Biggest Game of All The Inside Strategies, Tactics, and Temperaments That Make Great Dealmakers Great

Chapter One: Dealmakers Who Make a Difference I was looking across the negotiating table and thinking to myself: This stops right now.As CEO of AT&T Broadband, I had told the world a few weeks earlier that AT&T planned to buy MediaOne Group for $62.5 billion. Our offer blindsided Brian Roberts, the president of Comcast, who had announced his own plans to buy MediaOne just a month before that. Now Brian, who was seated across the table from me, was in a tough spot. He had to decide if he was going to stand down and lose MediaOne, or hang tough and fight us with a counter-offer. The situation was tense, and growing more strained by the minute. Microsoft by then had already offered to help Brian if he decided to counter. A senior Microsoft executive, Greg Maffei, was waiting in an office a few floors down. Paul Allen, the software billionaire, had also offered financial assistance. Paul was in Seattle waiting for a call from his go-to guy, Bill Savoy, who was standing by in an office across the street. All Brian had to do was pick up the phone and call Greg or Bill (who would then call Paul) and I was dead meat.Brian was edgy and probably a little embarrassed that we were trying to take MediaOne away from him, so he was liable to do anything. That scared the bejesus out of me. We couldn't afford not to buy MediaOne. The big cable TV operator was critical to AT&T's long-term business plans. But we couldn't afford to pay a stupid price, either. Though Brian had no way of knowing it, we had just announced our best -- and only -- offer for MediaOne. Unlike Microsoft and Paul, we didn't have the money for a bidding war. But we did have something they didn't have: Philadelphia. Comcast, which is based in Philadelphia, had been trying for years to buy Lenfest Communications, which owned the cable systems in suburban Philadelphia. Gerry Lenfest, the company's founder and namesake, had always refused to sell. Luckily for me, AT&T owned 50 percent of Lenfest. To entice Brian to stand down on MediaOne, I decided to offer him Lenfest Communications. There was just one hitch: Lenfest wasn't mine to give away. Gerry still owned 50 percent and had veto rights over big deals affecting the company. I knew that Gerry would never sell his company to Brian. The two had competed for years, so there was a lot of bad blood. But right then I didn't care about that. All I cared about was holding on to MediaOne and getting Brian off my back.I rolled the dice and made my move. I told Brian flat out that he could have Lenfest, and therefore the Philadelphia systems he'd wanted for so long, on one condition. He had to promise right then and there not to fight me on MediaOne. He had to agree to take Lenfest as a consolation prize and walk away. By then, Brian and I had been holed up for two days in AT&T's attorneys' offices haggling, so we were both exhausted. Brian considered my offer, then extended his hand to shake on the deal. My nightmare was finally over. MediaOne was ours.I couldn't gloat right then, but in my stomach I knew I'd just hit the ball right out of the park. I'd managed to use a handful of relatively insignificant cable TV systems that technically weren't mine to give away to lock down one of the biggest and most important media deals of the century. I'd have to work things out with Gerry, of course, who still didn't have a clue. But that was just a cleanup detail. By the time it was all over, I'd make sure that everybody, including Gerry, walked away as huge winners. For a high-stakes dealmaker, that's about as good as it ever gets.Dealmakers are found at every level of American business. But at the peak -- the very peak -- of the dealmaking universe are the ultimate wheeler-dealers. These are the dealmaking pros whose mere presence at a negotiating table is a sure sign that a big deal is about to go down -- a deal from which they will most likely emerge as winners.PuHindery, Leo is the author of 'Biggest Game of All The Inside Strategies, Tactics, and Temperaments That Make Great Dealmakers Great' with ISBN 9780743229005 and ISBN 0743229002.