"The competition had capital flowing through three different sovereign wealth funds. If we freeze their acquisition, it triggers an international trade dispute. Next, we are locked out" the secretary said.
"So that’s it? We are just going to let a predatory hedge fund dismantle the largest private collection in Southern Europe?" Selen said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy register.
"The office of Commerce is completely paralyzed with the threat of an international trade dispute. We are short exactly four hundred and fifty million euros to mount a defensive buyback. Nobody is willing to write that check.
"It is a matter of liquidity, not legacy. I am sorry" he said and the line went dead. She knew exactly how the upper class of the European business world operated.
It was not guided by cryptic poetry. It was governed by liquidity, regulatory pressure, and raw leverage.
She was short on votes and liquidity to cast her own votes. Her internal stats showed she needed exactly seven point five percent more of the voting shares to form a defensive blocking minority.
Without it, the boardroom vote tomorrow afternoon would be a slaughter. She thought she would have a solution when the time came.
But she had less than twenty-four hours and she was still stranded. She remembered how she had confidently promised the CEO that she would find a way around it.
She and her team had thought that it was just another attempt by a small corporation at poking the bear.
But this was different, it was a carefully calculated movement, carefully crafted and executed since the former ambassador was in seat.
She was not the target, she just happened to be the one in the seat when the final step was ready.
She needed hard capital and a political sledgehammer if she had a shot at stopping this. It would be a stain on her reputation if this happened with her on seat just for a few months.
Her secretary came in shortly after with a tablet in hand, she showed it to Selen. It was a leak.
But she knew better than to believe that it was a leak. They had done it on purpose to ridicule her and her position.
As they tried to do damage control from her end and the end of Vance cooperation, her phone rang within the next hour, it was from the commerce office. She answered immediately.
"Ambassador, you have to see this. I just sent it to you" he said to her. She went back to her table and looked at what he sent. "No way," she said.
Five minutes ago, an anonymous blind trust had executed an aggressive bulk buy of the Foundation’s public shares on the open market, absorbing the artificial selling pressure.
They were absorbing every single floating share of the Vance Foundation stock. They were not quietly accumulating, they were deliberately driving the price up, completely pricing the Mininil group out of the secondary market.
Within ten minutes, the buyer had swallowed eight point two percent of the total equity, effectively shattering the competitors guaranteed board majority.
The buyer had immediately executed a legal proxy assignment, locking the voting rights directly to Selen’s board seat for the next ninety days.
The seven point five percent deficit was erased in a single stroke. Selen stared at the screen, her mind racing through the global players capable of this.
To pull this off, someone needed immediate access to hundreds of millions in liquid capital, and a weaponized forensic accounting team.
No way, it seemed like a dream. She was trying to figure out who could have done that in less than an hour after the information leaked.
There was no way someone loved the Vance foundation enough to spend such a huge amount of money without a second thought in a matter of minutes.
Even the CEO was surprised. All the people he had asked for help needed weeks and months to liquidate their funds to about three or four percent of the stock.
He was certain it was not someone from his circle and his company pride themselves in their level of privacy so when the buyer clicked the option to be anonymous to third parties, they had to respect that.
"Who cares if the buyer was anonymous, we have been saved!" The CEO had said excitedly over the phone.
Selen smiled happily, yes it was a good thing. But she could not help but wonder who it might have been.
"Could it be JK? No, he did not have enough to liquidate four hundred and fifty million euros. His company would flip.
And it could not possibly be Newton, there was no way his company could handle it. Their companies would not even let them do such a thing.
She knew that they both loved and cared for her but this was one of those things that she knew that it was impossible for them to help her with.
She would be too selfish to even ask them. And she also saw it as a sign of weakness.
She was an ambassador, and she could not imagine how it would look if the first challenge she faced was fixed by going to ask her friends for help.
The secret helper did not seem to be done, because the CEO, who was still on the call, began to read a message he just received.
"Right now, three members of your own board are preparing to vote in favor of the liquidation plan. They have been promised lucrative board seats in the competition’s shell companies.
A formal corruption disclosure with the Spanish federal prosecutors. The wire transfers to those three board members, connecting them to the Mininil group have been fully traced and flagged for money laundering" he read out in excitement.
"It is here, it is all here. A massive, official legal brief, backed by the full weight of a Tier-1 international bank had just been logged into the foundation’s internal system." He said.
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