What's it like to field due diligence requests in a high-stakes, fast-moving auction for your own company?

Ask Josh King, who as vice president for corporate development at AT&T Wireless fielded diligence requests in the 2004 auction of the company. He'll tell you it's exhausting, sometimes frustrating, but also a chance to remind buyers that they have plenty of competition—and thereby get a better price for your shareholders. In the upcoming issue of Corporate Dealmaker (available Monday online and in print), King shares his first-person account of the 30-day buildup to the Feb. 13 bid  deadline.

As the self-described "one-man choke point for data," King responded to requests for data, coordinated the flow of information, and scheduled and sat in on diligence meetings. He never missed a chance to fill one potential buyer's request with information generated for another. But he also had to deal with the needs and personalities of three very different prospective bidders: Japan-based DoCoMo, U.K.-based Vodafone, and  Atlanta-based Cingular. Here’s how King put it:

"DoCoMo is hyper-focused on engineering details, is only now getting into financial  info and uses an army of lower-level folks to conduct their review. In contrast, Vodafone seems to have an uncanny knack for homing in on our hot-button issues, often getting their highest-level people on to calls with our senior executives to ask very pointed questions about our billing system conversion problems, increased churn, exposure to number portability and digital migration issues. Cingular takes a middle course, conducting diligence by the book and making the management meetings more of a lovefest, with pleasantries and softball questions.”

It wasn’t all love and softballs with Cingular, the eventual winning bidder. The company’s approach to diligence was to give equal voice to all parties, meaning executives at Cingular and at its JV parents, SBC and BellSouth. “I tell Cingular’s bankers at Citi that we can provide everything they need to do their synergies analysis, but we can’t necessarily do it three different ways to satisfy everyone. I hear sighs at the other end of the line—it’s obviously not easy managing a three-headed client.”
King's story is a great read—think Barbarians at the Gate for the corp dev set. It gives a crystal-clear window into the mechanics behind the biggest cash transaction in history.
—Suzanne Stevens

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