Blue Owl was born under a cloud of controversy. Who wants to tell me that story.
I guess I'll take that story. It actually turned into a lot more smoke than fire. But ultimately at the time we announced the
transaction we had about 50 underlying GP partners within our stakes business. These are general partnerships in which you had
acquired a minority interest correct. Within our funds we owned about 50 minority partnerships and 48 of those partners called
and congratulated us on a great idea wished us all the luck in the world. And there were two that really wanted to to cause a
little bit of of chaos and and make a little bit of a distraction for us. I think each had a different reason for it
and we don't necessarily appreciate it. But. But ultimately I think we weathered the test
and the courts upheld the position that we felt from the beginning was the right one. And we were able to complete the
deal and we're back on track hopefully long term partners with those last two holdouts. I'm going to name those those firms.
Sixth Street is one and Garland Capital is the other. And they objected to this merger of your two firms. I will rock and Dial
because it turned at least one of them from a well that turned the combination
right from a passive investor into what they perceived to be a competitor. Did you anticipate how bitter that fight was going
to get. I really didn't anticipate that it would be that bad. I didn't think it would be bitter at all because contractually
these two very sophisticated firms knew exactly what they were getting into when they sold a piece of their business to our
fund. Dial 3. In the case of 6 treated dial 4. In the case of Carla Bean any restrictions that they had or didn't have were
regarding the fund's ability to do something transfer or or move that position around. There was never any engagement about what
the dial business or the rock business could do with itself. And I think as the the court upheld in very colorful language we
were certainly right and they were certainly wrong. Mark L. Ron competed with these firms to varying degrees. Did you anticipate
that it was going to get that ugly. We did not anticipate it at all. You know at the end of the day these were to call them what
they were manufactured disputes you know with an end stay. Think it was also. Yes. Well I wouldn't call snotty B.S. but I would
say it was manufactured dispute. So it was it was it was commercialism and opportunism or maybe it was emotion. I'm not
sure. But at the end of the day the reason it never crossed our mind that this would be a problem is because it's not a problem
because the reality is that the stakes themselves are passive for the brilliance of the model that Michael and the team
created is being able to own stakes in a series of firms that themselves are competitors because each one is held separately.
Each one is passive. The information that is provided to dial which itself is subject to information barriers and our own firm
has nothing to do with the operational day to day transacting a business. So there is no competitive information that's
available. So the reason wouldn't have crossed our mind is we know there's no there there so to speak. And furthermore let's
just reflect for a moment. The other two people in this business are Blackstone and Goldman Sachs so who have vastly larger
businesses and credit. And that case private equity than we do. So this idea that that's somehow a problem it was a manufactured
one manufacturer. Right. But you know what. It's behind us. It's sound and fury. We want those firms to thrive where we have
stakes in them where we're vested in their success. So what we're wishing them well we know they'll do great. You know that
chapter is gone. Even if you came out victorious in court what you did did it come at all. It's something of a personal cost.
Given that you had a personal friendship with with with with Alan Waxman who who who runs one of these firms 68. Yeah. You
know we would have hoped that Alan would have approached it in a much more professional and friendly way. But you know at the end
of the day what six rate is really good at is trying to extract a little money from somebody when they see the chance. And
unfortunately for them this time they're better they're better credit managers than they are litigants. The ultimate question
of course is whether the fallout from that dispute becomes an obstacle to future deals. Well what what you have to understand
is that the folks that operate really collectively in our industry that know the players that know what we do and and are
considering. A minority piece of their firm to us. They know all this. They know there are information barriers. They know there
is no there there. And so they they sort of laughed at the whole concept itself. The whole dust up was was just Gallo being Gallo
and 6 3 6 3 being 6 3. They never thought that it would ultimately impact their business. And you saw that right after
the dust settled and we closed the blue LDL we we announced two very large transactions each of which had a large credit
business and showed to the world that there was really no impediment to us continuing our momentum within the GDP stakes
space. Why do a spark. It was the only way to do it.
Because you had a private company Neuberger Berman that was interested in the idea but didn't want to trade a unit of its
firm for a passive private interest in another firm that wouldn't ever that that might get stuck forever. They wanted to
know that they had a path to liquidity and so you had to pull this all off on a single day. And that's what made it complex.
You had to combine the two entities and list it. And to do so you really can't do that in a regular way IPO. That takes too
much time. Leaves the IPO window open for too long. Here's a twist and it's kind of part of how this became its own little
soap opera melodrama. You referred to before some of the stories in the so-called fights that went on. You know that look people
really want to see Wall Street soap opera. They just watched the show billions. But people like to manufacture things too. And
you know there were elements here that allowed people to craft their own narratives and stories. And this back is part of it
because the spark market has obviously surged and become all the rage. We would have been perfectly happy to do a traditional
IPO. But as always my my partner Michael pointed out we needed to have a mechanic where we could be public and merged on the
same day. That's a spark. Whether that was 10 years ago or in the middle of this back frenzy.