All that remained was to revise the final documentation. When that was done, the deal was signed by Caplan and Cotsakos, who had flown in that day from California with Levinson.

Now it was time to party. That evening, the E*Trade team went to Caplan's home in suburban Maryland for a celebratory dinner. "It was really stupendous," Bevilacqua recalls. "He invited everybody -- the entire E*Trade team, whether you were the project manager in charge of logistics or the third lawyer working on the transaction." One week and $1.8 billion after its inception, Project Blowfish was a done deal.

The Wrap-Up

Monday, Memorial Day, was media day. Plans were hashed out for the announcement, venues were booked for the press conference, and an overall media strategy for taking the deal public was agreed upon. Cotsakos and Caplan left for New York, where they were to unveil the deal the next day. Bevilacqua and the remaining E*Traders flew to California.

Though it would take federal regulators another four to eight months to approve the merger, the velocity of the Telebanc deal didn't stop once the announcements were made. Instead of resting, E*Trade started laying out the plans for the full-scale integration of Telebanc. "We basically made the decision that we were going to treat the transaction as if it were closed before it was actually closed," Bevilacqua explains. "Part of it is to get the Telebanc thinking intertwined with ours even before the combined operation starts. We're doing that by including them in meetings, even internal staff meetings. We're saying that we should be integrated and operating as if we are integrated -- even before the deal is closed."

Once federal regulators approve the deal, the two can move their combined products to market: "I think that you'll see us come right out of the gate with some very powerful things," says Bevilacqua.

Bevilacqua takes a break from finishing his story to wolf down a few pieces of sushi. Once again, he's been forced to skip lunch. He is about to make another point when his cell-phone goes off. Instead of ringing, however, it plays the first few bars of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." He listens, and then slips a hand over the mouthpiece. "Excuse me," he says. "It's another deal."

Eric Ransdell (ransdell@well.com), a Fast Company contributing editor, is based in San Francisco. He's the real deal. Contact Tom Bevilacqua by email (tbevilacqua@etrade.com).

Sidebar: What's Fast

Tom Bevilacqua, executive vice president of corporate development and strategic investments at E*Trade, the high-profile online brokerage firm, understands how to do big Internet deals in superfast Internet time. Here is his deal memo on the process.

The better you know the people, the faster you can negotiate the terms.

"I'm really interested in hearing how people describe their jobs," he says, "like how they feel about where they work, and how they see their mission there."

Don't talk price until you settle on strategy.

Amazingly, the senior executives from both E*Trade and Telebanc waited until the final moments of the elaborate deal-making process to get serious about the issue of price. Most of their discussions centered on business models, strategic plans, and shared skills. Price only became relevant after the two companies felt comfortable about strategy.

Investment bankers are supposed to serve you, not the other way around.

"In many transactions," says Bevilacqua, "the investment bankers lead the process, set the agenda, establish the time frames, do things their way. In the Telebanc case, we were the ones who said, 'We're going to get this transaction done in a week. We're going to get through the due diligence. We're going to have all of the meetings with Telebanc's management team and start to pursue immediate areas of synergy.' "

Don't just negotiate fast -- integrate fast.

E*Trade and Telebanc chose not to wait for final approval before laying plans to integrate their operations. They assumed that their deal was a done deal, and behaved accordingly. "For my group," says Bevilacqua, "when we have internal staff meetings, we include people from the Telebanc offices in Virginia."