Changing Fortunes - Inventing the PC - page 121

the boots to me,” protested Kutt. “Everything we negotiated
… they shut the window.” As Kutt recollected these events, he
was told that the Toronto Dominion Bank manager handling
the MCM file had informed the guarantors about his decision
to call the bank loan. Kutt knew what that meant. He himself
had described the possible implications of such an event in his
18 October letter to the shareholders. The guarantors would
most likely convert whatever was left of MCM into a new com-
pany, and it would be up to them whether Kutt's shares would
be worth anything. Of course, starting a new company to
manufacture the MCM /70 after MCM 's collapse would be ex-
pensive and risky. Legal actions by MCM shareholders might
follow, and deals with distributors, carefully negotiated by
MCM , could collapse as well. The name “ MCM /70” might also
require changing to disassociate the product from the name of
a bankrupt company, and that could lead to serious market-
ing problems; after all, MCM had expended a lot of marketing
effort and financial resources to make its APL computer known
worldwide. In short, it would be much easier to take over MCM
just by buying Kutt out.
According to Kutt, he was presented with an ultimatum:
either he must sell his controlling shares to Elliot, or MCM
would go bankrupt and he would end up with nothing. He
was given a copy of an agreement in principle between himself
and Beverley V. Elliot, the gist of which was that he was to sell
100,000 of his MCM common shares to Elliot, effectively losing
his majority shareholding status. He signed. With his signature
on the dotted line, his “reversed cue” was over, he was history,
and his dream of bringing the world's first portable personal
microcomputer to the market was in the hands of others.
Unfortunately, no written minutes of the 25 October meeting
are available (if any were ever taken). Furthermore, Kutt's ac-
count of the events on which this part of the narrative is based
could not be independently confirmed. Instead, what we are left