Lenny read the article from one of his other analysts and then forwarded it to Jeremy so he could read it when he woke up in a few hours. It was Kent’s interview about Pytho Corporation’s new banking product. He was even kind enough to state they hoped to save $12 million per year by switching to it. The stock was spiking. The banking sector needed some bright news and this was timed just about perfectly. The company was due to release a quarterly report in a couple of weeks and all of the financial analysts were racing to raise their projections higher than the last analyst.
It was nice the way Dimitri had set up the company on the other end. Rather than Dimitri making all of the investments, Jeremy was handling most of them through the other division. There was only about $100 million in play through Dimitri.
He had sent them a very bland email that auditors couldn’t charge him on telling them they should start unloading when the stock went up over eighteen dollars. Of course, by the time he finished typing that email the stock was up over twenty-two dollars and still climbing. Lenny did something he didn’t usually do. He instructed the trading system to do a Market Sell of their entire First Global and Pytho positions. Both were well above the initial targets, which meant there was no reason to hang around. Those who get too greedy go broke or go to jail.
Due to the way the other division was set up, it had to be an isolated entity on the shared computer system. It ran all of the same software, just had a different database to store account, position, and transaction information. Lenny had the ability to log in and start the selling, but he decided to let that money ride until Jeremy woke up twelve hours from now.
He picked up a disposable cell phone and called the office in the Ukraine. When he got Jeremy’s voicemail, he left a message. “Jeremy, dump all of your Pytho and First Global as soon as you get in. It is up well over our target. Watch it in after-hours and start shorting when it looks like it has hit a plateau.”
He couldn’t wait for Jeremy to start finding Russian and European stocks worth a play. Group Lenny would really be able to grow then. Indeed, after this series of plays, they were going to need to find some losses or issue some loans to get the cash out of the accounts.
Lenny decided to run the intra-day position report. When he scrolled down to the bottom and looked at total cash on hand his mount went dry.
Stacie was dressed for success today. Kathryn had tapped her to assist with the Friday presentation to Granite National. The Pytho sales rep had gotten nowhere trying to go through the Director of IT. Stacie’s impression of the guy was that all he could do was fill out an order form when it came to sales. Kathryn managed to pull some strings and now Big Four Consulting was leading the presentation to the board.
The Director of IT was dead set against this deal. Kathryn had been unsuccessful in keeping him out of the conference room. He wasn’t invited, but he barged in anyway. This was going to be a cutthroat presentation. Since the man had barged in, Kathryn wasn’t pulling any punches. After George got done with a small Pytho dog and pony show about the wonderful new reporting, Web accessibility, and international aspects of the software, Kathryn went into her PowerPoint presentation.
Kathryn went straight for the jugular. Her first slide was a spreadsheet showing what Granite National listed in their last quarterly report as IT expenditures. She admitted to using a national average when figuring in the cost of benefits for the large IT staff. She had browbeaten George into lowballing the price to them so the “after” picture looked so much rosier. Of course Big Four Consulting would be getting a cut from helping train all of their locations. Naturally, when you totaled up the proposal and compared it to their cost now, the bank would be saving over $2 million per year.
The Director of IT was putting up quite a struggle in the conference room, but Stacie admired the way Kathryn handled him, by answering some questions, ignoring and diverting others. Her killer stroke was asking the board if they had heard about First Global’s purchase of this system. She pointed out Stacie had just gotten back from France, having helped train the tellers for the French rollout, which had completed in only a couple of weeks and was running smoothly.
When the Director of IT took the bait and asked the board if they could afford to be down for a couple of weeks operating only a handful of locations, Stacie volunteered the two-week rollout was because First Global had to put standardized Pcs on the teller desks and they opted to do it as part of the rollout instead of in advance. If their tellers already had Pcs running at their windows, then the bank could literally bring them in for a Sunday afternoon training session and start operations on a Monday, assuming the data mapping and conversion was completed either late Saturday evening or early Sunday morning.
Kathryn was loving this girl! The other skirts and heels were simply there to drain blood from the brain, but this girl could drain and punch. She continued, “Since your tellers already have Pcs at their windows, a flash cut will work best for you. Simply have them log into the new application on Monday morning. If some horrible problem is discovered they can simply log back into the other application and we can migrate the transactions they did over to the new system once that problem is rectified.”
The only friend the Director of IT had on the board spoke up to try and save his friend’s job. “This is all well and good, but the conversion won’t be free and the cash position of the bank is not such that we can do a huge cash outlay to purchase a new system which does what our existing system does.”
Finally, George did something. “We can set up a payment schedule so you don’t begin paying until you have started to recognize the savings of the new system. We realize you will want to have it in place for at least a quarter to give you time to reap the benefits of staff reduction and terminate the maintenance contracts on your heritage equipment. Coupled with the other business changes your company has spoken about publicly, this system should have the bank off the FDIC watch list in less than a year.”
There was the knife in the back. The bank was on the watch list and in danger of being seized by the government to prevent a failure. Migrating to this system and showing the regulatory agency the amount of money they would save in salary and benefits alone would buy them a good six months, if not longer. If the first payment wouldn’t come until the quarter following installation, the board had no choice. Were a proposal like this leaked to the shareholders after it was turned down they would all be summarily tossed out. It was no longer a sales pitch, it was a bum rush.
Of course the board of directors thanked them for the presentation and said they had to discuss matters among themselves. They would get back to Pytho Corporation sometime next week with a response. Everyone in the room knew there was little they could do other than stall the payments for as long as humanly possible. If they opted to take a pass, news of this presentation would be leaked to financial analysts and all over the business news a few hours later. Then they would be seized. Nothing like holding a gun to their heads to make a sale, thought Kathryn. She made a mental note to have her broker buy some more Pytho stock.
Stacie returned home and dashed off an email to Jeremy telling him about the sales pitch today and that Pytho was sure to be announcing another sale in about a week. She asked him if he was going to buy some more Pytho stock for her based on this news or just let it ride. In closing, she told him she loved him. Truth was, she knew they would both sleep with other people while apart, but she was starting to fall for this guy. Perhaps it was just the thought of the life she could lead with the money he was going to make. At this point, she didn’t care. He was fun to be with and great in bed. When you added in about to be very wealthy it was difficult for a girl not to imagine herself wearing a ring.
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You are reading a special promotional version of “Infinite Exposure” containing only the first 18 chapters. This is the first book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:
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