Hollis.
He retired in the September, at the end of his term, which was announced as planned and which was not.
We had one conversation about it, in the June, in his office, and he did not pretend.
He said: “Clio, I had a shareholder with thirty-eight per cent and no board seat and no visible interest in governance, and a vacancy, and a candidate who happened to be married to her. I’d have had to be an idiot not to see it, and I’d have had to be a saint not to use it.”
And I said: you never once asked me whether I wanted it.
And he said: “No. Because if I’d asked you, you’d have had to say no, and then neither of us would have got what we wanted.”
That is the most honest sentence anybody said to me in eighteen months and it was said by the man who did the damage, and I have had to hold both of those at once.
