The Deal That Nearly Got Away

Ask any experienced dealmaker about their proudest transaction and they will usually tell you about the one that almost did not happen. For Asad Shamim, the British-Pakistani entrepreneur and international government advisor, one significant cross-border agreement stands out in his memory precisely because it came so close to falling apart. He speaks about the episode not to dramatise it, but because the lessons it taught him now shape how he advises governments, family offices, and companies on complex international transactions.

The details of the parties remain confidential, as they should. But the shape of the story will be familiar to anyone who has worked on deals that cross borders, cultures, and legal systems: months of careful progress, followed by a sudden moment when everything hung by a thread.

When Everything Changed at Once

The transaction had been months in the making, involving parties in more than one jurisdiction, layers of regulatory consideration, and stakeholders whose interests did not naturally align. Late in the process, a combination of events arrived at the same time: a key decision-maker on the other side changed roles, market conditions shifted, and a misunderstanding over a translated term in the draft documentation hardened into suspicion. Within days, a deal that had felt certain was suddenly in doubt. Communications slowed. Positions hardened. Advisors on both sides began preparing their principals for failure.

What struck him most, he recalls, was how little of the crisis had to do with the commercial substance of the deal. The economics still worked. The strategic logic still held. What had broken was softer and more human: confidence between the people involved.

Rebuilding Trust Before Rebuilding Terms

The instinct in such moments is to renegotiate: to fix the problem with new numbers. Asad Shamim's judgement was that this would fail, because the problem was not the numbers. Instead, he focused on restoring the relationship first. That meant travelling in person rather than sending emails, meeting the new decision-maker without an agenda beyond introduction and respect, and addressing the documentation misunderstanding openly, acknowledging how the confusion had arisen rather than assigning blame.

It also meant slowing down at exactly the moment when every commercial pressure said to speed up. Deadlines were extended. Both sides were given room to consult their stakeholders properly. In his experience, particularly across the Gulf and South Asia where personal standing carries enormous weight, a deal can survive a delay far more easily than it can survive a broken relationship. Weeks later, with confidence rebuilt, the parties returned to the table and completed the transaction on terms close to those originally agreed.

The Lessons That Remained

Looking back, he draws several lessons from the episode. The first is that preparation must include people, not just paperwork: a deal team should always know who stands behind their counterpart, and what happens if that person moves on. The second is that ambiguity is a liability that compounds: any term that can be read two ways eventually will be, and cross-language documentation deserves double the scrutiny. The third is that trust is the real currency of cross-border business: it is slow to build, quick to lose, and worth protecting even at commercial cost.

These are the same principles he had already learned in a different arena. Building Furniture in Fashion from a standing start in 2007 into one of the UK's largest online furniture retailers meant navigating supplier relationships across continents, where misunderstandings were cheap to create and expensive to repair. Commerce, he often observes, taught him diplomacy long before diplomacy became his profession.

There is a fourth lesson he adds almost as an afterthought, though it may be the most important: never let a deal become bigger than your judgement. When a transaction has consumed months of effort, the temptation to save it at any cost becomes powerful, and that is precisely when negotiators accept terms, partners, or risks they would have rejected on day one. The willingness to walk away, genuinely held rather than performed, is what keeps a dealmaker honest with himself.

Why He Tells the Story

Today, as Senior Advisor to HRH Sheikh Ahmad Bin Faisal Al Qassimi of the UAE and Chairman of the Advisory Board at OM International, Asad Shamim sits on the other side of many negotiations, advising rather than transacting. He tells the story of the deal that almost collapsed because it is the most honest answer he can give to a question he is frequently asked: what actually makes international deals succeed? Not brilliance, he answers, and not aggression. Preparation, clarity, patience, and the discipline to protect relationships when everything else is under strain.

More of his reflections on business and advisory work can be found in the news section, and a fuller account of his career is available on the about page.