 father and son, eventually met for dinner in a private room at the Bernards Inn, not far from AT&T head- quarters. It was the first time they had met in person since the previ- ous January. Brian Roberts began by clearing the air. "Mike," he said, "making an unsolicited offer for Broadband may have been the dumb- est thing I've done in my business career." Armstrong complained about the stream of negative leaks from the Comcast side, and Roberts promised to end them. Then they both agreed to let bygones be by- gones and see if they could reach agreement on a deal. When lawyers from the two sides followed up in an August 22 meeting in Wachtell Lipton's office, it was apparent that they were far apart on price. Katcher, representing AT&T, said that Comcast's offer was far too low, but he would not say by how much. The Comcast lawyers vacillated between asking for more data to justify a higher price and insisting that they didn't need confidential information, which would also have restricted their ability to partner with other companies in constructing their bid. For its part, Comcast wanted AT&T to agree not to talk to other Tough Calls bidders. "Everyone is trying to pick our pocket in return for agreeing to stand down," Comcast's lawyers complained. On the other hand, they also expressed the conviction that there was no one else in the wings. AOL Time Warner, they said, would have regulatory problems. Disney wasn't really interested in owning cable. And Cox was too small. In the end, while acknowledging that they "had identified more synergies," Comcast's people said that they couldn't increase their offer much without hurting their own stock price, which wouldn't help anyone. As they left, Hersch again expressed the hope that there wasn't SO much animosity between the two companies that they couldn't reach an agreement. They could, and ultimately would, but not until Noski and Arm- strong had wrung every last nickel and governance concession out of Comcast. The elder Roberts, Ralph, had shown his cards when he