Morgan James Publishing of New York published the memoir of former Acxiom chairman and CEO Charles Morgan.
Few people would consider Charles Morgan, former chairman and CEO of Acxiom Corp. and PrivacyStar founder, a literary light — until, perhaps, now.
Morgan has written “Matters of Life and Data: A Memoir.” The title continues: “The Remarkable Journey of a Big Data Visionary Whose Work Impacted Millions, Including You.” The entrepreneur is listed as a featured author for the 2015 Arkansas Literary Festival April 23-26.
A product of Morgan James Publishing of New York (no relation), its Kindle price is $7.99 on Amazon. Morgan James describes itself as “The Entrepreneurial Publisher.”
On the book’s Amazon page, Dillard’s Chairman and CEO Bill Dillard hails it as “A fascinating book!” Madison Murphy, chairman of Murphy USA, enthuses: “An enjoyable and engaging book written by a man it is a privilege to know and work with.” Gen. Wesley K. Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, says, “It’s a story as American as apple pie.”
Well, not quite.
First, there’s the profanity. Nothing anyone who has ever seen a Martin Scorsese film hasn’t heard (and not nearly as often), but enough for the publisher to write on the title page: “As a general rule, Morgan James does not publish works that contain profanity. In this specific case, however, we have deemed certain language integral to the proper understanding of particular personalities or situations being depicted. We apologize to any readers who may find some passages offensive.”
Then, there’s the women issue. From the book, page 226:
“My infatuation with C**** C*** hardly survived the summer, and soon I was seeing several women. ‘The big joke around the office,’ says Cindy Childers, ‘was that because Charles wasn’t good with names, we should get name tags for his dates to wear so he didn’t get confused.’”
Pretty PG. Except he was married at the time and he doesn’t use asterisks. He names names.
But many other, much better-known names are dropped: Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Paul Newman, Oprah, Sam Walton, even Mohamed Atta, ringleader of 9/11.
The book’s prologue, in fact, opens on Sept. 14, 2001, and Morgan describes the building of The Bad Guys Database.
Passages like the following make the book a page-turner: “Data mining is the new gold rush, and we were there at first strike, dragging with us all our human frailties and foibles. In this book’s cast of characters you’ll find ambition, arrogance, jealousy, pride, fear, recklessness, anger, lust, viciousness, greed, revenge, betrayal — and then some.”
‘And Then Some’
And then there’s the divorce from his first wife, Jane Dills Morgan, the woman who, Morgan relates, got pregnant just months after their wedding so her new husband wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam (page 71).
About that divorce (page 226): “Two-and-a-half years — that’s how long the hell would go on. It would disrupt not just my personal life, but also the corporate life of Acxiom itself.”
As your Whispers staff remembers it, Jane Morgan also found the divorce disruptive.
Although Morgan says he’s softened toward his ex-wife, he remains angry at her divorce attorney, Little Rock lawyer Stephen Engstrom, whom he describes as the “meanest, most tenacious Jack Russell terrier of an attorney in our part of the country” (page 226).
Morgan writes that Jane, pushed by Engstrom, was trying to prove she was the power behind Acxiom’s rise, a contention he calls “absurd.”
“We were in no way contesting the Arkansas law that said she gets half of all community property. The question was, how do you define half?”
How you define half mattered when half of the Morgan estate would have equaled $50 million.
But accommodations were made and Charles Morgan got his divorce on Nov. 7, 1997. Jane Morgan got about $37 million of Charles Morgan’s Acxiom stock, leaving him with about 8 percent of the company’s stock.
There’s more — oh, so much more — to the memoir, including juicy bits about a fierce proxy battle with Acxiom’s largest institutional shareholder, ValueAct Capital Partners of San Francisco, and ValueAct’s managing partner, Jeff Ubben.
Morgan, page 308: “None of us at Acxiom had ever witnessed such orchestrated vitriol, much less been on the receiving end of it.”
And a lot of stuff about Morgan’s love of racing, motocross and cars, including Acxiom’s Nascar sponsorship.
Morgan retired from the firm in 2007 after a buyout deal with ValueAct and another private equity firm fell through. He’s a big investor in technology firm Inuvo, based in Conway. He and his second wife, Susie, live in Little Rock. Morgan turns 72 on Wednesday.
Jane Dills Morgan, the mother of Charles Morgan’s two grown children, died in November in Fort Smith at age 73.
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