Tony James

And ultimately that lack of capital became an Achilles heel.

But we had a remarkable stretch of...

making the right credit assessments and the right market assessments.

So every time we got, it would win the business and we would have the distribution.

Because we were often controlling the issuer, we could put a little extra VIG in the interest rate.

So we became known as the distributor of high yield that people should buy on the issue because we'd price it to trade up.

With debt, it doesn't have to trade up much.

It's not like equities.

It doesn't have to trade up much to be juicy.

So we used that and we developed quite a following.

And then when Drexel went under, the bigger firms were also ambivalent about high yield.

It had a taint, especially when Drexel went under.

And so we were sitting there in second place, and we just inherited the world in that sense, and it became the most profitable part of Wall Street.

We accounted for all of 40% of all trading volume in high yield for 12 years.

It was a huge—Drexel's going on was a huge boost to our banking business.

It didn't really help our principal business much, but it was a huge boost to our—

You were able to recruit like real talent from Drexel.

We were.

Ken Mullis was a big one and Bennett was huge.

And although Ben was only an associate at the time, but I always believe in young talent, great young talent and unleash them.