Lance Knight couldn't completely wipe the smile off his face from being with Lila Carpenter overnight or earlier that morning, but he was all business as he walked into the main newsroom of The Moon Lake Gazette for the morning news brief.
"Okay people. What's happening today?" he asked in his capacity as Editor-In-Chief, standing in the middle of the room.
"Ella's gone to the Town Hall, covering the meeting between the Accounting Department and the Mayor's office over Stovall's new budget from their perspective," said one man, referring to the paper's town government and were reporter Ella Alyn. "If she has anything else afterward, she didn't say before leaving."
"Understood. Next?" asked Lance.
"The school board's planning to schedule a meeting with your brother over his offer to build a new elementary school," announced another reporter.
"Okay. When it happens, usual rules regarding anything concerning my family. Fair, but neutral," Lance reminded them. "Anything else?"
"This," said the paper's business correspondent, handing him a report.
"You, my office," Lance said to the business reporter. "The rest of you, back to work."
Moments later, behind the closed door of the Editor-In-Chief's office...
"How accurate is this?" Lance asked his business reporter, holding up the report he gave him.
"Except for the speculation about it being the Crawford family behind it, 100%. Someone, using a lot of representatives across the country, has been trying to buy up every share of Knight Industries they can get a hold of since the first bell rang in New York this morning," confirmed the reporter. "None of the official agencies monitoring the stock market have taken any action yet, but your brother has. The sale of any official voting shares were canceled and the original owners then resold them to your brother."
"So how much does... whoever is behind this actually have?" asked Lance.
"Although this specific trading has slowed down in the past hour, depending upon how many sale reversals haven't happened yet, rough estimate is 10%; but that's spread out across all the common shares of everything available. Original projections had the new owner at closer to 25%."
"What I'm about to say doesn't leave this room, but I know for a fact that the entire stock portfolio of available Knight Industries, provided one person was able to acquire it all, doesn't equal more than 40% of the entire company," revealed Lance. "Benton is probably reminding people that he has first right of purchase on the voting stock and is exercising that option. With that off the table, the available figure drops to about 20%."
"Then the best whoever is behind this could accomplish is to gain a strong voice in shareholder meetings and perhaps board of director meetings too, if they acquire enough to leverage themselves a position on to that," assumed the business reporter.
"Yeah. Okay. Stay on the story. Keep me posted, especially if you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who's behind the attempted takeover; but otherwise, remember what I said out there about covering my family."
"Fair but neutral," confirmed the business reporter, before leaving his boss' office.
Alone, Lance stared at his wall safe, hidden behind a framed copy of the very first edition of The Moon Lake Gazette published with him as Editor-In-Chief.
He had yet to take the thick envelope holding the major assets of his niece Frieda's trust fund (which included a good chunk of voting stock, among other things) to the bank, but the more he thought about it, the more Lance figured it would be safe right where it was.
After all, I took Knight Media private after Benton's failed take over attempt, so there's no way any of my assets can be targeted. Besides, only he and I know I have the envelope to begin with, and Benton doesn't know what I did with it. Best to leave it right where it is, for now.
But Lance Knight's next action was to call the head of building and paper security, to privately make arrangements to strengthen security for both the Gazette itself, along with his office and the safe within.