Ask the chief executive of BB&T Corp. why he has made his latest acquisition, and John Allison will cite the usual financial ratios and accounting acronyms. Then he will quote Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do." Wall Street analysts and fund managers who recently trudged to Winston-Salem, N.C. to hear the 52-year-old Allison speak got a lecture in classical philosophy. Half the two hours was spent on ideas like the great Greek's defense of deductive reasoning, the point being that logic should inform decisions on everything from car loans to cashouts.
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