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Soaring mightily, in fact. Already he has built an empire that includes scientific journals, printing plants, newspapers, data bases, magazines, books, satellite communications and even two soccer teams. His company spans 28 countries and has nearly 40,000 employees, 15,000 of them in the U.S. For the past two years, Maxwell has been on a U.S. buying binge that culminated this month in the purchase of Macmillan Inc. for $2.7 billion.
The acquisition followed a long, hard battle and came in the wake of last year's attempt to take over another U.S. publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. William Jovanovich restructured the company to thwart Maxwell's anticipated $2 billion bid. "Jovanovich killed the company. He's a dumb Croat coal miner. Had I met him, I would have told him so," Maxwell snarls with characteristic restraint. Some American publishers insist that he overpaid by as much as $1 billion for Macmillan. Not so, says Maxwell. "Information is growing at 20% a year," he explains in patient, professorial tones. "Communications is where oil was ten years ago. There will be seven to ten great global communications corporations. My ambition is to be one of them. You can't have a world communications enterprise without the U.S., which has 80% of the software and half the scientific information." So exactly how will Macmillan be integrated into his operations? "Synergy," he stonewalls, with a cat-that-swallowed- the-canary smile. "It fits like a glove."
Peter Jay, former British Ambassador to the U.S. and now Maxwell's chief of staff, enters with a load of letters. Maxwell pays the tall, handsome aristocrat something like a quarter of a million dollars a year to add a touch of class to his kingdom. Jay arranges meetings, meals and galas with foreign dignitaries and fields charity requests. "I am not the Salvation Army," bellows Maxwell, as he signs checks for needy causes. But Jay's real challenge is simply to keep the emperor's attention. After the first few letters, Maxwell's mind ticks elsewhere. He can drill to the core of any issue, but his attention span is that of a gnat.
With a wave, he dismisses Jay and greets two Israelis who have come to enlist his aid in a bond drive. Seated at the table, they wait. And wait. First Maxwell wraps a deal for a Moroccan satellite channel. Next his personal secretary, Andrea Martin, 25, a pale blond, appears with a message. Maxwell reads it and thunders, "He is as keen on this idea as if he was bitten by a rattler on the anus." Accustomed to such eruptions, Martin slips away as another button lights. "Latrine rumors!" he shouts into the speaker. "We are going to sue." Suddenly, he tells the Israelis he will aid the bond drive. "I always say yes. If I were a woman, I would always be pregnant," he says with a grin.
Trapped inside this billionaire publishing baron are a multitude of people: a peasant haggler, stage director, domineering patriarch, sophisticated currency trader, military commander, politician, Hollywood mogul and unabashed publicity man. Following his train of thought is like listening to ten tape recorders, constantly switching on and off, constantly interrupting one another.