Whats the significance of having that autonomy and that sort of vertical integration?
Randall Smith: It makes it tougher for the parent company to monitor the details of how they’re doing business. If you’ve got your own budget for promotion, your own budget for lawyers or whatever, you can pretty much operate on your own. And the ability of the front office to exercise oversight and control is limited by that. What kind of guy is Frank Quattrone? Randall Smith: He’s a funny, engaging, charming guy. And that’s one thing that helps him win business. He’s built a big franchise out in Silicon Valley by getting to know all the venture capitalists. … And even down to the ability to tell a good story on the cover of a prospectus, of what problem a company was designed to solve — he is the master of that process as well. But the thing that people come back to most often when they’re talking about Frank Quattrone is control — that he’s a control freak and wants to be involved in every step of the process. That reputation is one of the things that has put a cloud over him be
