Lloyd Blankfein

We needed to go public.

When they repealed Glass-Steagall, once upon a time, the lenders were separate from the investment banks and the investors.

That got repealed, and all of a sudden, people gave advice.

could now implement the advice by financing it.

So we had to, you know, if J.P.

Morgan was going to become an advisor, we had to become a good lender and a good financier.

So it meant that we had to have a bigger balance sheet.

We couldn't run that on impermanent capital of a partnership.

And so we had to go public.

But the big anxiety was we'd lose the partnership culture.

We went public, basically.

in an instant legally, but it's taken 25 years to get it done in a way that it wouldn't undermine the partnership culture.

So we do those things that make it partner-like.

We have partnership elections.

We pay people based upon how the whole firm does.

If your area does particularly well, you'll know it in your compensation.

The most important thing in compensation is how does the whole firm do?

And so you get people who are bankers sourcing investment things for the merchant bank.

You have people...

who, investment bankers who would like us to represent their client on an auction,