Brad Jacobs

I was in the town next over from Dan Tully, who was the CEO of Merrill Lynch at the time, fantastic man, may he rest in peace.

And Dan, this is the old days when you could meet with the banker and the analyst in the same room.

So Dan set up, and his son, who's also named Dan, set up a series of meetings, I'd say about a dozen meetings, with different parts of Merrill Lynch that had ideas of what should be the next industry that I should consolidate.

Where are there M&A opportunities?

And we looked at healthcare, we looked at financial services, we looked at education, and we looked at equipment rentals.

So that got me into United Rentals.

And United Rentals was a big win, obviously.

United Rentals, I started at, the company was $3.50 a share.

I haven't checked it today, but recently the stock has been $435.

over a hundred bagger.

United Rentals was a durable business that we created.

And then XPO, I started in 2011 and it was a similar business plan.

It was a business to consolidate an industry that was still fragmented.

And that's what I did.

I looked at over 2000 acquisition opportunities and I bought 18 companies.

And we tightly integrated those 18 companies.

And if you look at those companies that we bought, before we bought them, they were doing roughly about a billion dollars in EBITDA collectively, pro forma.

You look at them today, they're doing something like two and a half billion dollars EBITDA.

So we and my management teams that succeeded me have improved those businesses, have made those businesses more profitable.

And that's the other component.