Tony James

And-

So that was a key asset.

Once it got put into a Swiss bank, they had all of the institutional issues and the lack of commitment to the principal business that all the other big firms had.

So it kind of started to waste away.

I think there were macro and micro reasons.

DLJ had had a hell of a run, as I mentioned.

And this was 2000.

And honestly, I looked around and said, wow, the market's at some kind of peak.

And at the same time, the industry was changing.

Glass-Steagall was coming down, so the banks were coming in with very deep capital pockets.

Regulations were changing about how closely research, which was DLJ's strength, could work with investment banking.

Markets were changing.

We'd gone from negotiated rates to very low commission rates.

And so the big firms were essentially doing the cash business on a break-even basis to make money on the derivatives.

We didn't have a derivatives business, and we didn't have the technology to build one.

Interesting.

Um, and then the, our success in, in, in high yield and, and, and private equity meant we'd running out of balance sheet.

Our bridge fund was $1 billion.

And all of a sudden you were doing $1 billion bridge loans.

So you can do one deal at a time.