Irv Grossbeck

We had, I don't know, very few thousand employees when the company was sold after 30 years, 32 years.

It was sold in 1996.

So in a sense, we were much more capital intensive.

That also is something to watch out for if you're an MBA student, you're told.

But there are times it's a good thing because it served to the structure of the industry being capital intensive, made it an unregulated monopoly in effect.

And if you could raise the capital, which we were able to do, you enjoyed some of the benefits of no competition.

I guess other things where we guarded our ability to make decisions differently.

very carefully.

That's why I was concerned about the 55% ownership.

I don't think that's affected Asurion in a major way, but at the fringes, it has had an impact.

And Amos and I together for the first 16 years, and then Amos alone for the last 16 years running that company, we're able to run it the way we wanted to run it.

making the judgments that we wanted to make within reason.

I mean, we didn't have people with other agendas.

We had people questioning the decision-making and the strategy, which they should as board members, but not with other agendas.

The iron filings were all closely aligned.

That's not currently true with Asurion, but I mean, Asurion has so far exceeded Continental's performance that they must be doing an awful lot of things right.

Well, thank you very much for including me.

I'm very flattered and I'm thrilled that you're doing this.

I know a lot of people will benefit.

Thank you.