Leon Black Quotes
102 Leon Black Quotes (Apollo Global Management, Apollo Investments, Apollo Group, Leon David Black)
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Art and literature are what differentiate us from barbarians.
Leon Black
[In March 2011] A hope and a prayer is not a strategy.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] If you cover your downside and keep the discipline, the reward side will take care of itself.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] Most of what I learned about how to do business I learned from Shakespeare, not Harvard Business school.
Leon Black
[In 2006] The more partners you have, the more difficult it is to come to agreement when things go wrong.
Leon Black
[In February 2009] When you talk about what distressed investment really is, it’s a delevering process…
Leon Black
[On attending Harvard at his father’s urging.] I hated it. While I enjoyed studying Shakespeare, I didn’t love studying business. However, I love doing business.
Leon Black
[On getting a call from Thierry de la Villehuchet – Head of Credit Lyonnais Securities] He called me a few times. I didn’t return the calls because I’d never heard of him.
Leon Black
[On what he told Thierry de la Villehuchet when they did catch up.] The real opportunities, were on the principal side, dealing in a depressed and severely shocked junk bond market.
Leon Black
[On his time at Drexel Burnham Lambert] I had a damn good track record there.
Leon Black
[On payouts after private equity investing.] In some cases, we took 60 percent, 85 percent or even 100 percent of our investment out. It was the right thing to do for our investors.
Leon Black
There are going to be cases like Linens ‘n Things. We didn’t put more money in Linens because it would have been just putting good money after bad.
Leon Black
After my father died, we were pretty much wiped out, financially, as a family. So I decided to give finance a try.
Leon Black
[On the closing of Drexel Burnham Lambert.] The day they closed the doors was a bad day.
Leon Black
[On Drexel Burnham Lambert and securities violations.] I think what happened to the firm was unfair, but we were very politically naïve. I’m not sure fairness was relevant.
Leon Black
When we do distressed-debt investing, we have made money in 98 percent of those deals.
Leon Black
[On saying to CEO Fred Joseph that Drexel should use its clout from junk bonds to back the raiders in takeovers.] Robber barons of the future. These are they guys who are building empires.
Leon Black
[To Carl Icahn when he and Carl Icahn were fighting over E-II the company that owns Samsonite and Culligan and Carl owned 3 million shares.] Why don’t you come on the board. Why don’t you sit on the board? [‘So I decide OK. I’ll sit watch on the board. One day, one of these Harvard MBAs says, ‘Hey, we ought to open up some plants in India, sell water, you know, through Culligan.’ I said, ‘India? What the h*ll do we know about India?’ I looked at Leon [Black] and I said, ‘C’mon, Leon. Buy me out. The stock is at $22. You can have my 3 million shares at $20.’ But these geniuses look at Leon, too, and say, ‘No way. Forget it Icahn, you’re a minority investor. You sit on the board. You suffer with it. Screw you. We’re not buying you out.’ You know what I ended up getting for that stock about a year and a half later? 80. All those Harvard geniuses, right? They should have taken the deal. I was lucky. –
Carl Icahn]
Leon Black
[In August 1990] A lot of companies need to be sold or refinanced.
Leon Black
[In August 1990 on potential buyers of US corporations with the mergers business slowing considerably due to the junk-bond market’s woes.] Foreign companies are the most logical buyers.
Leon Black
[In 1993] We want to be like Warren Buffett.
Leon Black
[In 1993 on any future leveraged buyouts.] More rational. Less leverage, more equity.
Leon Black
[In January 1993 on a company restructuring process.] Torture. Just imagine what it’s like to get 50 people to agree. We have to work on cajoling them and building a consensus at the same time.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] The only thing I’m sure of is that markets will change.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] I’d be lying if I didn’t say part of my agenda was to show that [Drexel] wasn’t an evil machine.
Leon Black
[In July 1996 on Apollo rate of returns.] I’d be happy with 30%. There just isn’t much quality distressed.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] A better time to harvest [sell] than to buy.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] We’ll be making more [minority] investments as liquidity tightens, more control investments as the stock market falls, and more distressed as the economy weakens.
Leon Black
[In his second year at Harvard.] I had to go out and support myself and my family. [His mother and sister.]
Leon Black
[In July 1996 on his first 12 of 13 years at Drexel.] Pretty terrific.
Leon Black
[In July 1996 on his final year of 13 at Drexel.] Nightmare.
Leon Black
[On the good that came out of the junk bond fuelled takeover wave of the 1980s.] Management was put on guard. And junk became established as a real market.
Leon Black
[In July 1996 on being flexible in the kinds of investments Apollo made and being open-minded to sharing control.] Control is just one possible outcome.
Leon Black
[In July 1996] One of the reasons we liked distressed was because others didn’t have the capital-markets background and weren’t comfortable playing [in that arena].
Leon Black
[In 1996 on a deal that Drexel and Mr Reginald Lewis did.] There was no deal done that I can remember that was as generous… to the deal manager… Half the equity in the company, for putting up bupkis.
Leon Black
[In October 1996] What manager do you know of in any Fortune 500 company, let alone a Fortune 10,000 company, that gets paid $22 million for managing a company? You want to answer that?
Leon Black
[In February 2004 on using Dennis Kozlowski’s of Tyco International’s former office.] The desk is going to be changed.
Leon Black
[In 2006] Anything is fair game, there is so much capital.
Leon Black
[In 2006] There are few bargains out there. Deals private-equity players would have required a 25% return on in the past are now being done for mid-teens returns. That may be OK if everything goes OK. But if we have an economic downturn, some of these deals will come back to haunt the people who did them.
Leon Black
[In 2006] We feel we should have a wide funnel in terms of opportunities.
Leon Black
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