Michael Ovitz: evaluation

Transcript context

…What could have made CAA during the franchise that became a gigantic force rather than sort of apexing as you exited? It's funny. I had dinner with Ari a couple of weeks ago. He was a trainee at the agency and one of the best we ever had. I think he's done a fantastic job at building his business and diversifying it. I spent a lot of time, which a very few people know, looking into how I could diversify CAA. Could I run it public? Could I sell it to private equity? Could I buy an ad agency? I looked at buying J. Walter Thompson. I looked at bringing in private equity. At the end of the day, I didn't know how to divide it up amongst the players. I couldn't figure out how to get it transitioned to a bigger entity. Ari said, well, yeah, Michael, you could have bought an ad agency and blown the company up. But I said, Ari, this was 30 years ago. Economics were different, public entities were different, private equity was different. It just wasn't like it is today. I couldn't figure out how to keep my core group and compensate them all. I decided it was better to make a clean break and try to do it on my own in a different field. So how could it have been? Yeah, I could have bought J. Walter Thompson. I would have gone into debt. I wouldn't have known how to give options to so many people at the agency because how do you tell a group that's all for one, one for all, and were splitting all the proceeds? Then go through what all these companies go through, how do you give options out to everybody? Right. Because it was you and your founding partners primarily that owned 90% plus of CAA?…

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