Marc Rowan

The demise of Drexel was so sudden that we were still working on transactions for clients without any hope of being paid or without a firm that was backing us.

It was just what we did.

And as happenstance would have it, we received a cold call from the Government Bank of France, the Credit Line Bank, asking whether we would be interested in starting an M&A boutique.

under the mighty Credit Lyonnais banner.

What a terrible idea in 1990.

There is no M&A.

There's total loss of confidence.

And I think as a throwaway line, one of us said, but this would be an awesome time to deploy capital.

And the gentleman said, there's a guy in Paris.

He thinks exactly the way you think.

Why don't I set up a meeting?

A few months later, we left with $800 million of the government of France's money through the Credit Lyonnais bank.

with a group of people who had never invested money before from an institution that was not an investor.

And by the end of the year, we had $6 billion of the bank's money.

And in 1990, no one had $6 billion.

And we went on to become the largest profit center of the Credit Linea Bank.

For the next few years, we earned them regularly $3 billion plus a year.

We were very, very popular in Paris, despite speaking nothing other than restaurant French.

The movie rights to this story of us talking past each other are just off the charts.

Yeah, totally.