I've had a a long career in the utilities and electric power industry. I have been in this industry at this point for four decades. Um, and I have survived and thrived largely because I really love this industry. I've I've embraced it. It has embraced me and, uh, the path that I the path that I started on, um, was was one that started four decades ago. I was, um, I after my undergraduate, which I, uh, took at U C. Davis while I was at u C. Davis. I had I had a couple of very constructive internships, one with the, um, state of California in their state personnel board, another with the U. S. Department of Navy in, um, in contract management contract negotiations and logistics management, and was originally on a path to work in the public service sector, whether for federal or state government. And on immediately after undergraduate, I went back down to Southern California, worked for, uh, you know, or the party that I had done one of my internships with the Department of the Navy as a zey civilian logistics management specialist. You enjoyed, uh, enjoyed several years of that while while the what? The government did me a great favor of enabling me Thio, go get my MBA at night and on. And fortunately, the government was willing to pay for the dominant share of that. So worked in the day, got my MBA at night, but just figured I was on a path to to move forward in government service, which, you know, I was enjoying. I wouldn't say that it was something that I felt a huge passion around. But I was. My career was progressing. I was being promoted every year. There was a it was being offered mhm jobs back in Washington, D. C at headquarters. This, You know, this looked like a you know, a good career path. One of my one of my, uh, professors at the, uh, at my MBA courses, which I was taking at night. His name is Joe Player. He was at that point in time, the head of internal audit at Southern California. Edison Large, like utility, um uh, in the region. And he said, Larry, your your you would be great working at Edison. We really could use someone like you, you know? I got to know him. He got to know me. We liked each other and he said, Yeah, you know, you know, I know you're finishing up your MBA program. I know you have. Your career is probably going to be going back to D. C. But I'd really like you Thio talk to our team at at Edison and see if, you know, see if you'd like it. Okay? You know, I'm open you. No one has to be open to the opportunities. Even though I thought I had a direction, like, Okay, you know, you can't be. You can't be limiting to yourself. And I spoke with him, his colleagues at Southern California Edison. One thing led to another, and he's like, Well, g, this actually sounds like it could be an interesting, you know, redirection of my career path trajectory. So But if I'm going to, if I'm going to go in this direction, I really want to, you know, on dso something that I really knew that I enjoyed from my studies was yeah, I was getting more centered into the deep financial analysis path. I was good at it. I was I had a passion for it. I enjoyed it and I said, yeah, when I was interviewing with Edison. I really want to get into this career path and what they said is great. You know, come work for us. Work for us, you know, work for us. Yeah. You know, where we really need you is in is in. Um, at that point in time, they didn't call it. I t It was it was computer systems data processing. But we really need you on to help us set up a new income tax system. Remember, this was 40 years ago. This isn't today where you have software systems. This was FORTRAN coding and, you know, mainframe computers. And they were taking their entire income tax management system from literally cards from literally from literally three by five cards and a manual system into its first computer system. So help us help us do transition our system from manual to a computerized system. And then, you know, the world is your oyster. Okay, um, that that was interesting. And sure enough, you know, after the better part of the year, helping them on what was called their I. T. I s income tax information system and working in that direction, which was interesting, but not clearly a passion said here. Okay, right. Yeah, here's an opportunity. You can go into the treasurer's organization, the A financial analyst, and what we're going to do is put you at the forefront of what is happening in the industry. There were new laws. This was 19 79 1980 in 1978 there was a new law that was established. A federal law called Purpose Um purple is the Public Utilities Regulatory Practices Act. And, under purpose, utilities had to buy power from independent power companies and the companies that were Yeah, we're making your, you know, will make your financial analyst in the treasurer's department. And by the way, you are now the chief financial negotiator for all of these purple contract. Now look at them and said, What's the Purple contract? And they said, We don't know, but you'll figure it out. And and I figured it out. Yeah, this was like this amazing opportunity to be at a point at that point in time at the transition of not only the company but an entire industry, because Southern California Edison was the first company across the entire us that actually embraced these new these new regulations and said we're going to stop building a coal plant and a nuclear plant that we had started to build. We're going to stop building them. We're gonna We're going to embrace these new purpose generators. You, Larry, are going to be at the forefront of negotiating these deals, Which was which was pretty amazing, Pretty nice. And, yeah, at that point in time, I was because, like, this is great. I love what I'm doing. I am using my skills from a financial analytic standpoint, and I am helping to really drive change not only in my company, but in the industry. And I you know, um, I loved it. You know, Um, um significantly saw huge opportunities. And then yeah, and then really said, this is this is an industry that I want to really get very deep in and develop expertise in, and I recognize that my financial skills and commercial skills, or one element of it, but with their Yeah, this is the electric power industry. I had to effectively understand enough that I, you know, had to teach myself an engineering and electrical engineering. You know degree, you know, on on the side. Because this industry, if I was going to be in a leadership role in it, I had to understand the technology, not just the commercial and the financial aspect. So after Southern California, transit to another utility, this one in the Pacific Northwest, Portland, General Electric in Oregon and yeah, and, uh, and said, you know, this is this is an industry I love. This is a company that I could really sink my teeth into and, you know, and built a career in the on the more technical side off the industry, I became the first non non engineer by training and background in the company's 100 year history to, uh, to be in charge of the power supply. You have power systems, you will supply management. And I made huge changes because I was looking at the world with two lenses on. I understood by the technical lens what was going on physically. But I looked at the company what the company was doing commercially and said, You guys are, you know, on e pushed against the status quo, which is something that is very important, that I would give as a mentoring lesson to folks. I pushed against the status quo and and said What we have to do The company was in a surplus position. The company had never sold its power to other utilities before, other than like, on a very short term, daily basis, and was getting nothing for that. We have this permanent. We have a permanent problem. And it was an existent problem for the company. The company had started to build several plants that were unneeded, and this was this huge capital outlay that was causing massive financial problems for the company. Like, I have a solution for it. And, yeah, here I was. I'm still in my twenties at this point in time and this, you know, this kid in from an industry perspective, I'm rising through the ranks and, you know, getting in charge of things that, you know, that are interesting. And I come up with this proposition we have to sell. We have to sell our access on a long term basis, even sell assets in order to survive and thrive. No one had ever wanted to do that before you. You know, no one wanted to shrink the company. But they had because there were having this existentially problem and couldn't get recovery for all of the capital. Equipment and way have to sell. And we have to sell to California because California, we have a transmission access to California and California needs this power. Now we don't need it and we can make a lot of money because we will save them from having to build themselves. And we'll be able to sell to California because I had already been in California and it already known the environment in California and everyone said, Great, you can try to do this, but you're an idiot, Larry. You will never be able to accomplish it. Well, I accomplished. Yeah, I accomplished, you know, uh, selling off our entire surplus, solving the company's financial problems. The first deal I did was back in 1985 where we did a 300 megawatt transaction down all the way to San Diego Gas and Electric. And as a result of that transaction, the companies you know, not Onley where we're able to significantly reduce the rates to our customers in Oregon. But the company had the highest profitability that year of any year in its 100 year history. And then I repeated that for four years. Um uh, consecutive where the company, You know, where we did other transactions in California. And this was this was, um this was great. The company was doing well. People were saying, Look, you know, you're gonna you know, this is Larry. You're on a track to be the next, you know, president or CEO of the company. You're doing so well and and and, of course, at that point in time is like, Well, maybe that isn't the best thing, Um, for my career. And, um and, you know, opportunistically this thing company out of Boston found me, um, and, uh, company called Citizens Energy. It was started up by, um, by two of the of Robert F. Kennedy's sons a zey as an oil and natural gas trading company. And they said they came to me and said, We've seen you done a lot of interesting power, marketing and power transactions in the West. You know, we'd love to do a joint venture with you and your company, Portland General Electric in our company, and literally one thing led to another, and I wound up leaving Portland General Electorate and becoming the first president of Citizens Power, which was a subsidiary that Citizens Energy set up to do power, marketing and power trading. And it was a huge risk because here I was in this wonderful, nice career, everything was going well. And the opportunity that I that they came to me with was, Hey, you know, we don't have a business. There is no such thing as national power marketing. No one has ever set this up before. This was the first of a fine deal. We had to get approval from the Federal Edge Energy Regulatory Commission to go ahead and do it. But I looked at and said, Well, I've kind of, you know, my career has always been at the cutting edge. A little bit of this industry. This is a risk. But, um but hey, it, you know, it could be fun. And it was Yeah, it was It was a fun, right? We started with nothing. We started with absolutely nothing. No clients, no business, no mark. I was I was being told, you know where Where this citizens company, We don't have a lot of capital you have. You know, you have six months to turn this company into a into at least you know where you're covering your costs and generating profit. So, you know, we hustled. Yeah, hired a couple of people. We hustled where you started. You know, we you know, we started. We got our birth power marketing license, which was the first nationally on we started just doing interesting deals, calling you smiling and dialing, calling utilities across the country and saying you have power, Thio, you need power. You have power to sell. This was for any of the existing regulations that made this easy. We had to We had to fight for all of our all of our transmission assets and every deal we did, and we eventually the regulations caught up with us. Eventually, we became more profitable over time. And then we started doing some really innovations. We started. We started saying, Hey, you know what? What is wrong with this industry? What you're and we looked at things and said there these legacy contracts that air very much above market, and they're just they just keep operating their profitable for the owners of the contracts. But they're not, you know, way could actually replace the power at a lower cost than it's costing them to generate, um, and give the utility who's the buyer a better deal and make more money for the for the stellar and the first. And this really tumbled to me first. This is 1995. It tumbled to me. First. We were given an assignment. Um, you know, we we have this way. We're doing business for a lot of different companies. Chrysler Capital. Which was the at that point in time. Chrysler was an independent company not owned by Yeah, um, it had a capital and organization, and it owned a power plant in Hartford, Connecticut. Why did you know no power plant in Hartford, Connecticut? I don't know, but it did. And it was losing. It was losing money on this power plant. Um, it didn't make sense. It had, and they Chrysler came to me and our company and said, Yeah, here. We'll pay a bunch of money, figure out how we can that turned this company during this power plant into a profitable plant. It's got a good contract with the utility in Connecticut, but our fuel is expensive. Are operating? Costs are expensive. The plant doesn't work well. The plant is always breaking. How do we fix office? So they were expecting me to come in and say Okay, well, you make these operating changes, you operated in a different way. You buy fuel from a different company, you do a bunch of things and you incremental your profitability. And after about two weeks of evaluating it, they said the only way for you to make significant profits out of this plant is to kill it. And you're You're crazy. What the heck did we do? Hiring you, your idiot? No, no, no. Hang on. Let me share with you what my idea is. And they said you're an idiot. No one's ever done that before. You have to negotiate with the utility. You have to fight power. You have to transmit it in. We wound up negotiating with the utility, shutting the plant down, actually turning it down it. Well, it got we sold it to Mexico because it was more valuable in Mexico than it was in Connecticut. We bought power from Ohio, brought it over three different states into Connecticut. Um, replaced the power at a much lower cost than it cost to generate the power itself saved the utility 15% and wound up giving Chrysler a check for $50 million on an asset that prior to that was worth zero. So everyone, everyone one This was This was a classic win win When you effectively took, took our plan and said, Yeah, yeah, a different paradigm instead, Hey, if this plant shouldn't be operating in the first place and itself is the problem, let's figure out how to solve that problem. And it's been that into not only that wasn't just one deal, but after that deal, I've done those air. You know, we've called those power contract with structuring. We have done myself and my team beyond Beyond. Citizens have done 27 mawr of those transactions saving utilities and aggregate of over $3 billion in the process and making a good business. And, you know, you know, everyone has one in those deals after citizens. So we we spend spend, you know, um uh, I spent nine years at citizens building it up. The company was eventually sold to an organization called the Energy Group. Um a you know, at $120 million of equity value. Um, you know, everyone did did well left there. Went to El Paso corporation, built up a inorganic business, doing the exact same thing. Um, that was, um that was very profitable than when the rest of El Paso Corporation, which was originally El Paso natural gas, got, you know, tangled up in the Enron related messes. Unfortunately, my business was the was the most profitable business with in El Paso. It's the time. So guess what? My business was the to be sold, and I got my reward for having the most profitable business with in El Paso was to lose my job first, which was fine, because then I then went to Goldman Sachs and Goldman recruited and said, Look way want to develop an on balance sheet power generation business. And you think you know why? This is, You know, this is Goldman Sachs. It's a financial company, you know, I'm not, you know, uh, in the physical power generation business, how does this works? Like, don't worry. You're not in the investment bank. You're in the commodities division and your this is principal money. You're spending Goldman's own money. And Aziz, long as you build a business and are profitable, we Yeah, this is going to work out great. And it did work, right? I love Goldman. You know of any of the places I've worked. Goldman Sachs has been the the premier place for me. They gave me a platform to be successful. We were very successful. We built up a on almost 5000 megawatt business about a platform company, Cogentrix Energy. Use that as our platform to build the business. We earned A You know, we earned, um a total profit of of over $3 billion in that business over the period that I ran it on down a new internal rate of return of slightly over 60%. Um, yeah, I became a partner at Goldman, not because of my pleasant personality, although I do have a personality, but because I mean, I dealt a very profitable business. It was great. It was a great business. I would still be there. Were it not for a minor if you called the financial crisis which did not have any negative impact on my business, but it had a negative impact on Goldman and Goldman had to become a bank holding company. A bank holding company cannot own, operate or control and non financial business. Guess what my business was owning, operating him, controlling a non financial business. So we were on a track. That business had to be told. I had Thio move forward, selling all the assets in the business and then and then going else where I am. I am now at I squared capital, which is a ah, very significant global infrastructure business where where I can you know, by my trade, deploy capital and do it in a way that that has a long term focus, given our long term investors behind. I squared, so I apologize for the very long story, but that's been that's been my path.

Um uh let me start with the last question first, because it's especially in this environment of of co vid where one is working in front of a zoom screen. Andi, when is trying to do transactions? It is. It is, uh, it is close to 24 7. I would say that the working hours on a weekly basis, you know, there's no weekend, There's no night, There's no mornings. It's, you know it is. Yeah, it is pretty constant from from early morning through through late at night. My last call, the last evening was at 11:30 p.m. My first business called this morning was a little bit before 7:30 a.m. Eso um, Now that isn't Yeah. Uh, there are, um there There are breaks on occasion in in the middle, but one, uh, if you're in a transactional business, um, like this business, it's that it can get pretty intense when you're in the midst of transactions and going back to the first question. What responsibilities and decisions does one handle that? It's, uh, it is a transactional business. A an infrastructure private equity fund is in the business of number one, deploying capital and then number two. Once capital is deployed, the deploying capital is the easy part. The difficult part is when dog catches bus when the capital is deployed, earning a you're earning one's strong return associate ID. With that with the capital, you have to eat what you kill. You have to manage, optimize and and direct. The businesses that you are acquiring is so one has a dual Focus is focused. Number one is origination and execution of transactions buying stuff, whether that is businesses, whether it is assets, whether it is forming new platforms and enterprises. And number two is then when those businesses are within your portfolio, managing them, directing them, guiding them and on and making decisions in conjunction with the pre existing legacy management that organization in order to do something different, the whole context of the private equity model is to or call it by the status quo and get the upside for free. You look at you. There's always a focus on embedded optionality on what can be done with this business with this asset with this enterprise that is not being done by the incumbent management or the incumbent owners and you have that lens on, you're always looking, not simply for how well is the business doing today. That's well and good. But what can I do to break things? What can I do to to take this business and alter it in a way that it can be that it can perform better? What, what cognitive operational, structural or financial changes can one make to improve the business? And if you look at the business and say this is a really great business, it's operating exceptionally well. It's financed perfectly. The management is top notch. I don't want to buy the business because it's too good. If someone let someone else by it and harvest the crop that others have planted want to. I want to burn the crop that's in the field and plant something more profitable. So So we are always looking for this embedded optionality. These structural, um, difficulties, Um, and that makes yeah, and that makes the you know it makes the job interesting, but it is like a Rubik's cube you want. You don't when you're doing your diligence, you're not looking for perfection. You're looking for solvable Remedia ble imperfections because that's what gives you the potential for the upside. So getting into the middle of the sandwich, what are the top three priorities? Um, you know, buying, identifying, identifying the right assets and enterprises that fit into the business model that I just articulated. It's priority number one, number two, then buying those those enterprises and assets in the right way in under the right structure and number three, then optimizing and initiating all of these structural, financial and operational changes that can liberate the extra the extrinsic value that you saw in the assets in the first place. Let me speak for a moment about the second, which is buying right You're in in the industry, you know, the typical approach is when sits at their desk, waits for an investment banker to call and say to tell you, Hey, I'm gonna have a competitive RFP auction process on this on this company with this asset, and then you show up with um with 20 of your favorite competitors to enter into a two phase auction process. And what happens typically is that you lose your the If you win, you lose because you paid more than any of the other idiots around the table who are all vying for the same asset. And if you wind up winning, you're actually the biggest. You're the biggest loser, so to speak because you've overpaid, um, relative to the other folks who have gathered around this competitive process. So how do we avoid that? We avoid that by knowing enough about the industry, knowing enough about the people in the industry having enough embedded relationships to be to be able to pick up the phone call people have them, pick up the call and say, Hey, I want to buy your company. That is what I have built this, Yeah, my, um, acquisitions on there's there's a billion dollar deal that I'm in the midst of right now. We have a letter of intent with the company. Very attractive business. But it didn't go through a competitive process. Yeah, picked up the phone. I called up the CEO of the company. I also spoke with one of the board members of the company, but mainly the CEO of the company, and said, Hi, you know, I'd really like to talk to you about about potential acquisition of the business. We think we can do A You're really give you a really attractive deal. It would be good for you. Good for your team. Good for the shareholders. And we've moved. You moved down the road accordingly. You can't do every deal like that. But those were the kind of deals, you know. That's that's, you know, those of the deals that make the most sense because your probability of success is highest. And you're not going to be in the role of the biggest loser because you're not competing with 20 other people who you know who are, you know, some of whom are not going to do their diligence well and will over pay or will Yeah, or will have other quote unquote strategic. Yeah, it becomes a strategic acquisition. And my motto is, when you use the word strategic and acquisition in the same sentence, watch out because you're about to do something really dumb. Uh huh. Have So, um, Anyway, those air, uh, started with the last question ended with the middle question, But that z those air? Um, yeah. Uh, it may not sound like like a compelling career. When when is working? The hours Better work

Yeah, I would. I would tell you that a major challenge and pain point is that yeah, e mean, it's It's the world. It's society, Not all decisions. Bye. Our counter parties are made under, you know, in a rational way. Way were pursuing a publicly, you know, a process in which a publicly owned electric utility was being sold by the governmental entity that owned it. We we partnered up with the right partner. We had the right proposition. We had the right math. We did everything right. We spent literally millions of dollars pursuing this opportunity and we lost. And we did not lose because we had we had the best proposition. We have been told by people on the inside of the process representing the seller that we had by far not by a little by far the best proposition financially. The best proposition qualitatively the best proposition for customers. The best proposition for the government. The best proposition for the employees We we won by all rational, substantive metrics. We won that proposition yet we lost. We lost because yeah, yeah of Let's just say you know, the decision criteria, um, were somewhat political way we followed the rules. Not all of our competitors followed the rules that were given to them. We tried to do things right and ethically I can sleep a night. I don't know that our competitors concisely Puel at night. But sometimes you face competitors that or or decision makers or counter parties that that, yeah, that, you know, operate in a way that, at least does not embrace the same kind of rationality that you embrace. I prefer, And the companies that I work for, like I squared capital, prefer work on a high level ethical basis. That's the way that we base our business. We take the notion of e. S G very seriously to include being ethical, being honest, being truthful and doing the right thing. When you face counter parties when you face competitors, when you face others that don't adhere to the same standards, it's damn frustrated. You talk about pain points, you know, I always Yeah, when we lost that transaction for all the wrong reasons that z I mean I felt personal pain. I lost sleep. I lost, you know? Yeah, Yeah, I started to question Have I lost my mojo? Have I lost my ability thio to do things the right way because everything that we did, we felt was absolutely at the highest level of integrity and, you know, and delivering the right results to get us across the finish line. And yet we and yet we lost. That's frustrating as hell. And there's no way to Yeah, I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say, Oh, well, you just dust off and move on. It's hard to just off move when you put your soul into a deal.Unfortunately, I don't consume alcohol because that could have been an approach. I I would have been tempted to, uh, used to I mean, sometimes. Look, um um, I would I would say the learning that I have had is make sure that you do business with people that you can trust. Make sure that you know that, you know, fool me once game on, you fool me twice. Shame on me. So I will tell you. You know, we you know, we learned and, uh, you know, there was another. There was another process that involved in a an asset and enterprise that we would very much have liked to have participated in and owned. And it involved at least one of the same investment banking individuals who was, I would say, party to the last yeah, sub optimal approach that that we were subject to. And, yeah, we were called by them. Hey, you know would like you to participate in this in this process, like, frankly and we would have liked you. It was an assets of position. We would have liked. Jones was like, No, life is too short. Pound stand. We're not going to participate you know, um, in a you know, in a process that potentially has the same people and the same, you know, the same potential for pain points that we just suffered. So the best approach that I can suggest is don't be tempted to repeat the same mistakes even if they weren't your mistakes. Don't be tempted to jump into the same cool that you know, someone has previously peed in.