Tony James

Frankly, the amount I would pay Steve was dwarfed by the amount the firm would lose if we didn't get the deal done.

And Steve might've knuckled under anyway, but to me, this was a very good example of losing a battle to win the war.

And I felt like if I could give Steve a, you know, a pound of flesh, then I could get the whole thing done.

And the idea of someone putting money up and actually if Steve had to pay more interest rate, which wasn't Steve really, it was the LPs, had to pay a hundred, I would lose some money.

All that appealed to him.

So that did the trick.

And he agreed.

We got the deal done.

And, you know, we both look back on that slightly differently.

But I think we each accomplished something in our own heads, which is sometimes what it takes to make a deal.

So then after that, I was running investment banking for a long time.

And Steve was a client, not necessarily the closest client.

He did a lot with Chemical Bank and Jimmy Lee and other banks.

But we would have a casual, like a once a year lunch or something like that.

And then after DLJ was sold, I had to agree as part of the condition of the merger agreement to stick it out for two years.

No other employee did, by the way.

But I stuck my two years out and then decided that it wasn't fun.

Yep.

And that I wanted to do something else anyway.

My DLJ that I felt that same sense of proprietary ownership for that I felt for Costco was gone.