Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder Read Free Book Online Page A

greater, I met Leschek for our ritual breakfast. I’d learned not to wander into ridiculous Samantha Fox–like conversations by simply being quiet, which he respected. In spite of our awkward start, I’d learned that Leschek was genuine and helpful, and after spending every day together for two months, I’d warmed to him. I felt sorry that he would be the one who had to translate my dire recommendations to the Autosan management team, and even more, I knew that when I finally left Sanok, I would actually miss him.
    That morning, as I picked at slices of pork sausage, I glanced across the table at Leschek’s newspaper. He seemed to be perusing the personals, but then I looked closer. In little boxes were numbers—financial figures—surrounded by words I couldn’t read.
    I leaned over and asked, “Leschek, what are those?”
    “These are the very first Polish privatizations!” he announced proudly.
    I’d heard that Poland was privatizing its formerly state-owned companies, but I was so wrapped up in Autosan that I hadn’t been following this at all. “That’s interesting. . . . What’s that number?” I pointed to a figure near the top of the page.
    “That’s the share price.”
    “And this one?”
    “The profit from last year.”
    “How about that one?”
    “The number of shares being offered.”
    I did some quick math. The share price valued this company at $80 million, while the company’s profits for the previous year were $160 million, which meant that the Polish government was selling this company for one-half of the previous year’s earnings! I was stunned. In simple terms, this meant that if you invested in this company and it stayed in business for six months, you would effectively make your money back.
    I asked my questions again just to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything—and I wasn’t. This was extremely interesting. We went through the same exercise for some of the other companies in the newspaper, and the results were roughly the same.
    I’d never bought a single share in my life, but as I lay in bed that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Polish privatizations. I thought, I need to do this. Isn’t this exactly what I went to business school for?
    My net worth at the time was a total of $2,000. After confirming with John Lindquist that there were no rules against my buying the shares, I decided to invest all my money in these privatizations. I had the cash wired to me in Poland, then asked Leschek if he could help me. During our lunch break, we went to the local savings bank and stood in line to convert my money to Polish zloty, then walked to the post office to fill out the subscription forms for the privatizations. The process was complicated and required Leschek to make four trips to the teller window to ask questions about how to fill out the detailed forms. But in the end, I successfully subscribed to the very first privatizations in Eastern Europe.
    In mid-December, I returned to London to prepare BCG’s final presentation to Autosan and the World Bank, which we would make after the holidays. I was completely conflicted. My analysis showed that the company should fire a good part of the workforce if it wanted to stay in business. But after spending so much time with these people, I knew that mass layoffs would decimate them. I didn’t know how some would survive. I thought about Leschek and his extended family, and I pictured the hardships they were already forced to endure. I had to recommend layoffs, but I wanted to soften the blow. I decided to couch the whole idea of firings as just one of the possible “strategic options” in our report, hoping the government would ultimately consider the other option: continuing to subsidize Autosan.
    But when I showed this “softened” presentation to Wolfgang in London, he was furious.
    “What is this shit?”
    “These are their options.”
    “What are you, stupid? They don’t have any fucking options. They