Tony James

We didn't do that.

We could let them go and the last three years of their vesting, or if they were demotivated and weren't working, we could say, I'm sorry, you're not working hard anymore.

We're going to take away your unvested stock.

So what's vested is yours.

But the unvested stuff, on an eight years, we had an eight-year run at it.

And we didn't lose anyone that we didn't want to lose for eight years.

And people were totally motivated for the whole time.

So that part of it worked.

But all these things are just little small pieces of the whole that you have to think about.

And as I say, I could go on and on, but...

It was incredibly complex.

And the other thing I would just say and final on this, Steve and I and Pete Peterson, who was still around then, wanted to take a hard look at this and see what it'd be and do all of the plumbing to make sure we had the option, but we weren't sure we wanted to do it.

So how do we go through this and not have it loom over everyone in the firm and everyone's trying to come into?

And so essentially this was something that,

Steve delegated to me and I did really with no one else in the firm actually helping for nine months.

I did it at night and worked out all this with bankers, outside bankers and lawyers, but not internal people.

And I would report back to Steve, of course, and to Pete Peterson, but Steve was much more front and center on this.

But it was kind of a secret project because otherwise people would have been, Tony, I should be the number two person.

Well, we had a very small credit business.

Blackstone had about a billion and a quarter in it.