David Frodsham

This is sold as an easy week. “Fly to Munich, pick up 11 bankers drafts and the contract, drive to Stuttgart, sign the contract, hand over the bankers drafts, come home; that’s all”. I’m suspicious though. “What are you going to be doing?” I ask. “Christmas shopping” is the reply. Now I have to admit I don’t particularly enjoy Christmas shopping, but I have a feeling that perhaps I am not getting the better deal. “Nothing can go wrong; we’ve been working at this for weeks and everything’s sorted.” Then a slight hesitation and change of voice: “I suppose if you don’t think you can manage, I could come too”. I decline the invitation; if it’s really that simple I couldn’t live with the thought of the Christmas shopping taking place at Stuttgart airport Duty Free. In a final attempt at rebellion, I ask for a set of written instructions for the week. On a single sheet of A4, it repeats the basic “pick up drafts, sign agreement, hand over drafts”. There’s even a map to the bank, although as it has fitted most of Munich onto a picture little bigger than a postage stamp, I’m not going to rely on it.

The only consolation comes from Sophia, who has managed to upgrade me from the company-standard 3 door Opel Corsa 1.1 automatic Diesel ‘Teen trim’, to a Mercedes. She gets it.

Munich airport is a triumph of engineering over ergonomics. They’ve replaced inefficient signs – you know the ones: with words on – with just letters. You arrive in zone ‘B’ for example, can eat in zone ‘R’ before getting a taxi in zone ‘F’. That sort of thing. The zones are connected by moving walkways through anonymous but identical-looking (and no doubt very efficient) corridors. In reality it is like a steel and glass version of the Hampton Court maze, but without the kind guide who lets you out when you give up looking for the exit. But where exactly does one go to pick up the Sixt car? At one point I spot a Christmas tree – perhaps I should settle in for the season there?

The car at least has satellite navigation, and the rather stern woman who guides me around in German and I develop something of a relationship over the week. If things are going well, I get messages such as “in 100m, nacht rechts abbiegen” (turn right in 100m) but if I take a wrong turning, I get “falls möglich, bitte wenden” (turn round, you dork), in a colder, and rather sterner voice.

Dresdner Bank’s main office in Munich is in a grand square with expensive hotels, cars and… nowhere to park. The Pay and Display street parking is full in all directions. “Bitte wenden!” I keep hearing. “Shut up and find me somewhere to park!” I reply. At last I find a space next to woman draped in mink who is stepping out of a Porsche Cayenne, but she is parking on the pavement. “Is one allowed to park here?” I ask. “I have no idea, probably not”, she replies. A quick glance confirms that most of the cars in the road are parked illegally. What’s happening to Munich – it’s not turning into Paris, is it?

It starts to snow as I get out of the car and walk to the bank, which has one particularly distinguishing feature: no entrance. No front door, nor gate, reception, doorman… nothing. On one side is the Norwegian embassy (which has a very nice front door), and on the other is a passageway. Giving up, and now covered in snow, I call the bank manager who lets me in (the entrance is shared with the embassy).

Franz Moosmayr is completely unfazed about the fact he is holding 1.6M € of our money, waves aside my passport ID (“I’ve already checked you out”) and ushers me into a meeting room. There he lands his bombshell: Germany does not have the concept of banker’s drafts. How do you pay for something between strangers then, like a second-hand car for example? “Cash”, he replies, “German people like cash”. “Well”, I reply (thinking of David Everett at this point), “do you have 1.6M € in cash on you?”; “No”. We agree with the sellers to change the payments to wire transfers and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, the payments are set up.

Our German lawyer’s office is in a very swish square in central Munich, surrounded by over-priced shops. It would probably be easier here to buy a diamond than a loaf of bread, and the nearest car dealership sells Aston Martins rather than Volkswagens. I manage to park outside, but I’m the only one who buys a parking ticket. Mind you, no-one is going to see the ticket as it’s now snowing quite heavily.

Second bombshell: the entire structure might be illegal. SVB requires Actesys to set up a deposit account before it will issue the Letters of Credit and the lawyers think this might be illegal. Top legal brains beaver away for a while and the opinion comes back with a green light. Armed with a contract rather larger than a shoebox, and two files of papers to be signed, I head off to Eningen. The square outside the office looks spectacular. The snow reflects the Christmas lights and it all looks very festive. The Band Aid song “Do they know it’s Christmas” comes into my mind. No I don’t! I think to myself, trudging through the snow towards the car.

I’ve cut it a bit fine to get to the hotel before it closes at midnight. Fraulein Navigation tells me that there is a 13km traffic jam ahead, that she doesn’t expect us to arrive until 00:45, and would I like a detour? OK I say, and off we go, leaving the autobahn for ever smaller roads. The car is sliding around, and the roads become harder to make out in the snow. I miss a turning because of a complete white-out and decide that Fraulein Navigation must be over-ruled and I head back to the Autobahn. “Bitte wenden!” she pleads, but once I’m back on the motorway (where there is no sign of any traffic jam at all), she goes into a sulk and refuses to speak to me. I try reentering the destination, even pressing the reset button, but all to no avail. The only thing she does is to increase the estimated arrival time by 5 min. In fact I arrive at 23:30, in enough time even to have something to eat.

The next two days are not fun, comprising mostly a set of fairly fruitless discussions, sometimes heated. Jill has arrived to provide induction training to the staff and I worry about the impression on our soon-to-be-new colleagues of the contrast between her glowing presentations in one room and our heated discussions in another. The most impressive thing during this time is that Actesys applies to open an account with SVB in California, transfers money from Germany to California and SVB raises 3 letters of credit – all in less than 24 hours or, in comparison, 4 times faster than it takes to clear a cheque in the UK. Very impressive.

On Wednesday evening I have dinner with goddaughter Kim, who is studying Chinese at Tübingen University. She shares a flat with a Chinese girl and together they produced an authentic Chinese meal, washed down by tea and we have a lively discussion on China and regional politics. Kim’s friend is studying Japanese, which at face value at least does not feel like a logical choice for a Chinese person to study in Tübingen. But it was a delightful evening away from the acquisition hubbub.

Finally, all the signatures are in place, the money is transferred, and has arrived. All we are now waiting for are the L/C originals and their confirmation: the deal is unstoppable. Thomas and I have a deal post-mortem at a local Italian restaurant and, other than a security queue at Stuttgart airport that stretches so far that the end is outside the terminal on the road outside, the rest of the week is uneventful.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, together with your families and loved ones. We will have an exciting 2006 as newly-merged companies with many more possibilities together than we could have managed alone. It was worth the pain of the acquisition transaction to get to this point.