Dear Chairman

Gramm found the real letters. Benjamin Graham going after Northern Pipeline in 1927, Ross Perot writing to the board of General Motors, Dan Loeb doing what Dan Loeb does. Then he explains what was happening around each one.

Reading the primary source does something a summary cannot. You see how the argument gets built, what is said plainly and what is left implied, and how much of the leverage is in the tone rather than the position.

The Graham letter is the one I come back to. He is not emotional and he is not threatening, he lays out a number, explains why the company is sitting on assets it does not need, and makes it faintly embarrassing to disagree with him. He won. I write most of my hard letters that way now, and the piece most people skip is leaving the other side room to take the deal without looking like they lost.