Donald Trump once offered to seal a deal with a $1M coin flip
Before Ken Moelis was running one of Wall Street’s top boutique investment banking firms, Moelis and Company, he served as a banker to Donald Trump....MORE
In the early 1990s, when the newly opened Trump Taj Mahal was floundering and in need of financing, Moelis hopped a red eye to New York to take a meeting with the real estate magnate, he recounted in an interview with Institutional Investor’s Julie Segal.
The meeting was unorthodox, according to Moelis, then an emerging star with Donaldson, Lufkin, & Jenrette (DLJ).
After stopping at 7/11 for three Big Gulps of coffee, he met with Trump, who caught him off guard by wanting to cut a deal after talking for less than an hour.
Here’s Moelis (emphasis added):
“We got in there and had a great meeting for about 45 minutes about what I thought I could do. And he said, ‘Alright, I want to hire you.’
“I’m thinking ‘Really? We’ve only been talking for about a half hour.’“And he asked me what the fee would be. And I hadn’t come prepared for any of this. So I mentioned a number, and Donald of course came back at about half the number or a third of the number. Which, knowing Donald now as well as I do, I should’ve just doubled the number.“But anyway, we went back and forth for 10 minutes. And I’ll never forget, we’re sitting at his conference room table, and he looks at me and he goes — we’re a million dollars apart — and he said ‘I tell you what, I’ll flip you for it.’ And he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a coin.”...
