Industry

So you knew.

No, I didn't know shit.

Surely, it was obvious that I couldn't stand the little creep.

He was in our house practically swallowing you.

Well, you should have been fucking specific!

You introduced us. You didn't think, I don't know,

maybe if you had concerns about a

about a life-altering disaster,

one that you helped me get into...

You need to stop speaking to me like that!

You never had the right and you certainly don't have it now!

Yas, what the fuck are we gonna do?

Honestly, what the fuck am I gonna do?

I mean, "Now that you're implicated."

I... What does it mean?

Oh, it's just self-mythologizing nonsense.

It reads like a guru terrorist manifesto.

It's a threat.

Look, I... I... I think, uh...

I think what he's saying is... is that ignorance

is not a credible legal defense for me.

He's saying I won't be spared jail.

Oh my God.

Shall I wipe my phone?

- My emails? - No, no, no, I don't think so.

- It's an admission of guilt. - Yeah, but I'm not guilty!

I don't think that matters anymore, does it, Henry?

Fucking headlines write themselves.

I mean, we live in a house paid for by Tender.

Both of our salaries will be cut off. Our stock is worthless.

Where is the rest of the money, Henry?

What?

What? Where the fuck is it, Henry?

No one could put that much in their arm.

You still have a fucking nose on your face,

so where's the rest of the money?

I used it to, um, to buy some

well, to buy Tender stock.

Oh my God.

Yeah, why are we talking about money again?

The public perception of my morality is on the block.

And, please, take this with the love

with which it is intended, but nobody gives a fuck

about how you come out of this, okay?

- Not in the wider scheme. - Are you kidding me?

Henry, we're gonna end up with nothing! We're gonna end up with nothing!

How can you give a single shit about the fucking press release?

Because it's what matters!

Because I want to be better!

Because that's the purpose of living a life. To be better!

You know, I am a good person,

and the world shall tell that back to me,

otherwise what am I doing here?

- What am I for? - Oh my God!

You're right.

You're right, of course. I'm so sorry.

We're not the ones to blame here.

Other people let this happen.

Remember that.

Of course.

Fuck, it snapped back.

Tender's up almost ten percent already.

Uh... They've issued another press release of Tony Day's denials in writing.

- Anything new in it? - "Claims are baseless

and misleading and do not represent

the company's financial reality.

The company maintains a robust internal framework."

I mean, this shit is literally designed to make any reader glaze over.

Yeah, everything is a rehash at this point.

Anything about a new audit?

No, just affirmations of the results of previous ones.

Okay, so we hold the line until a new one is confirmed.

Yeah, well, who's forcing them into that?

Without another audit, we're dead in the water.

Well, I mean, maybe it's time we

meditate on how we catalyze the audit that kills them.

What would Eric's take be on that?

How should I know?

He decided not to be here.

Shut the door.

Can you, uh

let me gather my thoughts for a second? Sorry.

Take your time.

We don't have much.

I feel like I'm in the room with a reptile.

No, just a man.

Get whatever you need to off your chest, 'cause I need you to focus.

I've been thinking about going to the authorities all night.

Why shouldn't I?

You already know why you didn't go, or you would've gone.

I'm an accessory.

- You're the face of the company. - An accomplice?

Fraud, embezzlement, market manipulation.

Hire the cream of the legal crop, you're not escaping jail time, Henry.

So

why write me that letter?

Think of the optics if my CEO went AWOL now.

Besides

we're close enough for honesty.

Fuck yourself.

Everything we have done since we partnered has been true.

Why let them rob us of our glory for what was, at the time,

necessary balance sheet imagination?

Our share price will continue to recover.

Tender 2.0 has successfully transitioned us into real revenue

and phased out inflated third-party acquisition flaws.

"Fake."

Do you start using the fucking word "fake"?

I watched SternTao's presentation, which part of it was wrong, exactly?

It's simply a misalignment between the velocity of my vision

and the velocity of regulation.

And that gap is where smart people have always made money.

Henry, look at me.

I have to buy time.

Make a clean audit as protracted a process as possible.

Delay and complicate until some of our

overrepresented cash flows can be swallowed

by a much larger balance sheet.

How?

Targeted acquisition.

Hostile takeover.

'Cause its as simple as saying that, right?

How the fuck would that even work?

A few months ago,

when you said we should increase our stake in Pierpoint,

I used Cayman and Luxembourg SPVs

to build an undisclosed synthetic position to buy shares in Pierpoint.

Al-Mi'raj are spinning Pierpoint out.

They've been looking for an exit,

practically ever since they bought the old bitch.

Do you even know what you sound like?

This is how it's gonna play.

We say, "Due to a transformational merger,

any audit must reflect pro form a consolidation."

We need to hire more advisors.

Since you unwisely fired my auditor of choice,

we have to add intermediaries, add complexity

to the jurisdictional fog of who audits us,

plus, the media smokescreen of a turbo-bullish headline.

I don't think there's a single person on earth

who thinks like that in this scenario.

No, you're lucky you have me.

What do I... What do I do?

Believe in us.

One more time.

Whitney, the board's convening in an hour.

Oh, God.

Well, I'm sure it hasn't gone unnoticed

for the Secretary of State that there are whispers in the city

that some of the Tender profits are as real as a stripper's affection.

Well, I'm sure his colorful,

roguish language will continue to play well

for the Andrew Tate clones

and Russian bots who like all his posts.

This shouldn't descend into cheap point scoring.

It is clearly in the public interest

to understand what position Tender is now in,

- and what risk it might now pose. - Agreed.

So let's ask the Secretary of State

to just explain the nature of her interactions

with Tender senior management.

Sebastian, as a former entrepreneur yourself,

you well know that ministers routinely meet

with a large number of business leaders,

stakeholders and industry representatives.

All such meetings are conducted in line with the Ministerial Code

and they are properly recorded in transparency returns.

But people are saying that you and your department

were in bed with Tender senior management,

and expedited their licenses and approvals

in search of good headlines.

Expediting licenses? I mean, that is a serious allegation

you're making against the Minister personally there.

Yes. Do you have proof?

'Cause what you're saying is a deliberate inflammation of totally normal practice.

- So you are in bed with them? - Look, I'm not in bed with anyone

apart from my husband. Sorry, you...

- We almost had a scoop there. - Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, you have no proof.

Look, I understand the mainstream media hasn't deemed

this front-page news yet,

but people's lives and their hard-won finances,

they don't play out in the business pages.

These are real people. This is real money.

These are not pieces on Whitehall's chessboard.

Lisa has made a career attacking Conservative,

cozy contamination of party politics and business beliefs.

All I would say to your listeners

is sometimes when you are shown a hypocrite,

all you can do is hand them a mirror.

Look, we've heard your spiel, and we don't need to hear it again.

Far more important is the question of how vulnerable this bank is.

There are suggestions,

Business Secretary, you have seen on social media...

Alexander, are you in London?

What's the blast radius of this fucking thing?

How big could it get and how quickly?

We were doing our jobs and fulfilling the PM's brief.

The insistent messaging about post-Brexit dynamism.

The amount of bastard times he said to me,