1: The Joint Venture Facilitator

Twenty minutes after the Air Pacific flight had departed, the passengers in the business class section had already been offered drinks, mixed nuts, newspapers, pillows, blankets, travel amenity kits, hangers for their suit coats, menus for the meals to be served over the next 14 hours, deluxe earphones, and instructions on how to operate their personal entertainment systems. For David Lee, in seat 2B, none of these perks relieved at all the growing anxiety he was feeling. Lee was en route to Asia, to hopefully finalize a joint venture agreement he had helped negotiate over the past eleven months. Two parts excited and three parts nervous, Lee couldn’t help wonder whether the deal was the right one.