Word: presentational
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stages of the drama began the night before the Sept. 10 session, over dinner in a private room at Manhattan's Ritz-Carlton hotel. Originally Wyman had planned to be host to the affair for a number of board members, but then he suddenly canceled. Tisch also was not present...
...firm. Some of the directors were disturbed by reports, including those in a Newsweek cover story on CBS's troubles, that Wyman had talked to officials at several companies about a possible merger. (TIME has learned that feelers were indeed received by Philip Morris.) According to one of those present at the Ritz-Carlton, the directors considered such a purchase a bad idea; Paley was especially opposed. As a board source later explained, "We don't want the management of a big company that is in some other business to exert an unfair and self-serving influence on public attitudes...
That feeling began to change soon after the board convened the next day in the Italianate boardroom personally designed and decorated by Paley. Wyman and other senior executives briefed the directors on CBS's prospects and strategy. The presentation was later described by some of those present as lackluster. But it contained a bombshell: at the outset Wyman asked the board to authorize continued negotiations with Coca-Cola over the purchase of CBS. By implication, that meant he had already held talks of some kind; a Coca-Cola spokesman later volunteered that "there was contact, but there was nothing...
Once Wyman's proposal was broached, however, board members gave it a thorough airing. The dissection of the pros and cons went on for several hours. Board members heard legal opinions that they had no obligation to put CBS up for sale. But as one of those present put it later, the directors were also warned ; that "once you begin entertaining outside offers, you have to listen to all offers." A participant recalls that Tisch declared once again that his stock ownership "wasn't a takeover by Loews. He emphasized that he had a big stake in the company...
...Egyptian counterclaim hinges on a 1915 map drawn up by British military surveyors, including T.E. Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. This map places the border on a hilltop more than half a mile east of the 1906 line -- and, as it turns out, in or near the present hotel...