It's an opportune time to make this transition, ... Performance is strong, flows are positive, and the organization is stable. We had a lot of challenges before us, and we've fixed a lot of those. Now it's time to focus on execution of strategy.

Shareholders have lost total confidence in management because the stock has underperformed the S&P 500 (stock index) by 45 percent.

People are ready for a new vision and we see that everywhere we visit.

I think everyone's goal here was to work together to ensure the organization's long-term financial viability.

There is a great role for agriculture to play in meeting our energy needs and I want to be a part of that.

Alcohol and gaming aren't suffering the way tobacco is because you don't have the president of the United States talking about them.

The only reason it would be terrible to own tobacco is if you think the industry is going to go bankrupt. People are nuts if they don't want to buy stocks that are trading at 60 cents on the dollar.

We just called the JPs and polled them and let them know what was going on.