Kevin Tawil

We decided, conferred with the board, we had conversations about whether we could buy in as many shares as we wanted to or as were desired with just debt.

And we thought we couldn't do that.

So we opened it up to an equity process.

And that generated

some interest, but in particular, the highest bidder was TA Associates.

And while investors were interested in liquidity, I think it was really Gemini driving it, sort of the need for financial security.

And the board, they thought that was a good idea.

I mean, having management sort of hold on to types, never a good idea, and they understood that from the early days.

So just allowing us to sort of let some air out of the balloon and give us some financial security, they thought, and we agreed, would help us be better managers.

The TA transaction was once again a situation where Jim and I were back in the classroom.

He and I were nominally negotiating it.

We were the front men.

But really, there were people behind each of us pulling the strings.

On our side, it was really Bill Egan and Irv Grosbeck who were negotiating through us with TA.

So Irv, TA had been an investor in Irv's company.

Bill had been a partner-

with the folks at TA.

So they all knew each other very well.

And there was, I'm sure there were baggage from each of their past that were being handled through surrogates that were Gemini.

And on the other side, Gemini were dealing with Jeff Chambers and Richard Tadler were wonderful, but they weren't really in the control seat either.