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Um well cargo started in 1865 so it's been around you know 160und plus years and um so it's privately held so you got which means all the stock is owned by the Cargill family and the McMillan family excuse me except for a portion that management owns uh as stock and we also had an employee stock option plan so but anyway probably 85% is owned by the two families. It's all privately held. it's all tied up. Um I think if the family wanted to sell, it's all wrapped up in trust and stuff.

So it's really a a private company which allows you to think long term and it's really important thing where you're really not uh every morning you're not looking at the newspaper see what the stock did yesterday etc. And uh so it's privately held and um it is unique from that standpoint that fact that you could set your own pace. you the family had various requirements of management for example that they wanted a company that they can be proud of.

They wanted a company that can have impact on the world. They wanted to be a good corporate citizen. Uh yes, they wanted to grow and yes they wanted to be profitable, you know. So is is all those things really combined that really for me was very engaging that really was consistent with how I thought how I believed and how I operated um within Cargill and and one of the biggest motivators I had within Cargill was I call FTO it was a freedom to operate so as long as I did my job well uh I could operate where I wanted how I wanted you know it was a lot of flexibility and a lot of credibility from that standpoint and it's something I really appreciated being working for a company like that as opposed to you know just results results results results results because it's more than that and the expectations from the family for us was more than that and so being on the board uh of Cargill and uh also vice chairman and part

of their five to six people who were on the senior leadership team we had a chance to set the tone for all our employees you know 160,000 150,000 employees it oscillates sometimes depending which business we're in and so you got it's a global business uh you get a lot of exposure to uh companies, countries, customers, cultures worldwide. And so there's a lot of international travel which is really what gets to be tough sometimes u with time zones and stuff and you wake up at 2 in the morning going at 2 in the morning this is Tuesday I must be in Beijing you know you just lose track of uh all these things but you got to be on your game more or less.

So anyway I really enjoy the culture. It's a very highly ethical culture uh very highly ethical culture and they're dead serious about it. It's just not a poster that hangs on your uh uh k cafeteria wall. It's very highly ethical. And so that was another thing that was very consistent that Cargill would never ask me to do something that was against my own personal beliefs. And I would also never do anything to embarrass Cargill. That was kind of a very clearly stated um thing.

And I think going back to the ethics, I think it was really important for customers that a lot of times if they uh if a buyer uh was look headed to buy various commodities because we're in the basically the B2B business, businessto business, we do have some uh BTOC but it's basically B2B and uh they'd say please do business with Cargo because I know they are not going to do anything or allow you doing anything that's going to be unethical.

And we also have a lot of governments who who really uh come to us for advice, counsel, um you know, to try to get a you know, how to handle things and to make sure that they're doing things a way that we can uh uh think the long term.