From Wall Street to Dolly's Tennessean: Greg Sachs' Unlikely Journey

So you guys build together, what was the business at that time called?

So the business was called Springfield International Investments.

And in 1998, Russia defaulted on their debt and there was a bunch of turmoil in the markets.

And I said to the family, hey guys, And at this point, by the way, I had owned 50% of the business.

Because let's go back a couple of years.

In 1995, I went to the chans and I said, look, I really want to franchise this business from the standpoint of it not being a Greg Sachs business.

I'd like this to be a business that could really be built.

And I said, so I really need to own some equity.

And at that point, he said, OK, well, you've built this thing yourself and you've deserved the equity.

He said, but you're going to have to pay for it.

He said, how much do you think the business is worth? Well, I'm still struggling and making a little bit of money, but very little.

And I'm looking at a multibillionaire.

And so I very quietly and respectfully said, with or without Greg Sachs.

And he laughed and he said, fair point.

He said, why don't you just pay me the value of the physical assets, the desks, the computers, and so forth.

And at that point, I wrote him a check pretty much for everything I had saved up and bought into half of the business.

Not going to bore you with a lot more details, but fast forward the tape.

In 1998, there was some challenges with long-term capital.

there were some challenges with Russia.

They defaulted on their debt.

And the Chan family said, look, we don't want to be in this business anymore.

We want to focus on something called the Internet.

I said, okay.

And so we cut a deal where I bought them out and basically had to pay them over time, gave them whatever money I had put away the prior couple of years.

And at that point in 1998, there was a major run on all of these fixed income ARB funds because a lot of funds did not do well in 1998.