Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history. - Karl Marx
Everything depended on this. Everything. Securing a bank loan for more than two-thirds the cost of the hotel was serious business and we not only needed the loan but were constrained by a clause in the contract to begin searching for a loan within the fifteen days following the signing of the Promise of Sale. But our broker had the list of banks he usually approached ready and waiting and, immediately we walked out of the lawyer’s office, he began calling and sending each the impressive dossier he had put together. This dossier, beautifully typed up and printed out, sheafs of color coded spreadsheets, graphs and pie charts, contained everything a bank needed to make a decision as to whether or not they would lend us the money and at what rate: the details of the hotel, its history and the owners, the hotel finances and numbers, our own histories, resumés with past and current professional activities, our talents and interests as well as the details of our own finances. Sections within this colossal report were separated by brightly colored tabs that stuck out the side like confetti, allowing easy and immediate access to any information the banker needed at his or her fingertips in order to accurately and, hopefully, positively assess our situation. And it was all, this bulky collection of papers bound between glossy plastic covers, held together with a spiral coil, that stood between us and our hotel.
But this required more than only a fancy dossier, as we soon discovered. They had to meet us.