Remember That Banks Aren't Markets.

The Transaction Reflects Our Disciplined Strategy Of Investing Capital In Core Businesses Where We Can Leverage Scale And Expertise For Competitive Advantage. In Addition To Being A Great Strategic Fit, The Deal Is Compelling Financially.

My Guess Is The Big Chinese Banks Will Be In 100 countries By Then. They Will Have Very Sophisticated Operations, And They May Very Well Have Bought Banks Around The World In Countries That Allow It. I Mean, I Don't Think The American Government Would Allow Them To Buy Jpmorgan. But They Will Be Able To Buy A Sizable Big Bank In The U.s. At Some Point. Whether They Do Or Not, Or If It's Allowed Or Not, I Don't Know.

At Travelers, We Were Much More Opportunistic. It Was Very Successful, But It Wasn't An Integrated Financial Services Company. We Had A Property Casualty Company, A Life Company, A Brokerage Company. We Were A Financial Conglomerate. It Wasn't A Unified, Coordinated Strategy Of Any Sort. When It Merged With Citi, That Became A Big Issue; Citi, At That Time, Wasn't Yet A Fully Integrated, Coordinated Company.

Well, If You Were The American Public, You Saw A Catastrophe. In General, You Would Say, "the Biggest Institutions Of America - Washington, Broadly, And Wall Street, Broadly - They're To Blame." And, Broadly, They're Right.

Their [american Banks] Big Issue Will Be If They Want To Deal With The Biggest Companies, Which Are Doing A Lot Of Business Overseas. How They Do That Is A Big Question. It's Almost Impossible To Build A Global Investment Bank From Scratch. If They Want To Do That, They Probably Will Have To Do An Acquisition.