While in New York City to meet with investment bankers, 56-year-old Avery Bullard, president and driving force of the Tredway Corporation, a major furniture manufacturing company in the town of Millburgh, Pennsylvania, drops dead in the street. As he collapses in the street, he drops his wallet. It is picked up by a bystander, emptied of its cash, and shoved into a wastebasket. Without the wallet, there is no way to immediately identify the body as Bullard.
George Caswell, a member of the Tredway board of directors and one of the investment bankers with whom Bullard had just met, sees what he believes is Bullard's body in the street below their offices and decides to profit from the information. He engages a broker to make a short sale of as much Tredway stock as he can before the end of trading that Friday afternoon. Caswell plans to make an easy profit and cover the sale by buying Tredway stock at "a 10-point discount" on Monday, when news of Bullard's death will presumably push the stock price down. Caswell begins to doubt that it was Bullard who died, but when he reads in a newspaper that the man had the initials "A.B." on his clothes and cufflinks, he calls the police to tip them off to the identity of the deceased.
Bullard had never named his successor. Over the next 28 hours, Tredway's executives vie for the position of president. Once news of his death reaches Tredway, company controller Loren Shaw takes the initiative in arranging Bullard's funeral and coordinating the company's public reaction. In so doing, he undercuts treasurer Frederick Alderson, one of Bullard's closest friends. Shaw also shrewdly releases the upcoming quarterly report so that the good news of big profits can counter the news and perhaps even raise the stock price when the market opens.
Ambitious but narrowly focused, Shaw is concerned more with short-term accounting gains and satisfying the stockholders than the quality of the company's actual products and long-term growth. He holds the proxy of Julia Tredway, the daughter of the company's founder, who is still a major shareholder and board member. She had been in a difficult romantic relationship with Bullard for many years, coming second behind the company.
Shaw buys Caswell's vote in exchange for allowing Caswell to purchase 4,000 shares of company stock at the Friday closing price to cover his "shady" short sale. If Caswell does not get those shares, he will be in serious financial trouble.
Treasurer Alderson and Don Walling, the idealistic Vice President for Design and Development, are determined to prevent Shaw from taking over. After considering all the contenders, Walling convinces Alderson that Walling himself should be president. Walling is a strong believer in developing new products and more efficient manufacturing methods, although his wife, Mary, is against his giving up his dream of being a full-time designer. The decision process is further complicated by soon to retire Vice President of Manufacturing Jesse Grimm's opposition to Walling's relative youth. Meanwhile, Walt Dudley, back-slapping Vice President of Sales, is having an affair with his secretary, Eva Bardem, for which Shaw is now blackmailing him.
At an emergency board meeting on Saturday evening, the machinations, bargaining and maneuvering culminate with Walling's enthusiasm, vision and his stirring boardroom speech eventually changing Julia Tredway's mind and resulting in his unanimous election as company president.
Who is narrowly focused?
Shaw