Kevin Tawil

They had a history of investing in companies outside of their core business.

They weren't a private equity financial buyer.

Typically, that is essentially what they were doing in this case because there were no obvious synergies between what Lockline did and what DST did.

Right.

And for that reason, we thought we could pull it out again at a much higher price than what they paid for.

The conversation started.

It was clear that I was not going to make headway with the CEO of DST.

How would you summarize why?

Different generation.

The CEO was older.

He's certainly well-established in the Kansas City community and known somewhat nationally.

And in some ways, I was beneath his station.

So we brought in the big guns.

We brought in Irv on the board and our general counsel, consigliere, amazing attorney, Dick Flohr from Goodwin Proctor.

He and Irv and the DST system CEO were all of similar age and stature.

And

That helped us get in the door.

I think it played to their ego, which was a factor.

It got us to the table where we started the discussions and there were some long negotiations, but it came to a head in 2006 when we were able to bring it all together in a transaction where we bought Lockline largely for stock and DST ended up owning almost a third of the company.

Explain the location, wrinkle.