Lindsey Graham (0:00)

Want to get more from business movers? Subscribe to Wondery plus for early access to new episodes, ad free listening and exclusive content you can't find anywhere else. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's 2:45am on July 14, 1984, at the headquarters of Mirror Group Newspapers in London. 43 year old Mike Malloy steps into the leather paneled elevator reserved for company executives and ascends to the ninth floor. An hour ago, he was asleep at home when his telephone rang. The voice on the other end of the line ordered him into work immediately. The company chairman wanted to see him. As editor of the Daily Mirror, Mike is used to pulling all nighters when covering major stories. But since there's no breaking news this morning, Mike can't understand why he's been summoned so urgently. Mike makes his way along the plush carpet of the executive's hallway. Light spills from underneath the closed door of Chairman Les Carpenter's office. Mike knocks tentatively. Come in. Mike frowns because he doesn't recognize that voice. Mike opens the door and it's not Les sitting at the desk inside, but a large man with jet black hair and a cigar clasped between his fingers. It's Robert Maxwell, and he smiles. Mike, come on in. Mr. Maxwell. I was told the chairman wanted to see me. He does. That is, I do. I'm the new chairman. I just bought the Mirror Group. So please sit down and let me get you a drink. As Robert pours whiskey into two glasses, Mike notices that Robert has taken off his shoes. It certainly hasn't taken long for the Mirror's new owner to make himself comfortable. So, Mike, I wanted to meet you as soon as possible to go over our business strategy. So tell me, how did my predecessor plan to make the Daily mirror profitable? Oh, Mr. Maxwell, I'm just the editor. Mr. Carpenter ran the business side. Well, maybe that's the problem. It seems to me that Mr. Carpenter didn't do much at all. Now I'm here, though, that's going to change. Mike isn't sure he likes the idea of Robert being more involved in the management of the Daily Mirror. But now's not the time to pick a fight with his new boss. Well, I look forward to working with you, Mr. Maxwell. And I with you. How many readers does the Mirror have? At the moment, three and a half million. All right. This time next year we'll have a million new readers. On top of that, the Daily Mirror will be the country's best selling paper. And we'll be turning a healthy profit too. I think we should drink to that, don't you Mike? Robert holds up his whiskey glass and Mike half heartedly taps his glass against Robert's cheers. To the Daily Mirror and a prosperous future for all of us. Robert Maxwell had fought for over a decade to enter the newspaper business. He had tried and failed to buy the News of the World, the Sun and the Times. But now that he had the Daily Mirror at last, Robert would soon discover that buying a newspaper was only the beginning of the battle. 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And it's designed to fit your unique professional needs, working seamlessly with the apps you use every day. So for the best AI option, join 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to work faster and hit their goals while keeping their data Secure. Go to Grammarly.comenterprise to learn more. Grammarly Enterprise Ready AI from Wonder E. I'm Lindsey Graham and this is business members. In July 1984, 61 year old entrepreneur Robert Maxwell was at the peak of his career. The former refugee from Czechoslovakia had made a successful life for himself in the United Kingdom. He was the owner of the international scientific publisher Pergamon Press as well as the Oxford United soccer team. He had spent a fortune restoring a mansion and buying luxury yachts and cars. And he had just made a 15 year old dream a reality by finally becoming a newspaper owner just like his great rival Rupert Murdoch. But even after buying the left wing newspaper the Daily Mirror, Robert felt that he was just getting started. He was eager to grow his existing businesses further and expand his portfolio into other industries and other countries. But those ambitions would require cash. And cash was something that Robert was short on the purchase of the Mirror Group newspapers had cost Robert More than 100 million pounds, almost half a billion US dollars today. It had wiped out all the money that Robert had in his bank accounts and forced him to take on an additional 7 million pounds in debt. He now had nothing left to finance new additions to his business empire. So Robert could have taken his time consolidating his holdings while he built up cash reserves again. But Robert was not a patient man. Speculating had made him a millionaire after all. And he had no intention of stopping now. This is the third episode in our four part series on media mogul Robert man in the Mirror it's lunchtime on July 18, 1984 at the White Hart, a pub in central London. Four days after Robert Maxwell bought Mirror Group Newspapers. Robert peers through the warm fog of cigarette smoke. It's a bright summer's day outside, but this bar seems to repel sunlight. The floor is sticky. Dingy net curtains hang in the window and the sickly sweet smell of beer and stale sweat seems to seep out of the furniture. Robert is hoping to find his top reporters here. Because if there's one thing that newspaper men enjoy more than a good story, it's a good drink. He spots the group he's looking for and maneuvers through the busy bar to a table in the back. Hello, gentlemen. No, no, please don't get up. What are you all drinking? Pints of bitters all around, is it? Say no more. This one's on me. Robert heads over to the bar and gives the small gray haired barman a wave. Another round for my team over there. Thirsty work, journalism. But appearing by his side is one of the top political writers at the Daily Mirror, Joe Haynes. He has a concerned look on his face. What do you think you're doing? Robert turns. Joe is well known for his outspoken columns, but more importantly, he's an influential figure in the Mirror newsroom and Robert is eager to get him on his side. I'm buying everyone a drink. What would you like? No, I'm all right. But you don't belong here, you know. Oh, now, now, Mr. Haynes. I'm part of the team. You've just spent £1 million buying our paper. Yes, but don't give me the working man act. It is not an act. Joe scoffs and Robert looks wounded. I used to be a Labor Member of Parliament. Only because the Tories wouldn't have you. I mean, look at you in your pinstripe suit. You'd be more at home in Thatcher's cabinet. Than you are here. Well, in the business world, you have to dress a certain way, but beneath those fancy Savile Row rags, you're just like us. No. You know, Mr. Haynes, not a lot of people would speak to me like that. And that's one of the problems with this country. Well, don't worry, Mr. Maxwell. You won't have to put up with me for long because I can clear my desk by the end of the day. I am glad to hear that, because as my new political editor, you'll be needing an office of your own. Joe stares at him, wondering if this is somehow a joke. But Robert just smiles. You don't think I bought the Mirror without some idea of who makes it tick? One of the reasons I spent all that money is because I wanted to work with you. I want you to be the newspaper's political editor, Joe. I want you to be the man to really take the fight to the Conservatives. Joe is silent. He glances back at the group of senior Mirror reporters in the corner. Have you told them yet? That's our secret for now. There are plenty of changes I want to make, but rest assured, this will be one of the first. What do you say to all that? Joe thinks for a moment, and then he grins. Well, I suppose I'll have a pint of mild then, please. An excellent choice, Joe. An excellent choice. Having been one of Robert Maxwell's harshest critics before the takeover, the political reporter Joe Haynes would soon become one of his staunchest defenders. Robert would need every ally he could get in the newsroom because he had no intention of sitting on the sidelines. Robert had big plans, not only to transform the fortunes of the Daily Mirror, but also to transform the reputation of its owner. The first edition the Daily Mirror published under Robert Maxwell's ownership featured an editorial written by the new proprietor himself. Under the headline Forward with Britain, Robert promised his readers that the newspaper would return to its glory days of the 1960s, when it had been the country's bestselling newspaper. But Robert faced an uphill battle to overtake Rupert Murdoch's son newspaper as Britain's top tabloid newspaper. Readers were unusually loyal customers who tended to find a publication they liked and buy it day after day. Robert needed to find a way to stand out from the competition. But his first ploy to increase sales would be borrowed from his chief rival. For the last few years, the sun had run a bingo game in the pages of the paper. Every day, readers check the numbers printed in the newest issue against their individual game cards. If they matched them all they won a cash prize. Robert realized that this game encouraged occasional customers to become regular buyers, and he demanded that the Daily Mirror have its own version. Within a week of his request, the Mirror introduced who Dares Wins? A bingo game with a first prize of one million pounds, the biggest in newspaper history. Mirror customers who bought the newspaper on the day that the game began received a bingo card with a series of numbers on it. And over the next few weeks, each day's newspaper had different numbers printed in them. Just like the game in the Sun, Mirror readers had to match the numbers printed in the paper to the ones on their bingo cards. The first reader to match all of them would become a millionaire overnight. This competition had the desired effect. Sales of the Daily Mirror rose and Robert was delighted. What? He wanted the newspaper circulation to be boosted for as long as possible. He didn't want the contest to be over in the first few days. So when the first readers claimed to have won the million pound jackpot, Robert told his staff to find loopholes and deny them the prize. Only several weeks later, when the novelty of the competition had worn off and the circulation began to fall again, did Robert allow a winner to emerge. And even then, Robert controlled the supposedly random draw. He didn't want the prize to go to a reader who was too wealthy or not photogenic enough. Eventually, Robert found a winner who checked all the boxes. Maudie Barrett was a 67 year old widow from Essex who still worked as a cleaner. She also had a cute dog that Robert thought would go down well with Amira's readers. So with great fanfare, Maudie was announced as the winner of who Dares Wins? And invited to the coastal resort town of Blackpool to be presented with her prize. In a carefully choreographed ceremony, Robert handed Maudie an oversized check for £1,000,000. While photographers snapped Maudie's delighted reaction. Maudie was less pleased when a Mirror journalist managed to sit on her pet dog, though that part didn't make the report in the next day's newspaper. But Robert didn't just interfere in the Daily Mirror's reader competitions. He also involved himself directly in day to day editorial decisions as well. He read articles before they went to press and kept a red pen in his pocket to make last minute changes. He selected the photographs that accompanied front page splashes and he even suggested topics for Mirror writers to cover in features, often coincidentally choosing subjects that boosted his other business interests. One reporter was puzzled when they were asked to write a positive piece on Burma's economic growth under a military dictatorship. A subject that wasn't an obvious area of interest for Mirror readers. Only later did it emerge that Robert was negotiating a deal with a Burmese government to give him generous trade terms with the country. The Mirror's article was part of his charm offensive. But it wasn't just Robert's businesses that the Daily Mirror promoted. It was Robert himself. He became the face of the who Dares wins game as well as fronting charity appeals for famine in Ethiopia. In total, during his first six months of ownership, Robert's photograph appeared in the newspaper over a hundred times. But Robert's micromanagement did not have the desired effect. When he first bought the paper, he promised editor Mike Malloy that they'd gain a million readers in the first year. But when the figures came in, the Daily Mirror's circulation had actually fallen by almost half a million readers. Robert had chosen a bad time to invest in newspapers. The Daily Mirror was suffering from a decline that struck the entire industry in the mid-1980s. A new generation was getting their news from television instead of news newspapers. And as a result, circulation figures were down across the board, including at Rupert Murdoch's papers. So with the Daily Mirror's revenue falling, Robert needed to find another way to balance the books. And if he couldn't boost revenues, he had to cut costs. In the newspaper trade, the biggest expense was printing. For years, newspaper owners of all stripes had battled to bring down these costs. But the powerful print work unions had always stood in the way. The unions knew that there was a limited number of printing companies that could cope with the high speed, high volume production of daily newspapers. And that gave unions the advantage in any negotiations. So Robert knew that if he wanted to cut costs, he would have a fight on his hands. But then he got a stroke of luck. It came from an unexpected source. Robert's old rival, Rupert Murdoch. Rupert's company, News International, printed tens of millions of papers every week. To cut production costs, Rupert had invested in a new high tech print works in Wapping in East London. And through the use of computer technology and automated machinery, this new plant would require just a tenth of the workforce of a traditional print works. As a result, the unions had refused to work there. But Rupert found enough non union workers to cover the shortfall and his new modern print works opened in January 1986. Robert Maxwell didn't have the resources to invest in a modern facility facility of his own. But he didn't have to. Having lost the contracts to Print News International's titles, the old print works couldn't afford to lose the Daily Mirror too. So Robert chose that moment to turn the screw. He promised that Mirror Group Newspapers would not transition to an automated plant like Rupert Murdoch's, but only if the printers lowered their prices. With their backs against the wall, the printers conceded to price cuts that no other newspaper owner had ever managed to secure before. Slashing their biggest cost had a huge impact on Mirror Group's bottom line. In Robert's first year as owner, the company made a profit of 5 million pounds, but a year later that was up to 70 million. Robert could look back on his two years at the helm of the Daily Mirror with some satisfaction. Although circulation had fallen, profits had risen, and quickly. But Robert was never one to stand still. There were always new worlds for him to conquer, and he already had an idea on how he'd spend the Mirror's millions. Business Movers is sponsored by Monarch how much did you spend on groceries this month? I have to admit, if you ask me, I do not know the answer to that. Certainly not off the top of my head. And a month ago if I were to try to find out, I'd have to scour statements from like three different credit cards plus my checking account. A lot of work. But there is a better way. Monarch is the top rated all in one personal finance app. You get a comprehensive view of all your accounts, investments, transactions and more. Create custom budgets, track progress toward financial goals and collaborate with your partner. Plus, Monarch helps you make smart money moves to get you closer to your goals. And now get an extended 30 day free trial when you go to monarchmoney.commovers. i love the Monarch Dashboard. A quick at a glance financial check in how much did I spend on groceries? 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Learn more@wALKERdunlap.com podcast and be sure to follow Walker and Dunlap on all your favorite social media channels. That's WalkerDunlup.com podcast. The Walker webcast insights for life It's June 28, 1987, at the Mira Group offices in London, three years after Robert Maxwell bought the company. Robert settles back in his chair and takes a long drag on his cigar as he waits for the phone line to connect. He's determined to enjoy this call. Hello, this is Rupert Murnock. Rupert, so nice to speak to you. It's Robert Maxwell. Robert, this is a surprise. What can I do for you? Oh, nothing, nothing really. I just wanted to let you know I bought the Today newspaper just over a year ago. A new tabloid went on sale in Britain. Today offered something that no other newspaper of the time did, full color printing. A few weeks ago, Robert put in a bid for the tabloid. It's been accepted, and now he's keen to gloat about his success to his chief rival. After a moment's pause, Rupert answers. Well, I didn't realize that Today was on the market. Yes, and those full color presses weren't cheap. The owners wanted to recoup their investment as soon as possible. And I know a bargain when I see one. Well, of course, I spend a lot of time over here in the States now, so I might be a little out of the loop. You heard about our 20th Century Fox deal, I assume Robert scowls because he wanted to be the one boasting, not Rupert. Yes. Well, there'll be a big announcement about today. After everything's signed, I'll call a press conference, take questions. Yeah, you know the drill. It'll be all over television. But I thought it courteous to let you know. So I didn't catch you off guard. Well, that's very gentlemanly of you, Robert. Very honorable. I know we've been adversaries in the past, but I do feel it's important that we biz businessmen do things right. I quite agree. There's not really enough decorum in trade these days. So when you make your announcement, I'll make sure that my papers react in a suitably restrained manner. No attacks on you, anything like that. We'll even send some reporters along. You say the press conference will be held as soon as you sign the contracts? That's right. Presumably in a few days time? I expect so, yes. Well, excellent. I'll Let my editors know. But I've got to go now. I've got to make another call. You think the newspaper business is tough, wait till you get into movies. Ah, big screen adventures. Yes. You know, I've often thought my life would make a good again. Thanks for letting me know, Robert. We'll speak soon. Take care. Robert Maxwell had been so eager to gloat about his deal that he had made a major mistake. Rupert Murdoch picked up on a key detail that Robert had let slip. The contracts that would seal the purchase of the Today newspaper had not yet been signed. That meant it wasn't late for Rupert to put in his own bid for the tabloid. Rupert Murdoch had already beaten Robert Maxwell to two deals before. And he was about to do it again. By the summer of 1987, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch had expanded his business far beyond his native Australia. He was now a naturalized US citizen and the owner of several American newspapers and television stations, as well as one of the most famous movie studios in the country, 20th Century Fox. But success in the United States did not mean that Rupert Murdoch had any intention of letting a rival get the better of him in Britain. Within minutes of hearing that Robert Maxwell was bidding for the Today newspaper, Rupert booked a flight from Los Angeles to London. Although it was a Saturday, he got to work as soon as he landed. Reaching out to his contacts in the newspaper industry, he discovered that Robert was due to sign the contract to buy Today on Monday. And that gave Rupert two days to throw a wrench in the works. Rupert had offered 40 million pounds for the Today newspaper, the equivalent of $145 million in modern money. But he was only offering 10 million pounds of that upfront. The other 30 million came from Mirror Group Newspapers, taking on the debts accumulated in setting up the Today newspaper. In contrast, Rupert could be a pure cash buyer. And after huddling with News International's chief finance officer, Rupert put together a last minute bid of £38 million for the newspaper. This was slightly less than Robert's offer, but it would allow Today's owners to walk away with more money in their pockets. News International's bid quickly became the favorite offer. The deal with Robert Maxwell was called off and Robert was furious. Now he was the one scrambling against Clock to stop the sale. But he couldn't afford to get into a bidding war. News International might have plenty of money in the bank, but Robert didn't. He had spent it all to buy the Mirror Group. So Robert would have to find another cheaper way to stop Rupert Murdoch. He decided to try get a foothold on the board of the Today newspaper and veto the News International bid. The company had a handful of minority shareholders and Robert began courting them in the hope that they sell their stakes to him. One of them was a familiar phase from Robert's time in the House of Commons. Geoffrey Archer was a former Conservative Member of Parliament and a best selling author. When his latest novel had been serialized in the Today newspaper, he'd accepted a 1% stake in the tabloid instead of a fee. Robert knew this, so he made Jeffrey an offer. £10,000 for his 1% share, a figure that would value the new newspaper as a whole at just £1 million. It was a lowball bid, and Jeffrey responded with a vastly inflated counteroffer of £500,000. 50 times more. The two men settled in the middle and Jeffrey sold Robert his 1% interest for £250,000. But no other shareholders were willing to sell. And Robert's 1% wasn't enough to secure him a place on the board. And he was left powerless to block Rupert Murdoch's takeover. Over the past two decades, Rupert had beaten Robert to the News of the World, the Sun, the Times Group. And now Rupert had swept the carpet from under his feet for a fourth time. And Robert had paid £250,000 for the privilege. The collapse of the Today deal wasn't Robert Maxwell's only setback. In the mid-1980s, he passed on the opportunity to buy computing business Sinclair Research, a decision that cost him millions in revenue as the home computer market took off and his attempted takeover of American publishing house Harcourt Brace was fought off by the company's owners. But Robert was not a man to let any miscalculation or rejection stop him for long. He still planned an aggressive program of expansion into new industries. He renamed one of his existing businesses, making the rebranded Maxwell Communication Corporation into an umbrella company for new acquisitions. And there were plenty. He entered the music industry by buying Nimbus Records, the first British company to sell compact discs. Then he managed to get a foothold in television by snapping up a half share of MTV's European subsidiary and buying a 12.5% stake in TF1, the oldest and most popular channel in France. But Israel was where Robert spent the most. For years after arriving in Britain, Robert had tried to forget his Jewish background. He viewed his ancestry as a barrier to being accepted by the British establishment. But shortly after buying Mirror Group Newspapers, Robert had been invited to meet Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Tel Aviv. It was the first time Robert had been to Israel. And the trip was a turning point in his personal life. Now that Robert felt that he'd made it as a businessman, he could finally embrace the Jewish roots he'd denied for so long. When Robert met with Prime Minister Shamir, he was visibly emotional. He promised that he'd invest £250 million in Israel over the next few years. And he was good to his word. Robert bought Israeli newspapers, he invested in Israeli technology and pharmaceutical companies. And he tried to buy the country's top two football clubs. It wasn't long before Robert was the biggest single investor in Israel's economy. But Robert's shopping spree did not come cheap. He borrowed heavily to pay for the new purchases and the interest payments on all those loans quickly began to mount. Robert didn't take that as a signal to slow down though. It just meant he had to get creative. And as he trawled through his company's books, he realized that he had an interest free source of capital sitting in his own accounts. The Mirror Group pension fund was worth 300 million pounds, the equivalent of a billion dollars today. That money was meant to pay for his employees retirements. But Robert didn't see any harm from borrowing from it. It would only be temporary. After all, once the deals he made with the money paid off, he would simply transfer what he owed back into the fund. And no one would ever need to know. The first time that Robert put his hand in the pension fund, it was only for around 1.5 million pounds. The British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was privatizing a raft of state owned corporations. And among them was the national airline, British Airways. Robert saw an opportunity to buy a lucrative part of the business. The subsidiary that hired out helicopters to wealthy passengers like himself. So Robert agreed to a 14 million pound price for British Airways helicopters. But as the deadline to complete the deal drew near, he found he didn't have enough cash on hand. So he took the £1.5 million he needed from the Mirror Group pension fund. He repaid it in full a few weeks later. And no one seemed to notice what he had done. Nor did they the following year when Robert borrowed another £9 million from the fund. This time the money helped pay for the acquisition of IPC magazines and fund the launch of a new tabloid newspaper, the London Daily News. Again, the money was quickly repaid. Borrowing money from the pension fund was not illegal. The terms of the fund allowed its trustees to lend money to anyone they saw fit, even themselves. But Robert knew that using his employees pensions in this way would be considered unethical by many. Pensions were supposed to be a safe investment that offered a virtually guaranteed return. Robert's business acquisitions were riskier. Despite his bluster, he could never guarantee that he'd make enough money back to repay what he borrowed. And if he didn't, Mira Group's retired employees would pay the price. So to avoid anyone finding out about his misuse of the pension fund, Robert disguised what he was doing. In March 1988, he combined his company's four pension funds into one larger fund and put it in the hands of a new company he called Bishopsgate Investment Management. But this company was in turn administered by another new organization, the Maxwell Charitable Trust. Based in the tiny nation of Lichtenstein, nestled between Austria and Switzerland, Liechtenstein was a tax haven. It had strict regulations in place that hid the ownership and transactions of companies that were registered there. By putting two layers of corporate control between him and the pension fund, and by registering their accounts a secretive tax haven, Robert had made it almost impossible for anyone to trace transactions and withdrawals from the funds. Not for the first time in his career, Robert was bending the rules to serve his own interests. He was taking advantage of his employees and putting their money at risk. And they had no idea he was doing it. By opening up his company's pension fund, Robert had essentially granted himself a 300 million pound line of credit. And now he planned to take full advantage of it. Klaviyo powers smarter digital relationships for more than 151,000 successful brands, including Headley and Bennett, Fishwife and Dagny Dover. Klaviyo's unified data and marketing automation platform turns your customer data into personalized connections to make every moment count across AI powered email, sms, analytics, and more. Build smarter digital relationships with your customers. Visit K L A v I y o.com to make every moment count. It's September 1988. On a helipad above Robert Maxwell's penthouse apartment in London, four years after he bought Mirror Group Newspapers. As a helicopter idles on the rooftop, Robert emerges from his apartment with his financial advisor scurrying behind him. Robert's no stranger to traveling by air to avoid London's busy streets, but today he's rushing more than usual. He's just heard that gigantic American publishing house Macmillan is up for sale, and he's determined to get to New York in time to submit a bid in person. But as Robert hustles toward the helicopter, he grabs his financial advisor's arm. You jump on board. I'll be with you in a minute. Okay, Mr. Maxwell. As the financial Advisor boards the helicopter. Robert turns away and walks toward the edge of the building. He unzips his fly and urinates off the side of the helipad. When he's done, Robert zips his pants back up and boards the helicopter. The aircraft takes flight and the financial advisor turns to Robert with a shocked look on his face. Sir, did you just pee off the edge of the building? I do it before every flight. Superstition, you might say. What about the people in the street below? Oh, don't worry. There's a gutter around the top of the building. Probably catches most of it. It just makes me chuckle. Umbrella's up, huh? The advisor shakes his head as though trying to clear it. So, sir, the McMillan deal. Yes, great opportunity. One of the biggest publishing houses in America. A natural partner for Pergamon Press. Even so, we should be careful not to overpay in our haste. Of course, we'll need to strike when the time's right. Murdoch has already got his teeth into America and we need to get a piece of the action before he takes it all. You've made an offer of $80 a share? That's right. Which makes a total cost of $2 billion. I know it'll cause a real Mr. Maxwell, I must emphasize how much this acquisition is going to stretch us financially. I would strongly advise you not to go above $80 a share. We'll be in real jeopardy if you go any higher. Robert glances at his financial advisor. Whose helicopter is this? Well, it's yours, Mr. Maxwell. Right? It's mine. I'm tempted to throw you out of it. I'm the chairman. I do the deals. Your job is to make the numbers work. But Mr. Maxwell. And if you can't, I'll find someone who can. Robert looks out the window at the mud brown Thames river sliding by below. It is an awfully long way down. I'll be sure to make the numbers work. Good boy. Robert Maxwell ignored the advice of his financial expert and when a bidding war broke out for McMillan, Robert couldn't resist upping his offer over and over. Eventually, a deal was made. $90.25 a share at a total cost of $2.6 billion. Robert was delighted with his triumph, but the deal would extract a far higher price than he realized. Buying Macmillan was a victory Robert simply could not afford. Robert Maxwell's deal for the American publishing house macmillan was his biggest corporate purchase so far. But he wasn't done yet. Before leaving the United States, he shook hands on a second acquisition. This time Robert agreed to buy the Official Aviation Guide, a global flight directory for $750 million. That meant on his return to England, Robert would need to find a combined $3.3 billion to complete his purchases, the equivalent of almost 9 billion today. So Robert hit the telephones as soon as he got back to London. After a few weeks of negotiations, brow beating and sweet talking, Robert had raised the money he needed. With the backing of 44 different banks and financial syndicates. Maxwell Communication Corporation was the new owner of Macmillan and the Official Aviation Guide. These two purchases catapulted Robert into the big time. He was now among the top 10 wealthiest media moguls in the world and had become a global player to rival Rupert Murdoch. But in his attempt to reach the top, Robert had taken the biggest gamble of his career. He had assured each institution, lending him money that he had the assets to back up the enormous loans. In particular, he claimed to have £1 billion in cash stashed away in Liechtenstein. But it was all smoke and mirrors. Thanks to Liechtenstein's strict privacy laws, lenders had to take Robert at his word. If they had been able to inspect the accounts, however, they would have discovered that Robert's actual worth was a fraction of what he claimed. Robert Maxwell had loaded himself up with an unsustainable amount of debt. And for the first time, the value of his liabilities was higher than the value of his assets, with the gap just widening by the day. Every year, he'd have to find more than £500 million just to pay the interest on his two most recent acquisitions. If the banks got wind of his dire financial situation and called in their loans, Robert would be unable to pay them back. So to maintain the illusion that his finances were healthy, Robert resorted to some accounting trickery. He began transferring money between his businesses to give the appearance of cash flow while paying urgent bills by dipping his hand into the worker's pension fund. He then claimed that Maxwell Communication was on the path to becoming a 5 billion pound company and asked his accountants to issue generous dividends to shareholders. But in fact, Maxwell Communication was not making anywhere near the kind of profit to justify those payouts. And the company needed as much money as it could lay its hands on. But Robert needed to portray Maxwell Communications as a big success to keep the banks fooled. So he forced his accountants to do as he ordered. But the financial markets did not seem to be so easily deceived. Despite paying out substantial dividends to shareholders, Maxwell Communications stock price remained stagnant. So Robert engineered the increase he wanted himself by secretly buying up shares with more borrowed money through a complex maze of holding companies and brokers. Roberts trickery had given his companies a short term glow of health while making their long term prospects even worse. He was like a gambler, an addiction, throwing money at his problems in the hope that one big win would wipe out his ever increasing losses. But things were spiraling out of control. In the four years since taking over Mirror Group Newspapers, Robert had adopted a risky strategy, speculate to accumulate, and he'd speculated plenty. But he wasn't accumulating enough. In return. Robert Maxwell's business empire was weighted down with debt and soon it would sink beneath the surface. From Wonder E this is Episode three of the Missing Mogul for Business Movers. On the next episode, decades of deception and dubious dealings are finally uncovered as Robert Maxwell disappears in mysterious circumstances. If you like business movers, you can unlock exclusive episodes found nowhere else on Wondery plus and access new episodes early and ad free. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a survey@wondery.com survey if you'd like to learn more about Robert Maxwell, we recommend the Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston Maxwell, the Outsider by Tom Bower, and Maxwell's Fall by Roy Greenslade. This episode contains reenactments and dramatized deep details. And while in most cases we can't know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research. Business Movers is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Audio editing by Mohammed Shazib Sound design by Gabriel Gould Music by Lindsey Graham. This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves. Executive producers are William Simpson for airship and Aaron O'Flaherty, Jenny Lauer Beckman, and Marshall Louie for Wondering this is a story that begins with a dying wish. One thing I would like you to do My mother's last request that my sister and I finish writing the memoir she'd started about her German childhood when her father designed a secret super weapon for Adolf Hitler. My grandfather, Robert Lesser, headed the Nazi project to build the world's first cruise missile, which terrorized millions and left a legacy that dogged my mother like a curse. She had some secrets. Mom had some secrets. I'm Suzanne Rico. Join my sister and me as we search for the truth behind our grandfather's work and for the first time, face the ghosts of our past. Who is he? Listen to the man who Calculated Death exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spot.