You missed the best historical note (going from memory here, please jump in to correct me). The Treasury Department was so pissed off at Salomon repeatedly ignoring the "Paul Mozer rule" (prohibiting bidders from acquiring over 35% of any single auction) that they pulled Salomon's primary dealer status, which would have been catastrophic.

Desperate to stave off this crisis, the Board turned to ... Warren Buffett (this is in 1991), who had been given a seat after Berkshire's white knight purchase of preferred stock. Charlie had apparently warned Warren before the purchase, that if you lie with dogs you may catch fleas. Anyway Warren testified before a Congressional subcommittee and displayed enough humility that the punishment was rescinded. You really should watch the video.

YouTube: Buffett on Salomon Brothers (bid666)

Footnote: That year, as interim CEO, Warren conducted the Salomon annual meeting in Manhattan. At the time I owned Salomon but had not yet bought Berkshire. My boss and I took the day off and took the train into NYC to attend the meeting, and it was the first time I saw Warren in person. Even better is that there were "only" maybe 500 people there, compared to the mega-meetings in Omaha. And yes, I finally started buying Berkshire in 1996, pretty much the day that the Class B shares started trading for us pikers.