A Wall Street Genius’s Final Investment Playbook

Chapter 350 : The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs (8)

Anyway, Gerard ultimately agreed to the animal hospital business.

When you really thought about it, he had no reason to turn it down.

If you can’t dodge the typhoon, you might as well enjoy it.

Above all, at this point, the link between Talia and Orange was a business opportunity that was hard to refuse.

A few days later, we also got a call from Intelligentsia.

Apparently, that sweet bait called data was a lot more powerful than their pride in ethics.

After that, we started discussing a full-on collaboration.

More concretely, we decided to set up a joint venture, and that company would be solely responsible for CRISPR’s animal clinical work.

The total capital was three hundred eighty million dollars.

My Cure Fund would put in seventy percent, Marquis twenty percent, and Intelligentsia ten percent.

I was covering most of the money, while Gerard, along with his animal hospital network, took charge of regulatory negotiations, external risk, and all the political grunt work.

Intelligentsia would focus purely on research.

To sum it up, I was taking on the money, Gerard was taking on the hassle, and Intelligentsia was taking on nothing but research.

As he was flipping through the contract, Intelligentsia’s CEO paused and looked up.

“You’re being very generous.”

His eyes skimmed over the clauses about IP and future profit sharing.

If this project produced results, the fruits would be divided fairly according to each party’s contribution—a deal that, by Wall Street standards, was pretty much charity.

But the tone in his voice, as he read that clause, held more wariness than gratitude.

He looked at me like he was wondering what kind of scheme this CEO was plotting.

I let a faint smile curl at the corners of my mouth.

“In return, I’m taking a majority of the board.”

The joint venture’s board would have seven seats in total.

Out of those, I held three, Gerard had one, and Intelligentsia had one.

The remaining two seats went to neutral outside directors.

In the end, the key to every important decision was in my hands.

That was what mattered.

My goal wasn’t simply to make money.

For what came next, I needed to be able to move these people like pieces on my game board.

That was why I gave up some returns in exchange for control.

Still, from Intelligentsia’s CEO’s perspective, the whole thing just looked suspicious.

“If you’d prefer stricter terms, we can revise the contract as much as you like.”

Even that light joke didn’t loosen the air in the conference room.

“If there’s something you want, say it now. It’s better than trying to flip the terms later.”

That’s the problem.

If you treat people too well, they almost never believe you.

Of course, it’s not like I’m running a charity.

“I’ve already spelled out what I want clearly enough. Like I said, the project to apply CRISPR to Castleman disease has to go forward.”

Whether their in-vivo editing approach could actually be used in real Castleman clinical trials was still unknown.

Regardless of that possibility, progress in the research itself was necessary, so I’d made it a non-negotiable condition.

“And I’m also demanding speed. You have to produce meaningful results within the timeline I set.”

Our capital contributions would be paid out in stages, under a milestone-based structure tied to each target.

Within three months, they had to finish the clinical design.

Within seven months, they had to complete safety evaluations at the animal testing stage.

Within twelve months, they had to at least demonstrate basic efficacy.

Each stage required quantitative metrics that could numerically evaluate performance, and a formal interim report was mandatory.

In other words, this investment was structured so that new money only came in when each milestone was passed and they moved on to the next stage.

On top of that, the schedule was fairly tight.

It definitely wasn’t going to feel leisurely to them.

But that wouldn’t really be a problem.

The CEO hesitated, then spoke.

“Since all those ‘meaningful results’ you’re asking for are research outcomes, not commercialization milestones… there really isn’t any reason for us to refuse.”

Exactly.

The truth was, they’d been wanting to move this research forward quickly, but they’d been stuck because they didn’t have the money.

And yet here I was telling them, I’ll give you the money, now hurry up and do the research.

This was work they should have been doing anyway, even without my whip.

In other words, my “whip” was landing exactly where they’d been itching.

There was no way it could hurt.

If anything, it would feel like relief.

Even so, from the CEO’s perspective, that was exactly what worried him.

“The terms are so generous that your true intentions are hard to read. I don’t see any typical Wall Street-style profit structure here, so won’t it be hard to convince your investors? Are you really sure this is okay…?”

“Are you seriously worrying about me right now?”

Honestly, I was speechless.

Have I been too quiet lately?

I’d been busy with the Talia situation, sure, but it had only been a few months since the hundred-billion-dollar race wrapped up.

Maybe they’d been holed up in the lab so long they’d lost track of how the world worked.

“You don’t have to worry about my investors. They’re not going to object.”

Right now, I’m the fund manager posting the highest returns on Wall Street.

And my style has always been unorthodox, a kind of rule-breaking play.

At this point, even if I pull some bizarre stunt, people will just sit back and think, He must have a plan.

I’d already finished mapping out how I was going to make money from this anyway.

I’d already locked down the supply chain around the major CRISPR companies.

Reagents, enzymes, specialized equipment, analytics software, and so on.

Whether the therapy succeeded or failed didn’t matter.

Once the technology started moving, the infrastructure would move, and when the infrastructure moved, I’d get paid.

It’s the same logic as making steady money off Envid even when AI hasn’t been fully monetized yet.

What matters is lighting the fuse on the race.

“You can stop worrying about profits. I’m already holding the Envidi of this field.”

When I dropped that little hint, the CEO’s face immediately went pale.

“Are you… going to start again? Like during the AI fiasco…?”

Only then did I finally realize the root of his anxiety.

He wasn’t suspicious of the overly generous terms I’d laid out.

He was afraid of getting caught in the middle of a massive wave.

Afraid that his company would end up at the very center of changes big enough to shake the entire market.

There was no need to deny it.

“Yes, this won’t end quietly either. This isn’t the kind of deal that goes by quietly, is it?”

“What we fear most… is becoming nothing more than a tool in that fight.”

If I tried to talk him down point by point, we’d be here all day.

So I decided to just admit it.

“You’re right. I do intend to use you as a piece on my board.”

“…”

“If you hate that idea so much that you’d rather stand on the opposite side from me, I’m not going to force you. But from that moment on, you’ll become someone I absolutely have to knock over.”

“......”

“However, if you choose to stand on my side, I can at least promise you this—Intelligentsia itself won’t be touched. I’ll use only this joint venture we’re creating. And I’ll make sure the results are there. The choice is yours.”

In the end, Intelligentsia’s CEO signed the contract.

But it would still take a little more time before our joint venture could officially launch.

There were all kinds of legal procedures left to go through.

In the meantime, I kicked off a full-scale strategy meeting.

In the Pareto Innovation conference room, not only the people handpicked from Cure Fund but also a few unfamiliar faces had gathered.

For this meeting, we had not only traders and PMs from the “front office,” but also a large number of people from the “middle office,” including lawyers and the risk management team.

From the very start, it was clear that legal issues and various regulatory problems were all tangled up together.

“Our target is CRISPR Medical.”

Among the three frontrunners in CRISPR, they were the number one candidate I was keeping my eye on.

The legal team spoke up first.

“We were told to keep all options on the table and analyze them, but given the local specifics, a hostile takeover would be extremely difficult. Especially in Switzerland, the legal revisions in 2013 made it even harder.”

CRISPR Medical was headquartered in Switzerland.

It was listed in the U.S., but legally, it was very much a Swiss company.

And Switzerland is a country that prioritizes corporate stability above all else, where shareholders’ powers are limited and management holds overwhelming authority.

It’s not that you can’t force a takeover with sheer capital, but the explanation that followed was that pulling it off within the timeframe I wanted would be difficult.

“If we want to steer them in the direction we want in the shortest amount of time, getting onto the board is the fastest path…”

The most ideal scenario would be for me to join the board myself and effectively hold the reins of the company.

But even that was far from an easy task.

Dobby then tapped on his tablet and threw the shareholder breakdown up on the screen.

“The issue is securing enough shares. From the start, the float on this stock, the number of shares actually in circulation, is pretty small.”

The float is the amount of stock that actually trades in the market.

A pie chart popped up on the screen.

The shares held by small shareholders and minor institutions came to just nine percent.

We’d already secured three and a half percent of that.

The rest of the major stakes were roughly divided as follows: about twenty-two percent held by the founders, eighteen percent by the early venture capital investors, twenty-five percent by strategic pharmaceutical partners, and twenty-five percent by long-term mutual funds.

“These are basically immovable votes.”

The founders, the early VCs, and the strategic pharma partners.

Just those three groups together held sixty-five percent of the shares.

They’d all been partners since the seed stage, and there was no way they were going to side with some random outside force that suddenly showed up.

In other words, they were tightly bound, rock-solid votes.

“That means this is the only group really worth aiming for.”

The mutual funds.

“In a perfect world, we’d just buy out their stake, but that’s not very realistic. They’re in this as long-term investors, so they don’t get shaken by short-term noise. They’re not going to hand over a goose that lays golden eggs, not right now.”

They were investing in CRISPR with a ten-, twenty-year horizon in mind.

So no matter what blew up in the short term, they weren’t likely to flinch easily.

“If buying their shares isn’t feasible, then our only option is to ally with them. The problem is, we don’t know if they’ll actually take our side. We’re pushing for speed and rapid application to rare diseases, but their trust in the founders is pretty much absolute.”

Among CRISPR Medical’s founders is someone who will one day win a Nobel Prize for this technology.

From their perspective, of course they’d rather side with the authority on the science than with a hedge fund.

That was when the front-office side chimed in.

“Then let’s crush that trust. You dig into the founder’s life, you’re bound to find some dirt.”

“We can sway public opinion. Once the press starts hitting them, the stock price will go wild.”

“Or we could rile up retail investors again this time and use that momentum…”

Ideas from the traders came pouring out, fast and loud.

But the middle-office crowd went pale hearing them.

“Handling it like that would only make things worse!”

“This isn’t a simple capital game! It’s a game of trust and relationships, and we’re complete outsiders here—if we resort to tactics that rough…”

“If we want to earn their trust, we have to strengthen our technical advisory side and put forward a management track record that proves we’re reliable. That has to come first!”

I couldn’t say I didn’t understand their point.

My name might be fairly well known thanks to my performance, but that was strictly in terms of making money.

I’d never actually run a company myself, and I didn’t have any technical expertise.

It was hard to expect a board to just follow my lead.

The middle-office people insisted that we should start, even now, by building up the trust we lacked.

I quietly shook my head.

“No. We’re not going to focus on patching our weaknesses. We’re going to go with a strategy that maximizes our strengths.”

“…What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means we’re going to use money and push.”

We were going to squeeze every bit of value out of the capital we had.

The new team members couldn’t quite hide the look on their faces that said, Is that really going to work?

But my confidence didn’t waver.

“No matter how strong trust and relationships are, in the end, they always bow to money. And if they don’t, it just means the offer was too small, or the money was used the wrong way.”

There’s a reason people say never to co-sign a loan for family.

In front of money, even blood ties and loyalty eventually start to shake.

Saving that kind of power is what’s truly foolish.

“First, let’s see if we can make the turtle run a bit faster.”

Then, out of nowhere, a voice popped up.

It was Gonzalez.

“Turtle, turtle, stick out your head. If you don’t, I’ll roast you and eat you.”

Everyone else just stared at him, confused, while he sat there grinning to himself.

I ignored him and forcibly picked up the thread of the conversation where it had awkwardly snapped.

“There’s a saying in the East. People only move when the fire’s right at their feet. And that kind of spark is something money can always create.”

“But with just this joint venture…”

“Of course, it’s not enough.”

The turtle is absolutely convinced of its own way.

It believes that if it moves slowly and steadily, it will win in the end.

Confidence like that doesn’t usually crumble from a single little spark.

So what we had to do was simple.

“There’s only one thing we need to do. We keep throwing sparks at the turtle until its confidence starts to shake.”

“‘Until it shakes’—how, exactly…?”

I quietly pulled out something I’d been holding.

It was a high-end die I’d had custom-made just for this project.

Made of a subtly gleaming metal, with raised numbers and fine patterns etched into its surface, it had a refined, luxurious look.

This one was a fifteen-sider.

I had no idea if this approach would actually work.

There was only one way to find out.

I rolled the die slowly.