Ed

And you're ahead of the national, like a Middletown, you were the man at the country club.

You're the head of the rotary, you know, everybody loves you and you got this great job in this great life.

And like basically the deal, if you sell your bank, you're no longer the man anymore.

And you're looking down at all the people who work for you and say, you say, look, it's been great.

We just got bought out at a premium valuation.

It's great for the shareholders.

A third of you are going to get fired.

Goodbye.

Yes, exactly.

And, you know, I don't want to hurt the people around me.

And, you know, the opposite mal-incentive also applies.

So they don't have, if you're the head of a small regional bank, your CEO, you have a strong incentive not to sell.

If you're the buying bank, you have a strong incentive to overpay.

Barclays, the investment bank, did a great chart of this.

There's like an incredibly strong correlation between bank size in terms of assets and banker CEO pay.

So like if you run a bigger bank, you just get paid more money.

So like w whether it's good or bad for the shareholders, you do an acquisition, maybe you overpay, it destroys value, whatever you double the assets you're managing as a banker, you didn't double your income.

So you have the, the, there was a conflict of interest between the CEO and the investor and you, and like, you don't want to, you just don't want to be that involved in an industry.

where management and investors have different interests.

Same thing is true in fund management.