In a foreign project, it was imperative that various local requirements be met in order to be able to make an investment decision at short notice.
This included the conclusion of several purchase, connection and lease agreements with local companies and authorities.
All contracts were written in the local language and therefore not readable for me.
My responsibility was to bring these contracts to a timely conclusion with a highly professional team of local engineers, lawyers and business people.
I had the critical key points of the many contracts explained to me in detailed discussions by the respective experts.
In one case, however, I became suspicious. My questions were repeatedly evaded and sometimes even interpreted as mistrust.
In fact, however, the supposed "standard contract" contained a clause that would have wiped out the entire business case for the project.
In intensive negotiations, we finally succeeded in agreeing on an acceptable solution, so that nothing stood in the way of the investment decision.
As has often been the case, my gut feeling was a good early warning system for me in this case as well.
