Harrison spoke well. He always did. He described a decades old administrative obligation, a family matter, a dormant instrument of no operational consequence. He was still speaking when the lead independent director asked him whether the board had been advised before approving the crownidge structure that the transaction would convert 27% of the company into voting equity. He said the matter had been reviewed by council.
He was asked which council. He said he would provide that in writing. Then the vote came to me and every person in that room turned to look at a man in a 9-year-old suit. I could have taken the chair. Malcolm had told me plainly that morning that with 27% and the independence, the chairmanship was available and probably the chief executive's office as well if I wanted to be patient about it.
It is a strange thing to be offered an empire at 9:00 in the morning and to know by 9:15 that you do not want it. I am good at exactly one thing, which is understanding how built things work and why they stop. I have never once been good at wanting more than I can personally repair. So, I used the 27% for two purposes only. First, I voted against the Crown Ridge transaction which ended it because a 51% sale could not proceed against a 27% objection.
Second, I voted with the independent directors to suspend the chairman pending an independent investigation into the administration of the Hail Trust and the valuation process behind the transaction. The motion carried 7 to2. Harrison Blackwood gathered his folder, buttoned his jacket, and walked the length of that table past every person he had cultivated for 30 years, and not one of them stood up. I sat there afterward while the room emptied and thought about a marble column and a woman's voice saying that I was not paid to understand. Four months earlier, I had been told I was only being paid to stand in the room.
That morning, I decided who was allowed to keep sitting in it. I did not enjoy it as much as I had imagined I would. It turns out that being right about your own worth is quieter than being told you have none. The investigation ran 19 weeks. It found that Harrison Blackwood had maintained the Hail Trust certification since 2004, had received legal advice in 2017, confirming that a change of control event would activate the founders's interest, had commissioned air searches limited exclusively to the surname Hail, and had structured and championed a transaction whose terms he knew to be below fair value because the transaction was the trigger.
He resigned before the report was published. Two directors resigned with him. The matter went where matters like that go, and it will be years before it is finished, and I have stopped following it closely. Blackwood Meridian was not sold. The company was restructured with the Hail Interest, formally recognized on the register for the first time in 45 years, and Evelyn remained chief executive with a mandate she had actually earned rather than inherited.