Brad Jacobs

We bought well over 200 companies in the industry and we bought them at multiples lower than what we were trading at.

So we created a lot of alpha

The first Monday at seven o'clock in the morning, we showed up after we bought a deal just by increasing it in the deal.

They're all creative deals.

The other thing I took away from United Waste was that was my first exposure to public markets.

Everything I did in the oil industry was private.

The waste business was the first time I had a public currency.

And I remember when we IPO'd it with

The two banks that then, at that time, were the two leading banks in environmental services, there was Payne Webber and there was Alex Brown.

Of course, now Alex Brown's part of Deutsche Bank and Payne Webber's part of UBS.

But at the time, I went to two conferences and I saw Jim Groninger, who was an investment banker speaking for Payne Webber, and I saw Tammy Preston, who was the investment banker for this field, for Alex Brown.

These were the two big shot bankers.

I said, I want to use these bankers.

I want to work with the people who are actually doing the most amount of business in the area, who understand the business well.

And so I did.

And I formed good relationships with them.

I took their advice.

We took it public pretty quickly.

Then I said, after we sold United Ways for $2.5 billion, I want to build on the skill set that we've developed, that we've honed, of doing M&A, of doing integration.

of running a business in a standardized way.