When is the first time a CEO dares to say out loud, “It’s time to sell the company”? Does he practice first in front of a mirror? Does he quietly float the idea to his most trusted colleague over dinner? Does he seek legal counsel? SEC guidance? Financial advice? If the CEO is gutsy enough, “selling the company” might quietly pass his lips for the first time during a clandestine meeting with a potential buyer in Las Vegas—setting the bait for a bid that will electrify the decision-makers back home.
Mergers and acquisitions are messy business and they change the lives of everyday people.
Pink Slips and Parting Gifts is the fictional account of the sale of a U.S. development company, revealing absurd events mixed with employee anguish as another corporation changes hands and disappears from the big board on Wall Street.
By the time Easton Company CEO Jeffrey Elkins entices a major competitor to buy his Fortune 500 Company, the corporate jet is waiting and his parachute is platinum. In 14 weeks the deal of a lifetime transforms a handful of quirky executives into undeserving multi-millionaires, propels a workforce into unemployment and dispatches unsuspecting retirees into near poverty. In the background, security guards dance naked in mall fountains, the corporate jet is sold on eBay, and a CEO utters his final words before relinquishing his title: Make sure the employees get their pumpkin pies.
The memorable cast of corporate characters includes a germophobic CEO, a marketing VP turned Elvis impersonator, the Sundance Kid of Everyman Compensation, and a purchasing director nicknamed the eBay Wizard.
