QuestionerI think that most companies, when they do acquisitions, would feel the need to do a significant amount of legal due diligence, to do things like check the leases, check into things like undisclosed environmental liability, or perhaps threatened litigation. And I guess my question is, have you ever been burned by your approach?
WarrenWe've never been burned by the – we've been burned only in the sense that we've made mistakes on judging the future economics of the business. which would have had nothing to do with due diligence. We regard what people normally refer to due diligence as really sort of boilerplate in most cases. It's a process that big companies go through, and they feel they have to go through it, and they're ignoring, oftentimes in our view, they're ignoring what really counts, which is evaluating the people they're getting in with it and evaluating the economics of the business. That's 99% of the deal. It's been on 19 public company boards, and their idea of the due diligence is, a sudden the lawyers out and have a bunch of investment bankers come in and make presentations and all that. And I regard that as terribly diversionary because the board sits there, you know, entranced by all of that and everybody reporting how wonderful this thing is and how they've checked out patents and all that sort of thing. And nobody is focusing really on where the business is going to be in five or ten years. And, you know, business judgment about economics and people to some extent, but the business economics, that is 99 percent. of deal-making. And the rest, people may do it for their protection. I think too often they do it as a crutch just to go through with a deal that they want to go through with anyway. And of course, all the professionals know that, so believe me, they come back with the diligence whether they're due or not.