Tony James

So that's always served me well throughout my career.

Well, again, KKR does that Huda ideal back in 1980.

I said, wow, this is something we can do.

We don't even have to have a client.

We're the client in a way.

And so I went to the firm and I said, we should do this as I was running M&A at the time.

which in and of itself was some kind of distortion of reality because I was like 30, maybe not 30, 29.

And they said, go back to work.

We have a principal business called Sprout, the venture capital.

And they know how to buy things and you know how to advise.

So go back to advising.

And I sent them a few deals over the next year or so.

And they said, no, that doesn't work.

And then someone else would do it and make a lot of money.

And I kept going to the firm and saying, this is ridiculous.

These guys don't know how to get out of their way.

So ultimately they gave me the responsibility and we started off with a landmark deal.

I think it was the third biggest LBO ever called.

We bought the retailing subsidiaries from Household International.

We ended up with Vons and Ben Franklin, TGI.