Chapter 4 Ethan
Ethan
My father points at the Reuters dashboard on one of my desktop monitors.
‘You know this makes sense, and you know it makes more sense now than it’s ever done.’
I don’t need to glance at the flashing green and red list of hotel stocks globally to know he’s right, just as I don’t need our bankers to tell me that the government would have no issue with this deal going ahead.
Dad and his golfing, Scotch-drinking, cigar-puffing cronies have any potential monopoly issues tied up.
And, given the pummelling The Montague Group’s stock has taken over the past few days, this is the perfect time for us to move in for the kill.
The only thing that’s unclear, in fact, is why this leaves quite such a sour taste in my mouth.
Late last week, it was announced that work on not one but two of our largest British competitor’s new London flagships had suffered “indefinite” delays due to withheld planning permission.
The news spooked investors, and their stock is currently off by as much as ten percent.
While I don’t expect the sell-off to continue, it’s looking cheaper than it has for quite some time.
At first glance, the Montague and Kingsley hotel groups have a lot in common. Both are now run by the sons of the men who founded them. Both are considered standouts among their peers. And both have remained independent, despite the huge conglomerates—Hilton, Marriott, and IHG—sniffing around them.
But our differences, no matter how well concealed to everyone but us, divide us more than our similarities unite us.
It’s not just that the Montagues have increasingly pursued the family and leisure markets while we’ve doubled down on being the hotel of choice for discerning corporates.
It’s that the current CEO, Miles Montague, and his father Charles, who was at the helm previously, are thoroughly decent men who, as far as I can see, run their business with integrity, while Richard Kingsley wouldn’t know integrity if it whipped out its dick and pissed all over his face.
That said, I’m a businessman. I’m the CEO of a listed company, and, to that end, my fiduciary duties are extremely clear.
My primary objective is to create value for our shareholders, and boy, would this deal be value-creating.
While The Montague Group may be suffering a setback, it’s structurally better positioned than we are.
Leisure travel recovered far better after the pandemic than business travel.
Zoom has removed the need for a large proportion of meetings to happen face to face, but it will never remove the need for people to take holidays.
Their hotel assets are incredible, especially their flagship hotel in Knightsbridge, near Hyde Park Corner.
That gorgeous Victorian grande dame gives me a hard-on every time I drive past it.
And, in a genius move that I’m ashamed to say I didn’t see coming, they formed a joint venture with the idyllic rural resort Sorrel Farm and have been rolling out new locations with great success.
In this, I’m my father’s son.
Because I want it.
I want it all.
And what the Kingsley men want, we get, even if our motives are different. Dad wants the glory. The coup. The blood. He wants to lord it over his old rival, Charles Montague, conveniently ignoring that they were once on the same side when they rowed for Cambridge.
But I want the clout. The control. The jurisdiction over such a huge swathe of the industry that I can be assured my voice will be heard.
By taking out a similar-sized player and bulking ourselves up so magnificently, I can assure Kingsley Hotels its autonomy for years longer.
I can ensure we remain a force to be reckoned with.
A whale—or should I say shark—rather than a minnow.
‘You want me to set up a meeting with Miles Montague.’ It’s not a question.
He leans forward. Shark is right. It’s like he can already taste the blood of his prey.
‘As soon as possible. Go in gently. You know how to play it.’
I do. In this game of chess we’re playing, the Kingsley board has planned for this day for a long, long time.
Our bankers at Loeb drew up a detailed proposal for a takeover of The Montague Group years ago, and they keep the numbers up to date.
We know how this deal could look. We know how much money we’d need to raise from our debt and equity investors.
And we know exactly what their appetite would be for an acquisition like this. In a word: large.
Our investors would support us.
The market would reward us.
We just need the Montagues to agree to sit down with us.
Because what my father didn’t have to say is that there’s an easy way and a hard way for them to roll over. We can hash out a friendly acquisition between us and jointly pitch it to our investors and to the market more generally.
Or they can dig their heels in, and we go full hostile, buying out their stock in the open market and in blocks from their key shareholders until we have a majority stake.
That route could not only get expensive for us pretty quickly, as all that buying drives their share price up and up and up, but it robs them of a lot of autonomy in the deal.
When a predator moves in, the prey is usually fucked.
No, a friendly takeover is cheaper and easier for the acquirer and more pleasant for the target. It offers the Montagues a way to preserve the best of their culture. Their legacy. It’s the sensible solution.
I’m just not convinced that they’ll see sense, even when their backs are to the wall and we have them by the balls.
As soon as I’ve got rid of Dad to his token office along the corridor, where he’ll preen for an hour before going out to lunch for the afternoon, I turn my attention to getting hold of Miles Montague.
There may be no great love lost between us, but there’s a grudging respect—at my end, at least—and we run in the same circles.
We even play in the same golf tournaments on occasion, though he’s far less active on the social circuit since marrying his indecently attractive second wife and former nanny.
In any case, we have each other’s mobile phone numbers, and I stick my earbuds in so I can pace as I talk.
I’ll feel far more in control of the conversation that way—if he actually accepts my call, that is.
He’d be stupid not to. He has to know why I’m calling, which makes him as obligated to take the call as he would be tempted to decline it.
Just as I’m pulling up his number, a WhatsApp comes in from my son, Jamie.
Can u top up my tuck card
For fuck’s sake. Fifteen grand a term after tax at one of the most elite schools in the country, and this is how they teach him to communicate. I’m bristling with nerves and apprehension, and I don’t need an illiterate fourteen-year-old being needy right now. Before I can stop myself, I hit reply.
Can u learn basic grammar and manners
I regret it as soon as I send it. It’s infantile and generally dickish, and it’s the last thing my already fraught relationship with my son needs.
He replies before I have a chance to delete the message.
Dad please
I sigh.
Sure. Give me a sec.
Even if this is his mother’s job rather than mine. Still standing, I crouch over my keyboard and pull up Westminster School’s parent portal, transferring a hundred quid. Hopefully that’ll keep him in doughnuts and sausage rolls for a few weeks.
Done.
K
One letter. How this kid is in the top set for English, I have no clue.
That small item of household admin covered off, I call Miles Montague. There’s no point in hesitation or overthinking. I’ve been ready to make this call for five years, give or take.
He answers after three rings, and my pulse quickens.
I leave the phone on the desk and jam my hands in my pockets, turning to face the window.
Our headquarters on the Embankment are architecturally stunning, the executive suite as quietly luxurious as one would expect from a luxury hotel group.
It’s a sunny autumn day, and the view of the river never ceases to calm me.
I feel like a king surveying his empire from up here.
An empire that’s about to double in size.
‘Ethan.’ Montague’s tone is clipped but not overtly hostile.
‘Miles. How’s tricks?’
‘Can’t complain. You?’ His reply strikes me as unnecessarily stoic given that the shit’s being kicked out of his share price, but maybe when his hot little wife slides down his body at night it makes matters like market capitalisation seem downright trivial.
‘Good, good. How are Saoirse and the kids?’ God, I hope I pronounced her name right.
‘Everyone’s well, thank God. And Jamie?’
‘He’s…’ Emotionally distant. Unreadable. Seemingly indifferent to me. ‘Fine, thanks. Look, I’m sorry about the planning curveball. I don’t know what those pen-pushers over at the Planning Department are smoking. It’s beyond irrational.’
He blows out a breath. ‘I appreciate it. Yeah, it’s never good to feel like your hands are tied.’
It’s certainly not, mate. Remember that. Hold onto how much you dislike that feeling of powerlessness.
‘Damn right it’s not. Look, we’d love to help you turn things around. Do you think you and I could sit down for a drink and a chat in the next day or two?’
He hesitates, and I have the impression he’s choosing his words carefully. ‘I’m not interested in what strings Richard thinks he can pull with the council. It’s not how we do business.’
I ignore his wholly accurate character assassination of my father.
I also ignore the tiny, fleeting, and most unwelcome suspicion that rises up that Dad and his “string pulling” could have had any impact whatsoever on Westminster City Council’s decision to kibosh both Montague projects.
Even Richard Kingsley wouldn’t stoop that low to engineer a favourable acquisition price.
‘That’s not what I’m offering, and you know it. It’s time, mate. Time for us both to stop plodding along on parallel lines and at least consider joining forces. Think of the—think of the scale we could command.’
I almost said think of the costs we could cut, but that is categorically not the way to go.
No proud business owner wants to consider that an acquirer, no matter how friendly, would swoop in and axe a ton of extraneous people.
Even if that side of the equation is one of the most attractive parts of the deal.
HR, payroll, finance, marketing: all areas we could cut back to the bone.
This time his pause speaks volumes.
‘Ethan. I’m only going to say this once. We’re not for sale.’
‘That’s not your call, and you know it. That’s your shareholders’ call. Believe me, you want to sit down with me so we can discuss this like adults. It’s not black and white, and it doesn’t have to be an end. It could be an amazing new beginning for both of us.’
‘I’m not interested in discussions with competitors who circle like vultures the second we hit a stumbling block.’
‘You should be,’ I spit out. ‘You know damn well we can do this the easy way or the hard way.’ I’m losing my hold on the conversation now, showing my true colours. I may as well have bared my teeth at him. Shit. I’m not sure how the hell this discussion is unravelling so quickly.
‘Listen very, very carefully, Kingsley.’ A pause. ‘You and your corrupt father can go fuck yourselves.’
And with that, he ends the call.
I spin around, tugging my earbuds out and throwing them on the desk.
Fuuuuck! He’s holding a losing hand, and he fucking well knows it, and he’s refusing to play ball, refusing to engage with me on a professional level, despite it being his clear fiduciary duty to do so.
Stupid fucking incompetent arsehole. There is nothing that pisses me off more than dickheads who don’t understand when they are powerless and won’t respect when I am powerful.
I hold every fucking ace here, and he won’t do me the courtesy of even acknowledging it.
I pick up my phone and throw it on the floor, and when that fails to make me feel one iota better, I take the great pile of research reports that the various banks have compiled on our sector recently and sweep them off the desk.
They land on the carpet with a flurry of dull thuds. They can damn well stay there.
Still fuming, I stride across my huge office to the recessed bar in one wall. Decanter. Tumbler. Three, four fingers of scotch, sloshed inelegantly in. Done. I knock the entire thing back, and for a single blissful moment, the burn in my throat, in my sinuses, consumes everything else.
The whisky floods my bloodstream, but it’s not enough. I’m looking around for something else I can throw, some other outlet for this useless fury, this impotent frustration, when there’s a knock at my office door. It opens, and Alexis, our receptionist, peers timidly around it.
‘Mr Kingsley? Ms Petrakis is here for her interview.’