異類之不一樣的成功啟示錄 第82期:別人所不齒的也許能成就你

"Among my classmates at Harvard, the thing that bright young guys did was securities law or tax," another white-shoe partner remembers. "Those were the distinguished fields. Litigation was for hams, not for serious people. Corporations just didn't sue each other in those days.

我哈佛的那些同班同學(xué)中，那些聰明年輕的家伙干的事情不是證券方面的就是稅收方面的。”一位“白鞋”公司的合伙人回憶說(shuō)，“那些是特別的領(lǐng)域。訴訟只針對(duì)那些玩得過(guò)火的人，那些規(guī)矩的人不會(huì)遭遇訴訟。那時(shí)的企業(yè)一般不會(huì)相互起訴。”

What the old-line firms also did not do was involve themselves in hostile corporate takeovers.

那些老牌法律公司還有一樣不做，那就是涉及惡意并購(gòu)、惡意接管的案子。

It's hard to imagine today when corporate raiders and private-equity firms are constantly swamping up one company after another, but until the 1970s, it was considered scandalous for one company to buy another company without the target agreeing to be bought.

這一點(diǎn)在今天很難想像，現(xiàn)在，上市公司和私人直接投資公司不斷吞并一家又一家公司，一直到20世紀(jì)70年代，人們還認(rèn)為一家公司在另一家公司沒(méi)有出讓計(jì)劃時(shí)，強(qiáng)行購(gòu)買該公司是可恥的。

Places like Mudge Rose and the other established firms on Wall Street would not touch those kinds of deals.

諸如默基·羅斯律師事務(wù)所和華爾街其他一些法律公司是不會(huì)受理這些案子的。

"The problem with hostile takeovers is that they were hostile," says Steven Brill, who founded the trade magazine American Lawyer.

“惡意接管的問(wèn)題是他們的行為帶有敵意，”商業(yè)雜志《美國(guó)律師》(AmericanLawyer)的創(chuàng)始人斯蒂分·比瑞爾(StevenBrill)如是說(shuō)，

"It wasn't gentlemanly. If your best buddy from Princeton is the CEO of company X, and he's been coasting for a long time, and some corporator raider shows up and says this company sucks, it makes you uncomfortable. You think, if he goes, then maybe I go too.

“這里不講究紳士風(fēng)度。如果你的來(lái)自普林斯頓的拍檔是公司的首席執(zhí)行官，他的經(jīng)營(yíng)業(yè)績(jī)不斷下滑，這時(shí)候有些人出來(lái)中傷企業(yè)，說(shuō)這個(gè)公司很爛了，這會(huì)讓你很不舒服。你想，如果他離開(kāi)，或許我也要離開(kāi)。

It's this whole notion of not upsetting the basic calm and stable order of things."

這是平息事態(tài)、恢復(fù)正常秩序的辦法。”

The work that "came in the door" to the generation of Jewish lawyers coming out of the Bronx and Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, then, was the work the whit-shoe firms disdained:litigation and, mor important, "proxy fights," which were the legal maneuver at the center of any hostile takeover bid.

20世紀(jì)50年代和60年代，對(duì)于布朗克斯地區(qū)和布魯克林地區(qū)猶太籍的那一代律師來(lái)說(shuō)，“找上門來(lái)”的業(yè)務(wù)只有訴訟，稍微比較體面一點(diǎn)的，也只是代理人之間的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)糾紛，這是惡意兼并案例尋求法律支持的主要地方，這些業(yè)務(wù)是那些“白鞋”公司所不齒的。

An investor would take an interest in a company; he would denounce the management as incompetent and send letters to shareholders, trying to get them to give him their "proxy" so he could vote out the firm's executives.

任何一個(gè)投資人要想從一個(gè)公司中牟利，他就會(huì)指責(zé)那一家公司管理者不勝任公司的管理職務(wù)，他會(huì)寫信給公司股東，試圖勸說(shuō)他們把公司“代理權(quán)”讓給他，他從而可以投票，將現(xiàn)任的執(zhí)行官趕下臺(tái)。

And to run the proxy fight, the only lawyer the investor could get was someone like Joe Flom.

如果這個(gè)投資者想要發(fā)動(dòng)這場(chǎng)競(jìng)爭(zhēng)代理人的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)，他需要找的，就是像喬·弗洛姆這樣的人。

In Skadden, the legal historian Lincoln Caplan describes that early world of takeovers...

法律史學(xué)林肯·開(kāi)普蘭(LincolnCaplan)在《司卡登》(Skadden)一書中這樣描述企業(yè)兼并的早期世界……