№ 06The Faculty
Tomas Eriksson.
Independent Commercial Negotiator, Formerly senior in-house counsel, two cross-border groups.
On negotiation as a long conversation across two laws.
A negotiation is a long conversation across two laws. The point is to stay in the conversation.
The work
Tomas takes about eight named negotiation engagements a year, normally lasting six to fourteen months, across cross-border commercial situations in which two or more legal systems disagree about something material. He works alone, with one researcher in Stockholm. He does not present at conferences and he does not write a column. He runs the Negotiation in Practice masterclass with Reema Sharma and he has co-authored two short books with her, both published in small editions and out of print at the time of writing.
Background
He is Swedish, by birth and passport, and read law at Uppsala and Edinburgh. He spent twelve years in two cross-border commercial groups as senior in-house counsel: first in maritime and offshore services, then in industrial chemicals. His specialism was the unusually long deal, the one that takes eighteen months to close, in which the substance of the negotiation is not the price but the relationship between the systems of law involved.
He left in-house practice in 2017. He gave one reason, in private, which was that the rhythm of in-house work no longer let him think long enough about individual transactions. He has not, since, employed anyone besides his researcher.
Signature contribution
Tomas is known for a particular technique that he will not call a technique. It is the long pause before the price conversation: a deliberate three-week interval, scheduled into the negotiation, during which neither side puts a number on the table and both sides are asked, in writing, to describe what they think the other side is trying to achieve. The interval is uncomfortable. It moves the negotiation faster. He has used the technique nine times in the past five years; all nine deals closed.
Outside the engagements he is known for the slow correspondence: a quiet exchange of letters with about thirty fellow negotiators across Europe and North America in which he tests the working assumption of the year. The letters are not published. He is the youngest member of the correspondence by twelve years.
In practice
In the closing weeks of a deal Tomas does very little talking. He keeps a single foolscap sheet on his desk on which he records, in pencil, the three concessions either side has made and the two each side will refuse to make. He revises the sheet daily. When the sheet stabilises for forty-eight hours, the deal is close. When it does not, he asks for the long pause. He has not, in twenty-five years, lost a negotiation that survived the long pause.
The most important moment in any cross-border deal is the moment neither side is talking about price.
Outside the work
He divides his time between Stockholm and a small house in Bruges that belongs to his wife, who is a translator. He sails in the summer. He reads Russian and German in the original and he is the only member of the faculty who has been in print, in two languages, on the subject of nineteenth-century trade treaties.
If you have to threaten to walk away, you have already walked away. The negotiation ended a week ago.