Dorsey limped back into the great room of his Washington town house with a Scotch for her. “I get to run Jesse Wood out of the White House, and you get total control of Everest Capital. You won’t ever have to worry about Christian Gillette snubbing a deal of yours again. Allison Wallace will do whatever you tell her to do.” He handed Victoria Graham her drink as he sat down beside her on the antique sofa. “And you won’t have to worry about this ridiculous health insurance thing Wood’s trying to push through. Once he gets caught up in the Cuba scandal, he’ll forget everything else. He’ll just be trying to survive at that point, which he won’t. I’ll personally see to that.” He smiled and held his glass up. “To us.”

She touched her glass to his. “To us.” He was still so damn handsome, still so damn charismatic. Still had the same effect on her he had had that day in the University of Florida law school classroom, when they’d seen each other for the first time. “Yes, it all sounds very good,” she admitted, taking a long sip of the honey-colored liquid. “Lloyd, what’s actually going to happen to Christian?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I want to know.”

“Why?”

She put her glass down on a table beside the sofa. “He’s made me a lot of money over the years.”

Dorsey groaned. “We’ve been through this so many times. Didn’t Gillette basically tell one of your board members he thought you were off your rocker? That he thought you were going over the legal line with that Ohio deal?”

She didn’t answer.

“Vicky.”

A few years ago she’d gone to Christian and asked him to buy an Ohio insurance company for her. MuPenn was competing directly with the company in a couple of big markets, which was driving premiums down for both firms, she’d explained to him. And she’d already gone to the insurance regulators seeking permission for MuPenn to acquire the Ohio company, but had been turned down by both states. So she wanted Christian to buy the company using Everest so they could “rationalize prices,” as she’d termed it, in the competing markets. Basically, have an informal agreement—after Everest did the deal—between MuPenn and the Ohio company not to compete on price. In fact to raise prices and keep them equal because they were the only two big carriers in the region. Which was completely illegal. A clear violation of the Robinson-Patman Act, punishable by years in jail.

Technically, there wouldn’t have been anything the regulators could have done or said if Everest made the acquisition because MuPenn was just a limited partner with Everest, with no “official” control over anything Everest did. At least, that was what she’d initially thought—she’d found out later that the Feds could actually have prosecuted her if they’d been able to prove complicity between Christian and her. It was the only time she’d ever asked Christian for a

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