David Solomon

It's just a very different world.

And so let's just start with the fact that finance was a relatively nascent industry and also had been relatively stagnant

for 15 years because we really went through a period from the late 60s to the early 1980s where interest rates were going straight up.

September 15th, 1982 is a very, very important day in the history of financial markets because that is the day that the 10-year treasury hit 15.9%.

And it also happens to be- Put things in perspective.

It also happens to be a little less than two years before I landed at the Irving Trust Company at one Wall Street to start my career.

And at the time, you got trained to do analysis.

But the business was very entrepreneurial.

There was very little structure.

And there was so much open running room to go out and participate that young people, especially when you got away from the most white shoe firms, which at the time were Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley,

were really encouraged to go make their way.

And so I was working at Irving Trust.

And this was a time when almost everybody in finance went to business school.

I was applying to business school in 1985.

And I got a job offer to work in the junk bond business at Drexel Burnham.

And I decided to take it because it appeared lucrative and my dad gave- Jump bonds were like the only thing taking off basically in finance in the early 80s, right?

It was definitely an area of finance that was accelerating and it was very entrepreneurial.

And I said to my dad, this is taking a risk because everybody else is going to business school.

And my dad said, go try it for two years.

If it doesn't work, you go to business school in two years.