Adam Waterous (Strathcona) — How Canada Can 2x Oil Production

But the market started to get crowded with First Energy.

Tristone came along, Tudor Pickering a whole little later, plus the big banks.

So how did you keep the momentum going? Was it relationships? Was it just good deals? So I'm not a big

fan of... of most investment bankers talk a lot about their relationships.

What distinguish you? You're Goldman Sachs.

Oh, I got these relations.

I'm Morgan Stanley.

I got these relationships.

You know what? Relationships will break your heart.

You know, there's always somebody who who's got a better relationship with a client than you do.

And the real key thing is you need to be providing better value to the client than the next guy.

And so one of the things that we did is we reinvested a lot in the business.

We were a private business, and often when you're a private business, you have an advantage in that it's easier to reinvest the cash flow on it.

So now we globalize, we invest a lot in technology.

We were the first people to digitize a data room, put it on CDs.

We were the first people to develop an online data room.

We really pioneered hiring technical people, geologists, engineers, geophysicists, you know, working on our team to be able to help communicate the merits of the upside of potential assets.

So we just constantly reinvested in the business.

And ultimately, that business model was seen to be providing the most amount of value.

And then others, not surprisingly, would try to replicate it in some form or another.

You've done a lot of deals through the years, a lot of good deals, creative deals that made sense.

But on the flip side of that, what do you see in deals that doesn't work? And what advice would you give to dealmakers on the flip side on what not to do?

So I'm trying to be short on this.

The most times it's a competitive world out there and getting a good buy is is like, oh, you know, I think the thing's worth $100, but for whatever reason, I was able to do a one-off with the seller and got it for $90 or $80.

Sometimes that happens, but generally speaking, I think that's quite a hard business model to try and create value, where we think, I'm going to get a really good deal.

But the market started to get crowded with First Energy.

Tristone came along, Tudor Pickering a whole little later, plus the big banks.

So how did you keep the momentum going? Was it relationships? Was it just good deals? So I'm not a big

fan of... of most investment bankers talk a lot about their relationships.

What distinguish you? You're Goldman Sachs.

Oh, I got these relations.

I'm Morgan Stanley.

I got these relationships.

You know what? Relationships will break your heart.

You know, there's always somebody who who's got a better relationship with a client than you do.

And the real key thing is you need to be providing better value to the client than the next guy.

And so one of the things that we did is we reinvested a lot in the business.

We were a private business, and often when you're a private business, you have an advantage in that it's easier to reinvest the cash flow on it.

So now we globalize, we invest a lot in technology.

We were the first people to digitize a data room, put it on CDs.

We were the first people to develop an online data room.

We really pioneered hiring technical people, geologists, engineers, geophysicists, you know, working on our team to be able to help communicate the merits of the upside of potential assets.

So we just constantly reinvested in the business.

And ultimately, that business model was seen to be providing the most amount of value.

And then others, not surprisingly, would try to replicate it in some form or another.

You've done a lot of deals through the years, a lot of good deals, creative deals that made sense.

But on the flip side of that, what do you see in deals that doesn't work? And what advice would you give to dealmakers on the flip side on what not to do?

So I'm trying to be short on this.

The most times it's a competitive world out there and getting a good buy is is like, oh, you know, I think the thing's worth $100, but for whatever reason, I was able to do a one-off with the seller and got it for $90 or $80.

Sometimes that happens, but generally speaking, I think that's quite a hard business model to try and create value, where we think, I'm going to get a really good deal.