(2 of 3)
The second woman who spoke to Judge Tyler, an administrative assistant employed by Grace, recalled the morning that Bolduc popped into her office unexpectedly. She offered to bring him some coffee. "When I bent down to put the cup on the credenza for him, he reached over and ran his hand up my leg." This was no accident, she says. "He traditionally wears a Cheshire-cat grin on his face, and he was grinning then." In shock, she stalked out of the room and did nothing.
But later, she says, "I told my boss, 'I'm not looking to create a big problem or a legal problem, but could you tell this person I am not for sale?'" It seemed to her that Bolduc was too far up the corporate hierarchy to challenge through normal channels. She later told Judge Tyler, "The big question mark for all the women he approaches is, '[What will happen] if I don't play along with him? Will I lose my job?'" She says she is still puzzled by Bolduc's behavior. "I could not believe he could be in the position he was with a personality like his."
Though Bolduc would not return calls for comment, his attorney, Gerald Walpin, says the complaints are part of the smear campaign by remaining Grace directors and that the incidents described by his accusers were no more than "kidding" on Bolduc's part. "That no one ever filed a complaint," he says, is proof "that employees viewed it as friendly banter and nothing more."
Whatever his merits as a boss, Wall Street liked Bolduc's performance as a manager of the giant specialty-chemicals and health-services company. By focusing on Grace's core businesses and selling off subsidiaries, he was credited with bringing the company back to profitability. But colleagues say that over the past year or so Bolduc had begun to seem impatient about his long wait to inherit the top job from Grace, who is suffering from lung cancer. Where previously Bolduc had treated his boss with deference, he was now apt to roll his eyes whenever the elderly Grace rambled on at board meetings. As a sign of his power, he began cutting off the older man's privileges. For one, he reduced Grace's personal corporate staff from about 10 to four. After taking away Grace's Gulfstream IV jet, he crowed to a colleague, "Peter is yesterday's mashed potatoes."
Almost immediately after Bolduc resigned, the institutional shareholders that hold sizable chunks of Grace stock became worried that his departure would mean that the company's 22-member board would balk at reforming itself. Among other things, investors wanted a smaller board with fewer members over the age of 70. Grace arrived in a wheelchair last week to address his last board meeting as chairman. Weakened by radiation treatments, he was unable to read aloud the full text in which he condemned "the scheme" used to oust him from power. But when the meeting was over, Grace and eight other company directors, most of them over 70, had nonetheless agreed to leave the board.