Tony James

Just number one.

Number two, at that time, there was nothing like Blackstone.

We had three different ways to account for carry.

We could account the way we did it, and now the industry does it now, which is kind of...

You get carry when it's realized.

You could do it on a mark-to-market basis, so an accrued carry.

You could use option models to compute the option value of the carry and then how do they vary over time.

We had lots of choices just on something as basic as the accounting for a carry.

So there was not even an accounting standard then.

You know, the tax structure and all that, you know, should it be a publicly traded partnership?

We thought that was more value added because that's what all the insiders wanted because they don't like paying taxes.

Sure.

Turns out the market actually didn't really like it.

So, you know, we converted.

But I don't think that was a compelling narrative.

But we were making it up as we went along.

And then, you know, the reason we could get public is Blackstone would have had a hell of a run.

We didn't want to ruin that.

So how do you protect your day-to-day working partners that go in to work every day and try to make good investments from being distracted or influenced by the public?

So first of all, we built an elaborate corporate overhead so that we didn't involve any of them in any of it.