Charles Peabody Quotations

We're at an inflection point where the fixed-income markets aren't going to give you the tailwinds you've had in the past. The fixed-income markets have been on an incredible bull run but over a three- to five-year horizon what you've seen is going to reverse itself.

J.P. Morgan had a fairly strong independent streak. In the last two-to-three years, they decided they were going to try to get their brand name out there to and leverage that into a business stream of revenue that would have allowed them to remain independent. It didn't work. Their second goal: If you can't do it internally, let's command an extreme premium for that brand name. And they did that. Chase paid top dollar.

As value investors, we start with the fact that they are historically cheap and at all-time lows relative to the market, ... Secondly, we think there's an opportunity in the next year or two for the pricing cycle to improve. Thirdly, as the financial services deregulation bill makes its way through Congress, we think there's opportunity for some bank takeovers of insurance companies.

It's a really high price and not many people are willing to pay that, so I think Lehman is the more obvious,

In the latter stage of his career he became a product of his time: deal-driven, acquisition-oriented and power-oriented. It forced him to do things that he wouldn't have done earlier in his career when he was picking up valuable merchandise at discount prices.

Chase paid top dollar and this is going create substantial strains on Chase. There's tremendous execution risk going forward. I think it's going to be a very difficult cultural fit.