Interview With Lawrence Levy: Masters in Business (Audio)

a new book out about his time. They're essentially he was recruited by Steve Jobs. He's working in his office electronics for Imaging. He's a corporate lawyer from London to to Harvard too out into who Silicon Valley. And he's working at his desk one day and the phone rings and it's Steve Jobs. Hey, I have a company I'd like you to come look like to talk to you about um. He thought it was gonna be about next It turns out to be about Pixar, and he wrestles

with the idea Jobs. His reputation precedes him, but he goes and gets a tour of Pixar, which you know is a horrible part of town, across from an oil refinery. It looks like a dumping What is why do I want to have anything to do with this? On the wrong is a long, ugly commuter. There was nothing appealing

to it. And then he gets inside the building and starts to see the magic of of Pixar and just the collection of brilliant creative people, both on the technology side and the storytelling side, and early version of Toy Story. A few minutes he gets to see UM as part of his tour, and he's just you know, we take it for granted today, how brilliant these movies are. But he's just blown away. Imagine you see five minutes of Pixar, even of Toy Story, even a rough, un in version

of it, and it's just mind blowing. It's unlike anything ever before um And ultimately wrestles with the question and decides to join the company, and he describes bluntly the

company was a disaster from a business perspective. They had all these different lines, none of which could scale, and ultimately comes up with a creative business plan in order to turn the company into a real business, which really relied on all we have to do is shut down these three lines of business that aren't scalable and we'll never make money, pivot from technology and hardware into the entertainment business, and then come out with a series of movies,

each of which has to be spectacular and record breaking at the box office. Easy peasy. How hard could that be? Well, it turns oh nps take the company public with a mercurial owner who just got tossed out of his previous company called Apple, and it turns out that his plan worked out really well. All sorts of things come out in the book he wrote, called to Pixar and Beyond. You learn about all sorts of things you had no idea about about Pixar, about the entertainment business, about Apple,

about Steve Jobs. It's really a fascinating story, and I had a great time um speaking with him. As as an old mac heead and a huge fan of Pixars films, I found it to be just fascinating and I think you will too. So, with no further ado, here's my conversation with Pixars CFO Lawrence Levy. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Pixar, and I can't imagine there's anybody listening who is Fourteen of Pixar's films are amongst

the fifty highest grossing animated films of all time. You're familiar with names such as Toy story Finding, Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatui, while E Inside Out, Monsters, Cars. It just goes on and on. The studios are in sick teen Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, eleven Grammys. He is also the author of a new book titled to Pixar and Beyond, My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs. Lawrence Levy, Welcome to Bloomberg

High Burry. It's a pleasure to be here. So I have to tell you I'm almost done with the book and I've really been enjoying it. Let's start with you. You're born in London. How do you end up working in Silicon Valley as a lawyer. Well, yes, I was born and raised in London. I moved in my late teens over to the United States and then I ended

up in the university. I was at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, where I studied business and accounting that i'd go into Harvard Law School and then I started my law practice and I was practicing on the East Coast, and I was not happy whether this is sort of in my mid twenties, um, and I'm like, you know, what do I really want to do? And at that time, I was married, we had a one year old baby, and there was a request in the law firm to represent

a software company and nobody was interested. This is like seven no one was interested in representing software companies. They didn't mean anything. And my hand shut up and I was like, this is what I'm gonna do, And so I did. This is just a tiny little company. I don't even remember its name, but I could see that, you know, by doing this, that this was sort of a land of opportunity and then technology, this technology thing

is going to go somewhere. Even the law is associated with the protection of software and this kind I hadn't been sorted out yet. And so but I'm in the wrong place, you know, Where shall I go? And we had never been to California, We've never really even heard of Silicon Valley, but that was the place. So I came out to Silicon Valley and I interviewed with the biggest law firm out there, and the founding partner of that firm Larry Soncini, who's featured in the book Le

Langendary Law Firm. And I said to Larry, you know, I just want to come out here and do technology transactions. And he said, you know, we have no one specializing in it. It's growing and growing. I'll let you do it. And that was the start of what became the rest and the biggest technology transactions law practice in in the legal business. That's that's worthy of a book. Unto itself. Let's talk about the phone call out of the blue from Steve Jobs. What was that like? So imagine that

I'm sitting in my office. By that time, I was working for a company called Electronics for Imaging that had been one of my clients, and I went to to work for them, and I ended up becoming their CFO and we took that company public. They're still around. It's a great company. And my phone rings, and I pick up the phone and I hear on the other end of the line, High, this is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in the magazine a couple of years ago. I thought we'd worked together. Someday I have a little

company I want to tell you about. And I immediately thought to myself, next, he's talking about next computer. Now, this is some context. This was after he's tossed out unceremoniously from Apple eight years later. This he's tossed out. You know some years before you went to do next computer. But two years before next it's shut down. It's hard business,

which so it was basically rumored to be done. And I thought to myself, Okay, he wants some help to turn around next And but then he says the company is called Pisarre, and inside I'm kind of going, what's picks are? And awardly, I kind of said, that sounds really cool. I'd love to you know, I'd love to learn about it. But you know, it, Picks alway was so unknown at that point that you know, maybe you sort of barely had heard of it. Um. But that was how the that was how everything got started. So

so let's briefly talk about the genesis of Pixar. George Lucas, while working on Star Wars and other films, wanted his own facility. Why did he cleave the Pixar portion off and keep Skywalker Labs or studios or whatever it's called for himself. I think he cleaved it off for the because it was very expensive to run, and so I don't think he wanted to continue the investment in their

computer graphics division and so um. And so that's when at Katmo av Ray Smith and decided to sort of try to take it as a spinoff, and they needed an investor to help with that. So Jobs invites you to come be the CFO at Pixarar. At that point, his reputation wasn't what it was today. He was sort of an on front every blow. How concerned were you about that before you said yes to join Pixar. I was extremely concerned. And that's why the first chapter in the book is is cool? Why would you do that?

Because that's what a lot of people told me. It was maybe the lowest point in in Steve's career. You know, he'd had a string of basically four failures in the you know, the Apple Leasa computer, then the original Apple Macintosh computer that had a very hard time finding a market. Uh um, the next computer that Pixar Imagine computer. So there were books being written about you know him as done finished and so I I was very concerned about him. So you go to Pixar, You you meet everybody before

you agree to say yes, what was your impression? Well, it's funny, you know, Pixar was at that time in Point Richmond, California, which, from the point of view of Silicon Valley was kind of like in the middle of nowhere. And so and it was in It's across the street from an oil refinery, and it's a dumpy building and

there's nothing remarkable or inspiring about it whatsoever. And so I went in there scratching my head, and you know, I meet at Cat moll and a couple of other people, and then John John Lasseter, and then they take me to see this sort of footage of Toy Story, which is a year before Toy Story comes out, and it's just a few minutes and it's unfinished and there's no music and the voices on final and so there's all

these caveats about what it's going to be. And I'm in a screening room that's full of like couches that look like they've been picked up from the end of a driveway, and I'm like, what's going on here? And the film begins to roll and I'm kind of like mesmerized by this. I'm looking at this saying to myself, somewhere in this building there is magic. I don't know where it is or what it is, but something is going on here. I'm Barry rid Hultz. You're listening to

Master in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Lawrence Levy. He was the CFO of Pixar and he is the author of Two Pixar and Beyond, My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs. Let's let's talk a little bit about Pixar. When you first arrived there, they seem to have a lot of different businesses going on, but entertainment was almost an afterthought. Tell us, tell us what greeted you when you first joined the company. Yeah, well,

entertainment wasn't afterthought. You know. Pixar was created as a graphics company, and it was hardware, software, software. It made a computer called the Pixar Imaging Computer, and so it was in these different things that it was making this random and software which was rendering these high end graphics, uh and creating them into computer images. It was doing animated shore films, it was doing commercials. It was doing this sort of thing called there's a lot of focus

on toy story. Um so there was kind of a lot going on, and I realized right away, you know, I had kind of a lot to learn there, that was. And so when I first got there, I was just like, you know, I'm not gonna make any decisions. I'm not going to do anything. I literally took I got a pad of paper and a pen, and I asked, everybody, can I just follow you around and and see what's

going on? And I literally did that. You know. I spent a lot of time just you know, sitting listening, you know, and just taking notes so I could sort of start to understand, you know, what was going on at the company. You look at three businesses, the hardware, the software, the short commercial business, and none of them scale to anything remotely approaching a public company. None of

them could scale. They were amazing for the hardware had already been closed down, but the anime commercials, the animate short films, the rendom and software they couldn't scale. And the reason was because there's too high end. You know, there was like, how many people in the world at that point in time, We're gonna pay this very large amount, but it's unbelievable software, you know, to render unbelievably high quality image. You know, just studios. You know, studios not

enough to build a business. So you decide the future of the company if, if it's going to have a future, is to pivot from technology to applying the technology to be a unique entertainment company. How hard was it to get Steve Jobs two, who is essentially a tech slash marketing guy at heart, how hard was it to get him to buy in on that vision? Yeah, well, decide is probably a bit of an overstatement. It was a

strategy by default in a way. So you look around the company and this isn't gonna work, This isn't gonna work, This isn't gonna work. So then you look at this animated feature film thing, and so I started to learn about that, and I'm like, well, this is the worst possible business strategy. So you you specifically right, in order for this to be successful, we have to have a string of blockbuster hits, And then you go through the numbers and and send snow White in the Seven Dwarfs.

In nineteen thirty seven, the two biggest hits that were animated were both Disney. One is a Laddin at two hundred seventeen million dollars, The other is Lion King at three hundred thirteen million dollars, And in order for the Pixar business model to make sense, you have to come pretty close to those two, you know, in in almost

uh three quarters of a century, every three or four years. Yeah, I mean, and it's worse than that in a sense because if you looked at the Disney model, which I did, and I was like, why didn't Why aren't there more independent animated feature film, It's not like animated feature films there's a new product, right, it's been around for two generations, right, Disney releases snow White in the Seven Dwarves, the first

animated feature film. So it's like every studio had an opportunity to get into that business, and none of them are in it. And it turned out that even Disney couldn't make it work because you know, he has a good run from He's got you know, Bamby and snow White and Dumbo and all these beloved films, but he couldn't keep that engine running financially. So he diversifies, right, he diversifies. He goes into five, he goes into theme parks early, he goes into television with the wonderful world

of Walt Disney. Uh, he goes into distribution. He sets up one of us, the distribution. He's trying to diversify away from an animation because he goes to live action film Mary Poppins in this and that. So he built this diversified media company. And so I'm looking around and not even Disney is a good example of an independent

animated feature film. But um, you know, you know, you're sort of looking at it qualitatively and quantitatively that was the only shot, and you're you're exactly right that in order to make that work, those films had to be you know, blockbusters pretty much, every single one of them. And that's what the business plan called for. You could call it crazy, right, You could say, well, that's a crazy bet to take, and I would agree with that,

but what what other choice do you have? That In the book, so, so before we get to Toy Story and the subsequent films, a big part of the middle of the book is about the Pixar I p O. That sounded like that was a really fascinating experience. Yeah, well it was, you know how. And so the idea for the I p O essentially comes about from do you want to it's sort of all flows from this strategy. So you want to build an independent animation film company,

that means you have to finance your own films. Those films cost a lot, so it could be you know at the time, seventy million, hundred million dollars. You know, So how are you going to get that kind of money? Right? And so no lender is gonna provide that kind of money, you know, for that kind of product, So you got to go to the equity markets, capital markets, and so. But the business model of Pixar had none of the characteristics that the investors and investment banks. So it wasn't steady,

it wasn't reliable. It required a lot of one off success stories that had to be the best of their type. It really in advance, it's amazing anybody was willing to give you money. You laid out and impossible, here's what we're gonna try and do something that's impossible, and then

repeated every three years from the next twenty years. And my take at the time was, in the world you said, which is layer it out, just lay it out right, um, put it out there, because and then investors are investment banks, they'll decide you know, I don't have to decide for them, I just have to lay it out. Steve presented, you know, grand vision for what Pixock would be. I would lay

out all of the details together. We we we presented you know, this, this vision and this possibility, and then it was sort of up to investors to decide, and you know, fortunately some decided to go along for that. So toy story comes out. It comes out just before Thanksgiving, and you're hoping for a ridiculous millions. Steve is hoping

for fifteen to twenty million opening weekend. What happens? So the opening weekend, you know, it turns out to be you know, thirty eight million, and you know, just faring on anybody's world. And he says, you know, by today's standards, that's not even even that huge. But in that time, but that film, it was like, you know, grand slam home run in the bottom of the ninth. I mean, he just couldn't have been better. We would just giddy from it. I'm Barry rid Helts. You're listening to Masters

in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is Lawrence Levy. He is the CFO of Pixar Now part of entertainment giant Disney, and he is the author of a new book two Pixar on Beyond My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to make Entertainment History. Let's talk a little bit about, uh, what took place with your relationship with Disney. There's a line in the book that

I really enjoyed. You said, the darkest day in your life is when you were had already been working at Pixar and you reviewed the contract between Pixar and Disney. Why was that so awful? Yeah, Well, the darkest day in my career, that's for sure. Um. So, you know, Disney had Pixar had entered an agreement a few years before I came before the making of Toy Story, and you would have thought that me, a you know, well trained and experienced lawyer, would sort of understand what that

was all about. And I told we had a challenge to look at it. But it was written in this sort of arcane language of entertainment law, which is totally different from any other type of law. It's its own rules, its own everything, its own language, everything. Because I didn't know that at that moment, right, So I just thought, you know, I can't I don't understand everything that says I'll figure it out later kind everything. That's that's what I said to myself. How bad can it be? Right? Well,

anytime you ask that question, you usually find out. Yeah, usually find out, and it probably is. It probably turns out to be a good thing that I went in naive, because if I had known what I learned later about it,

I kind of imagined I would taken that job. So but it just it turned out when I did understand it, that Disney had effectively tied Pixar up for what three films which could have been twelve fourteen years, and with almost no chance of sort of making money on those films that would be anything like what you would need to grow a business. To go over some of the details, they owned, the rights to the sequels, the merchandizing, the Lion's share of the profits, everything, I mean it worse.

I mean like they and they had sort of exclusivity provisions. It's not even right a first refusal. It was them or nobody, Yeah, them or nobody. So it was like, you know, Pixar is not even allowed to work on other other film projects, you know, And I was asking, you know, the lawyer. You know that Sam Fisher about that, and he's saying yeah, because you know, like it picks us working on other things. They could take that better people and put them on other things. And Disney want

to make sure has assets to the best people. And I was like, but that ties up a whole company. We could hire a thousand animators and they could only work for Disney. And but you know, my my protests were or for know it, it was what it was. So you you create a business strategy, which you describe as four pillars. In order to allow the company to grow. You have to change this contract with Disney, and briefly, you have to capture more of the profits on each film.

You have to raise capital so you can self finance, which is part of the way to get to that greater profit share. You have to double or more the output of films. It can't be every four years. And you have to turn Pixar into its own standalone brands. How did you go about negotiating that with Disney? Because they could have said no, we have a contract to go away. They absolutely could have. And we learned that

there are two things that talk in Hollywood. Um One is success, right, so you have a success here, celebrity of any kind, you have some cloud and the second thing that talks is money. Uh and so and so all of a sudden, from the I p O Pixel had money from Toy Story, Pixarl had success. And that means that in that you know, that is going to

get attention. And so then Disney, you know it's Michael Eisener at the time, is sort of going to start to think about okay, um, Pixar is willing to invest in its own films, right, and so instead of Disney investing, you know, maybe the Pixar's willing is invest that's of interest. Secondly, you know, I want to keep closer attention to these guys because now they're successful, I don't want to risk losing them. And so that opened the door for a negotiation.

Now that said, as I recount in the book, that negotiation was pretty rocky, but but it opened the door. And and just to reiterate, so you we mentioned earlier, Toy Story opens their first weekend at thirty eight million dollars, far better than anyone was even hoping in the company. How successful was Toy Story following that thirty eight million dollar opening as the first feature film for Picks Are. Well, from a box office point of view, it was unbelievably successful.

It did like hundred ninety million dollars in the domestic box office, It did well in the nationally. It was the biggest film of the year. So from that perspective, it couldn't have been better. Doesn't mean it made Pixar a lot of money because it was still under the original agreement with Disney. So when you renegotiated the the agreement, how what did that change to? Well, when we renegotiate,

it radically changed. And so if you looked at it on the original agreement, maybe pixel was gonna depends how it worked out, but ten twelve percent of the profits from the films under the new agreement, it was going to be and we're putting up answering, but what about marketing, sequels, ownership of of rights, et cetera. That was you know, Disney was always going to do the marketing, but that Picks Are regained sort of control over the creative side,

So the sequels and those things. I'm Barry rit Hilts. You're listening to Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Lawrence Levy. He is the CFO or former CFO of Pixar, currently the author of the book to pix On Beyond, My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs. So in the beginning of the book, I learned something fascinating. I'm a longstanding Apple fanboy mac head. I thought I

knew a lot about Apple. I did not know that it was Pixar that turned Steve Jobs into a billionaire, not Apple. Describe what that impact on Jobs was like, Well, this was one of their inspirations for writing the book. Actually, I long known that this is a great story. I told it to people privately and publicly and always had fantastic reaction, and people were always that, you know, you should write this into a book. People don't know this story, and I didn't. It took me a long time to

get inspired to do that. But one of the inspirations came in the aftermath of Steve's death. When we have this you know, endless amount of material I documentary, move his books, you know, on him, and you know, I began to feel that pis are and what happened and there was an afterthought and all of that. You know, it really wasn't. If it wasn't for Pixar, we wouldn't be talking about Steve Jobs. That's what set him up

to go back to It was a setup. You know, It's all sounded as though like he started Apple, he goes back to Apple, and I was like, wait a minute, the stuff that happened to Pixar was really important to this story. And and you know because look, when when I met Steve right, he hadn't had a hit in ten years at Apple. So so Lisa was an expensive failure. McIntosh ultimately had effect did, but not the original one.

Right at the time, it wasn't going anywhere by it was a successful but he was already gone by that. He was already gone by that. And then he did the next computer and the Pixar image. Next computer was a disaster with nowhere. Eventually they've developed an operating system. Um, but Next wasn't a successful hardware company, and it looked like Pixar was a yelling hardware company. Right, so he hadn't had a hit. He had put close to fifty million dollars into Pixar and lost it all. So explain

I have to interrupt you here. Explain how completely unique and unusual. That is in in the late eighties early nineteen nineties in Silicon Valley for a founder to put fifty million dollars into his own company, well, it was crazy, and those days I have ventured. I guess only Steve would be Steve would be the only founder to do that. But you know that was Steve. I mean, Steve didn't do many things, but what he did do he did with sort of passionate intensity that was like second to nine.

Did he have any other option at the time? I think that a lot of that. You imply in the book that he was kind of funding this and didn't want to admit it wasn't working, and didn't want to go to other venture capitalists, that this was really a partially a face saving exercise. Well, I think so. I think there are a couple of years before I came. Had he had the opportunity to sell out the company just to cut those losses, he would have just don't

think that opportunity came along. And I don't think he wanted to close it down. You know, that just wasn't his nature. Um and so and so he hung in there, and that's a great credit. And you know, a tribute to to him as well, and so it was rare, but he still had fifty million dollars in there. And and he also had you know, sort of sort of a toxic relationship with with Pixar. And so you spoll forward a few years and this is really the arc of his story in the book, you know, and then

all those things have changed. He's had this huge comeback um with the Pixar I p O and with toy story is fifty million loss is converted into now a billion dollars of of of of of of wealth. And and this is when a billion dollars was real money.

It's when ill I know, that's right. You know, when I came out first, came out to Selicon Valley, we used to talk about millionaires like you know, now it's like there's a billionaire I to even to count Um and his and and his relationship with the how many had changed into you know, Um into really like a beloved you know, patriarch of soil. He gave all the employee stock options, probably not as much as they wanted,

but they all did wildly successfully. It also all these changes that this arc of this I'm thinking, you know, you know, had to be important. You know, I know it was important and gave him a level of confidence and knowledge of the entertainment industry that mattered a lot when it came to going, you know, taking on the challenge at Apple. So Apple and the music industry, Apple and television and film. The experience of Pixar was formative to that. What I was there. We did it together.

I mean, we imagine, I mean what I'm saying, we need to go into the entertainment industry. And you've got the two business guys running the company that don't know anything about that industry. Uh, And so we literally, you know,

learned it and pieced it together. And so I think when he went back to Apple, he was the only CEO that had great sort of mastery over both industries, you know, of technology and technology and entertainment and you know, and and he was brilliant and so he put those things together in a way I'm not sure you know, anybody else could. So let's let's explain for people who have not yet read the book, how often you were

speaking with Steve or you tell the book. You tell them earlier in the book that you lived around the corner from him. The two you would go for walks all the time. He was calling the house night and day. You would frequently like you must have spent thousands and thousands of hours with him, Oh, I would say. At that time, it was just a continuous dialogue. Started first

thing in the morning, ended last thing at night. And you know, we have a phone by the fax machine in the kitchen, and it's every night, you know, he calls me. I call him on the weekends, come over, you know, go for walks. But it was there. It was just an ongoing dialogue, you know, and it was

a back and forth. It was really a collaboration and it lasted for how many years, Well, it lasted were oute all the way through Pixar, so you know, I'm gonna say all the way through the Disney acquisition and then you know, and then he converted you and we became friends too. And then you know, after he was ill, I spent time with him then, um, and so it was it was a relationship that lost it, but it's it started with this kind of dialogue. So we're speaking

with Lawrence Levy. He was the CFO of Pixar and helped bring them public and is the author of a new book to Pixar and Beyond. So tell us something about Steve Jobs that we probably don't know about him. Well, you probably don't know about him that I had a I had a nasty accident when I first started broke. You broke your ankle. I broke my ankle, a very bad break that required surgery, and there was a lot of pain involved, titanium rods and all that, and so

there would be no way to know this. But Steve was really really concerned about this, and he was very concerned about how much pain I was in, and he would come visit me in the hospital and at home after it was with his family. And so, you know, I think that was a side of Steve that that people never don't really see. Did you did you read

the Walter Isaacson biography? Actually I did not. You didn't have you read any of the other body I only recently, you know, I when The World's Eyes in some book came out so close to Steve's death, you know, and I was kind of like, you know, I'm just I have my own memories and my own experience, and I'm just not really ready, you know, to you know, to read something like that. So no, I didn't. I'm curious as to somebody who's close to him how accurate of

a portrayal it is. It comes across as if it's very accurate, because Steve is the guy who reached out to him and said, I wanna chronicle my life for posterity, or at least that the implication it is. And of course I'm aware of all the information and content and reputation of Steve out there, and you know, my my take on that is that it's not for me to judge.

I mean, people have their own experiences, and I'm writing my experience, and so so you are perspective at Pixarar sounds like and reads like it was very, very different than what other people experienced that Apple. Well, you know again it I can't speak to what they experienced, but I can speak to my experience at Pixar, and you know, I can say it was you know, it's that's something

I look back and I treasure it. So, so let's talk a little bit about the process of the I p O. He wants to have Goldman Sacks and Morgan Stanley, the two biggest banks for technology. I p O. S on the book, and they both look at it, they assessed the risks and they passed. And what was his response, What was his reaction to that? Well, you know, I think that was a blow. Um and uh and so you know, but he didn't, you know, he sort of goes quiet in a way. You know, it's not like

there's a big bruja over it. It's just was a blow. And you know, and so we had to regroup and so and and and that's what happened. So so ultimately ends up being Um, Robbie Stevenson, hambriken Quist and Count and company are the under utterers on the I p O. And he seemed to be pretty comfortable with that. By the way, it's usually Goldman or Morgan Stanley just to describe Steve jobs. He insisted on both of them, he thought. So he said, oh, it'll be you know, a part entertainment,

part technology. We'll get them both. Was that typical of his attitude, Let's do something no one's ever done before because we can and it will be great. Yeah, But it's not because we can, it's it's out of his conviction for sort of the greatness of what we're doing. I mean, and so whether Pixel or Apple later. I mean, it's a reflection of his belief that this work is so it's so stunning, it's so great that these other people sort of want to come on board, and so,

you know, it wasn't like to take advantage. It was just came from that place of you know, I really believe in this, and so everyone else will. How infectious was I mean, we've all heard about his reality distortion field. How infectious was his almost preternatural self confidence, almost delusional self confidence in the face of incredibly daunting odds. How

much did that impact everyone around him? Well, it's very it's very infectious, and I think the key is there working with others that can collaborate at a level to sort of make those dreams a reality. But the you know, but as a certain contagiousness to sort of the passion and intensity that he wrote to what he did. We've been speaking with Lawrence Levy. He was the CFO of Pixar and is the author of Two Pixar and Beyond.

If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and stick around for the podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things computer generated animation. Be sure and check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com and follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts. You love your comments and feedback. Be sure to write to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I'm

Barry Ritults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio, brought to you by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Seeing what others have seen, but uncovering what others may not. Global Research that helps you Harness disruption voted top global research firm five years running. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith Incorporated. Welcome to the podcast extras Um Lawrence than is it Lawrence or Larry? When Lawrence justish, I assumed

it was a British That's my middle name is Lawrence. Um, so I just assumed you were also a Lawrence. So thank you so much for doing this and being so generous with your time. Are welcome. I have to tell you I read a lot of books for this. I'm literally you can see I'm almost done with it. It's a fascinating story that I had no idea about. It's a fast re eat and you're actually a very talented storyteller.

So it's I've really been enjoying it. This is like perfect thing for people to take on holiday vacations because it's it's characters you know but don't really know in great depth. Most people who follow any sort of entertainment business or even film at least have an idea of who John Lasseter is. They they've heard of Pixar. You really tell a fascinating story in a very entertaining way.

I've really I've really been enjoying it. Um. So we were talking about the I p O was so successful you obviously, um get a little fun money out of it. Since then, you've been running or operating something called the Juniper Foundation Foundation. Tell us a little bit about that. Well,

I had another sort of talise running in me. You know, I had a great career and I loved what I did, both as a lawyer and as a business executive and a Pixar But I also sort of took note that there's a sort of a one dimensional quality to corporate life in a way. It's it's driven, it's an acquisition oriented mentality. It's all about performance. And you know, and I thought to myself, you know, there are it produces incredible things, great technologies, a lot of prosperity, a lot

of wealth, but they're a hidden cost to it. That performance mentality produces costs in terms of stress and anxiety and personal performent and how we feel about ourselves. And I wanted to go off and learn more about that because I felt that we were sort of missing this dimension. Everybody puts the family and themselves second, and very I shouldn't say everybody, but many people do. When they just get so focused on the rat race, they lose sight

of what matters. They lose sight of what matters. And so I had been very disciplined about that in my career, so family, my children, my wife and all of that. WAS always tried my best to prioritize it. But I really wanted to go on a deep dive in that. And so and I was past and always interested in religion and philosophy, so I went off to discover how

one might cultivate that side of life. And I found it eventually, and basically, you know two thousand tradition of Buddhist philosophy and and and and meditation, which I see not as a religious undertaking, but if you look but I was looking at these things. I was thinking like wow, like this these ideas are basically a technology of inner transformation. We're really good at the outer stuff, but the inner stuff that you know, you need something for that. And

here was this sort of whole philosophy. And so that Lad myself and my wife Hilary, the teacher that I had at the time still do um say Rimpoche, and and two other individuals. We we founded the Junior Foundation in two thousand and three, and the question that we set out to ore and so was what would it take to embed right in the middle of contemporary life UM a system and methodology that could be used for this inner transformation. And that system comes from this sort

of two thousand year old tradition. So there are two things. I don't use the term trendy because it almost as a negative connotation, but there are two things, especially on Wall Street and finance these days, that have become really popular. One is meditation, yes, and the other is mindfulness. UM tell us how that fits into the concept of of

Buddhism and what you're doing with the Junior Profoundation. Well, I think it's great, and you know, a meditation and mindfulness you know, represent sort of an opening, if you will, an awakening, a realization that these things that that impact us inwardly are are important. And so I'm sort of happy to see all this. H Um. I would say that, um, those represent like a one piece of the puzzle. Um,

you know kind of a thing. And I think if people take that space of meditation or that space of mindfulness, it's like opening a door to a to a world in which there are all these tools and ideas to cultivate ourselves endwardly. That the key to it is that, um, it takes some effort. We have to pay attention to do it, and we tend to want to quick fix. We tend to want to be you know, like I'm stressed. What's gonna take me out of that? Quickly? A pill? Here's a pill, you know, or even you know, I'll

go to a meditation retreat or something like that. But it takes an engagement with this kind of methodology and so um and so you know, Juniper presents that because we present a whole way of looking at you know, balancing emotions, cultivating compassion, developing insight, all using meditation as the tool to do those things. So that is just a radical break from what you were doing previously. What were the in between steps? How did you go from Okay,

I'm a corporate lawyer, now I'm a CFO. The company's public were successful, everything is now running the way we wanted to. Let's explore the inner space. How did that come about? It came There wasn't much of an in between. I I just realized the Pixar was in this incredibly good place. The plan that we put in place was going to go at least ten years. I was on the board of directors, and so I would still be able to keep my eye on things. And I realized

I had an opportunity. I had an opening in my life, and I was just like, what do I do? I'm really interested about these other things that I do. I wait another twenty years? Will I be around it another twenty years? You know? Now is the time kind of a thing. And so that's the decision I made. I said,

you know, no, don't don't put it off. You know, this is something that is deep and and also in the back of my mind, I thought that one day maybe it would come back around and I would be able to take these new learnings back into that corporate world because I think that the I think we haven't reached the ultimate or the end of sort of the corporate paradigm. I think that it has problems in it, and as many has much to evolve, and I think

it's evolution can come out of these kinds of ideas. So, you know, you end up in especially in Silicon Valley, with people with kind of you know, on the East Coast they would be laughable titles, but on the West Coast there's a Chief Happiness Officer, there's a there's a Director of Joy, there's a like we've we've seen some really you're laughing, and you've spent a lot of time out there, so you can imagine what jaded New Yorkers

think of that. Are we eventually going to see in the corporate world the chief um mindfulness officer or a director of meditation? Or is that one step too far? I think it's a step. I don't think it's the ultimate step. I don't even know if it's the best step that the you know, it it's not us about sort of bringing mindfulness and meditation teachers, you know, because that's like putting a band aid on a problem. You know.

And so it's the question of how that entity is going to think and work and whether it um it wants to take account for the well being of all the people that it affects. Both it's not just employees but everyone, it's customers, you know, the environment and these

kinds of things. Because you know, it's interesting, like you know, corporations want to be people and when it comes to like you know, First Amendment rights, uh, you know, when it comes when it comes to third party externalities, they don't want to pay for right, But real people, generally speaking, don't have the chance to get away with that right. If you start acting on with all the people around you, someone's gonna, you know, se say, hey, Berry, what's going on? Right?

You know, And so it's a way of thinking, you know. And when the way of thinking is acquisition at all costs, short term profit, that's we care about. You can bring mindfulness and meditation in, but it's like putting a band aid on the problem, you know, because at the very same time you know you're teaching mind when it's a meditation, you're also putting enormous pressure on your people to perform.

So no, nothing wrong with that, but the problem is to UM look at it from that broader perspective and take responsibility for this. And I think that these kinds of ideas can can infiltrate the corporate paradigm in other

ways too. That that's quite quite interesting and really not I don't think a lot of people, UM would have expected that from UM, a corporate lawyer, but really your path was very different, and uh, what I enjoyed about reading the book was your approach to problem solving, which is very logical and yet at the same time employed a lot of creativity. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that you're now taking a slightly different focus on

what you're doing. So I want to go through a couple of questions we missed and then jump into our favorite question. I promised to get you guys out of here on time. I'll see if I can I can do that. UM. One of the things you had mentioned early in the book is the tension between and this is very relevant to what you were just talking about,

the tension between creative integrity and real world necessity. UM. Describe that if you would, well, these things sort of pull against each other, so you know, the creative impulse is sort of by necessary, but it needs to be unbound in a way by um, sort of time or imperatives. You like. A way of thinking of it is like you can't force the gestation of a story, so you can't go to someone's I want a great story in a year, right, You may get a great story in

a weekend. You may get a great story in five years, but you can't corse it and and um. And so what the business imperative wants is that no, I want to know, right, I want to know I want this UM, I want everything to be sort of orderly and on time and and um, because that's the only way I can build this thing. And so those things pull against

each other. And so the challenge for organizations trying to do any kind of creative work, it doesn't have to be filmed, it could be engineering, design, anything, is how to bring harmony between those two things. And it takes a fair amount of courage because business executives kind of want to smother creativity sometimes with bureaucracy, and so it's

not easy to allow it to flourish. So later in the book, is you're reminding me of something that Steve Jobs said, to you and to some of the bankers when you were prepping for the I p O. A lot of these technologies that seem to have sprung up wholly formed or really the result of many, many years of gestation. It takes a long time to become an overnight sensation. And and he described you describe in the book how uh Pixar was developing hardware, they were developing

software that we're working on narrative storytelling. And then really a lot of this was a decade in the making. No one would have set out, all right, here's what we're gonna do for the next ten years. Here's a new company. We're gonna spend ten years developing hardware and software, rethinking the approach to creating narrative, and then we're gonna first start putting out a product. So so describe as a follow up to that that creative tension. How true

is that today? Do you still think these things take much longer than it appears? With Steve right when he said that, and what does this mean for us taking all these products for granted that seemed to just appear. I think it's as true today as any other time. I think great work requires a much longer period of gestation than we think. You know. One of my frame was one of my favorite science fictional authors, Rob Behindland. He's he wrote, he said, when we're ready to railroad,

we railroad, meaning that until we're ready, no railroads. And so you know what it means is it takes a long period. A lot of things have to come together. You know. I remember Stevie and told me once, you know, when he was thinking about tablets that you know, he was passionate about tablets for a long time, you know, had long long before, but he felt it wasn't ready. It wasn't ready right, it wasn't ready to sort of tools. You know, I went there, he had kind of his

pulse on that. It was the same with Pixar. You know, it took you know, fifty and twenty years for the gestation of everything to come together. And I think it's not that there are never overnight sensations, but I think they're much more rare than we think. Well, it looks like overnight sensations really is the result of a lot more time. And African people realize so in corporations today, you know, they're trying to sort of force innovation in a way and or force creativity. Then, um, it doesn't

sometimes allow for that for that process. So I have to just digress briefly. You're the third guest out of the previous four or five who drops a reference to science fiction. James Glick, who wrote the book, Um, The Information and Time Traveler. We were. We were geeking out on science fiction. And then I was surprised to learn that Bill McNabb, who's the CEO and chairman of Vanguard, is a giant science fiction geek. Um, and you just

referenced Heinland, who I am always quoting. We're in the midst of a horrible election and everybody wants to convince the other side that they're right. And I believe it was the Notebooks of Lazarus Long as a quote I use all the time. Never try and teach a pig to sing it waste your time and annoys the pig. And that's what the political debate seems to be. You know, you're either preaching to the choir or annoying people who were never going to change their minds. Don't waste your time.

It really feels that way amongst the citizenry. The candidates have to do what they have to do. But it's funny you you went right to uh Hindland was filled with wonderful But I haven't um finished listening to the Jim Click interview. But if you've read any of his stuff, time travel of History is a really interesting So so we're gonna we're gonna get to some books soon. That's still fresh in my mind because um, I'm I don't know if you read multiple books at a time. I'm

I'm finishing two books that and this. These are the two books I'm almost done with. Um. So the run of films that picks are it's like Grand Slam after Grand Slam. How on earth is that possible that you careen from Toy Story to Bugs Life Defining Nemo to The Credibles too. Like at a certain point, I remember saying, all right, the streak has to come starting to an end, but it looks like it could go on. And definitely,

how is that possible? Well, Pixar is you know, despite you sort of see all the animation and the story glitz and all of this, but it's a very very disciplined company when it comes to creativity, and so um it has honed over years and years and years sort of systems to um to develop these films, you know. And so you know the Pixar brain trust that is very famous and has been written about, and the story

team and the production team. UM. You know. An example of this is, you know, when Pixar finishes a film, it it goes through a painful, you know, process of looking at everything that it did wrong. And there's a films like a hit. So The Incredibles comes out like it couldn't be better. Well, you know, there's a group of people that Pixar that spend weeks just criticizing it, picking it apart, picking it apart, you know, what went wrong?

Where we go better? How can we improve our production processes? And so they never let up and and then so that's sort of on the technical production side, you know. On on on the creative side, the the value of what they called the brain trust is is and many companies try to duplicate that, but that how to make that work is much much harder than than I think

is known. And even if you've read about it or know about it, um, because there's a tension in in doing great work and on the one hand, you need this passionate, create an intensity to create, and have to have the talent to go along with it. That's true for a writer, a musician, you know, uh, anything that that that is great creative, innovative work. But on the other side, you also have to collaborate. You have to yield to those voices that can sort of help shape

what you do. And like if you look back at even Steve's career, I think you see an absence of that yielding and some of those products that that didn't make it. And so because there's a lot of hubris in the creative side, and so those tensions pull against each other. The very hubrists that you know makes you, you know, talented and creative and passionate, and all that cuts against the very yielding that you need to to um sort of keep things in balance and check and

um which is really important. So is that the secret sauce that Pixar is they've found the right balance between what we described earlier, the creative tension in the businesses and that it is, and between that creative drive and and the collaboration it takes to have all the pieces

come together. And I think picks our mass at that tension and It's really interesting because even when picks are slips and it forgets about that tension for whatever reason, it'll slip and quickly regroup, you know, to sort of you know, come back to that. And so it's it's hard to there are a lot of there's a lot that goes into that. We could do. We could do

a whole episode here just on that one. So so while I still have you, let's talk about some of the Pixar executives you reference in the book um and and spend a little bit of time, but really don't give us a lot of color on them. They're all kind of famous people within the industry, but I would imagine the public doesn't know them that well. So let's

let's go through a few of them quickly. John Lasseter tell tell us about well, John, and you know, he's probably the most well known I mean John is you know, the mozart of his generation. When he comes to animation, I mean, storytelling through the medium of animation just courses through John like it's like he was born with it or something like that. And you know, he's a kind of a larger than life charismatic character. He's very warm. You you greet you with a with a he's interested

in you and and he's just endlessly creative. You know, there's a little boy in him. He was like a little child in him, a twinkle in his eye clear, and that is reflected in all the output of films he does. You could see there is a child's wonderment and joy in everything he seems to touch. Yeah. I mean, I think he's office is full of toys. And when I went there, his office was was old toys and gadgets, and I don't think he ever lost that kind of

you know, um, that creative inquiry. Brad Bird Well, Brad came on later, you know, to to direct The Incredibles, you know, and which was so different than the previous films. There there was a family relationship. You could sort of see, oh this is intellectually similar, but it looked and felt so different. Yeah, Brad is a very very disciplined filmmaker. And it's you know when when a crew it's like

a cruise, like fall in love with Brad. You know, he has kind of a mesmerizing quality over It's a very large crew and and that pushed to do a lot of things. And he's a great sort of leader and um and and so um so when he comes on to do Incredibles and he's done live acting films as well, you know, in Mission Impossible. But um so, people sort of like take to him that he has a natural leadership that complements his his creativity. Tell us

about Lee, Uh, Lee is. It's funny. You know, when I was thought of the Pixar, Lee was an editor. He was you know, an editor. But you know, John recognized this sort of creative talent in Lee and kept trying to, you know, bring that out. So Lee is um a little sort of he's sort of more understated, a quieter by nature, and but an incredible sort of force of filmmaking. He's a guy that sort of like

knows everything about filmmaking. And there's a list of thirty or forty or probably the people I can ask, but I would be um remiss if I didn't ask about Ed catmull. Well, you know, Ed is my great friend and you know, beloved by everyone at Pixars. It's sort of a co founder. But Ed is and I think it's because you know, Ed is sort of professorial, you know, almost by nature. You know, he's and that comes across a little bit in your depiction of it. He's a listener,

you know, he's very very attentive. He's a learner, you know what I mean. He's I've never known him to be otherwise, and so he learns, he absorbs, he listens, he talks. He's always respectful, um, and and then he kind of and and and then so and then when he does put things together and he says, you know, his views about things, you're always kind of like, he's not the loud, booming voice in the room. If you have heard him speaking, it's a great speaking voice. Uh,

it's kind of an understated speaking voice. But he's a voice that you want to listen to what he has to say because he's he's sort of put it together in ways that matter a lot. So he's wonderful. It sounded like this was just a collection of rock stars. Everybody at Pixar was really astonishingly talented, and everybody was more or less pulling together in the same direction, which is really hard to do with a complicated project like like you were undertaking that, It is really hard to do.

And I think Pixar is a collection of rock stars. I think a lot of companies that you know, collections of of have a lot of rock stars. But what Pixar did was to honor that. And that sometimes is is because it doesn't matter. You know, someone could be a production assistant or working on the budget of the film. It doesn't have to be you know, I'm directing you know the film or something like that. Um. And by

honoring all of that, it matters to the culture. And and sometimes that's easy to forget what in companies, you know what that means to really respect and honor people. You You had written about how important corporate culture is, and there was concerned when Pixar was being acquired by Disney that that culture sure would get destroyed. So two questions, First, what what was done to make sure that transition was okay? And second, is the Pixar culture still intact even though

it's a part of Disney. Yes, I mean it's it's funny in an acquisition, but I would say that when a lot of money is at stake, right, and that's what everyone's talking about. But that was the single most important point in that deal, was the preservation of pixows culture. And I think that if we hadn't believed Bob Iger's sincerity in that UM, then that acquisition would not have happened.

And so you know, Bob promised that Pixos culture would be intact, and in fact, he wanted to sort of infect Disney Animation, you know, with with Pixows culture, and he completely came through on that. And so I think if you visit Pixar today, all the things that I've been talking about, and they're working very hard to try to keep that in place. So I know I only have you for a limited amount of time. Let me jump to my favorite podcast questions I asked all my guests.

We we talked about your background of what you did before picks are UM, who are some of your early mentors? Well, I always have had mentors, UM. I believe very strongly in that this is the whole collaboration pod. I've always had sort of what I considered being an inner circle of people that I really trust, that have got my back, that I listened to. So you know, early on, you know, well Larry Soncini, for sure, you described that relationship in

the book. Yeah, for sure. Efia Razzi, who was giving me my first job in electronics for imaging, UM, you know, I would go on, I have to include my wife Hillary and that in in in that circle, um say, Rimpochet, who has been my mentor and teacher on this new you know part that that I'm doing now and and even in writing the book, I've had incredible mentors to sort of help me. So that's so you really accomplished a lot of pis are what business people well influenced

your approach to what you did at Pixar. Well, you know at Pixar, the people that I've told him about, I mean, and in business, I cut my teeth a lot with Fie Rozzi Fie who's who's passed on now. But he was a brilliant entrepreneurs from it, I mean he was. It's funny. You know, he was known as the Steve Jobs of Israel because he created the company called side Ticks, which just put them on the map from a technology point of view, but um put the whole country one. Israel has become known as a hot

hotbed of high tech. That was the first really big success. It was the first really big success and it was it was him who did it and um and so we you know, we built that first company of electronics for imaging together and um, and he was brilliant and

I learned a lot from him. And I also, you know, but I had the advantage because when I was a lawyer, I was sort of a business lawyer because I was doing these transactions for all these companies, these startups that were trying to you know, break cannon, doing deals with

all these big companies. So I met a whole bunch of CEOs, you know Ken Osman, who was a founder, old time founder of Rome, and then he was doing another company called Echelon, and so I had, you know, a lot of interaction with different people in Silicon Valley, and so I, you know, started absorbing a lot from them. And then and then I met Effie and then of course Steve. So that that's quite on Sasani, Effie and Steve jobs for pretty pretty good mentors to have. And yeah, no,

I've been on that front. I've been very fortunate. So let's talk about books. So I mentioned I enjoyed this. Tell me about some books that that you've enjoyed, fiction, non fiction, technology, It doesn't matter what. What sort of books have you really read and have resonated with you. Well, I'm avid read there so there's a lot. But I am by the way, I constantly get emails from from listeners who say, what was the book he referenced? I

couldn't find it, could you. People really want to hear book recommendations more than anything else, So feel free to go over many books as you like. Well, it's only like a lot of Hinden books. I am a bit of a science fiction boff. Brandon Santison's UM series that that that that he's doing now, The Way of Kings is absolutely brilliant. Um I UM. As far as literature is concerned, Thomas Munns The Magic Mountain the big influence

on me. That's a big undertaking. Uh. He also wrote Death in Venice, and I thought there's a very powerful literary literary books. UM. Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces big influence, UM, especially for anyone in in narrative storytelling and mythology, pathology. Absolutely brilliant. And I've watched all of Joseph Campbell's videos that he did on PBS, UH

many years ago. UM. And now you know, I'm into sort of you know, five year old you know, sort of Buddhist philosophy, you know, there's a book, um, the Great Stages of the Part by great teacher called jades On Copper UM T s O N G k p A. That's a very challenging undertaking, but it sort of took me years to work my way through that. UM and uh so there's uh, there's a few that come to mind. UM A recent one, gosh um UM. One of the inspirations for this book was the Boys in the Boat, Boys,

Boys in the Band, Boys in the Boat. Um M, that sounds absolutely incredible. It's being absolutely incredible story about the US rowing team and um huge bestseller and um and going to Germany. Dan Brown. Dan Brown is the author of Boys in the Boat and Oh, I don't know if you've read Ready Play a one, UM, which is a current that's just super fun, just a super fun Ready Player one. I think Steven Spielberg is making that into a movie. Really that's very interesting. So, um

so there's a few for you. So aside from um reading, what do you do outside of the office, What do you do to relax? What do you do to stay fit? That's a question I get from readers all the time about guests. I've been sort of a bit of a fitness buff. And so during you know, when I was working really hard, I was I ran, you know, and I always just if I could go out and just run, like you know, even two or three miles, like you know, five or six days a week. I did that all

the time. And then a few years ago I started reading you know, as you get a little bit older, its resistance training is good. So I took up to the weight training in the gym, and I do that you know regularly now. So I find that exercises, um, you know, there's huge benefits to it. Um. And then of course I I do a lot of meditation and practice.

So that's an important part of my life. And and then you know, you know, my family still left to sit around and watch you know, Gilmore Girls and the Voice, and so you know, that's what we do for for entertainment. So my last two questions, these are my favorite questions. If a millennial or a recent college graduate were to come up to you and say, I'm interested in a career in law or business or entertainment, what sort of

advice would you give them? I the advice iart with give them is that, regardless of what you're interested in, get some deep experience in something, in anything. Um. You know, what I see a little bit is sort of jumping around. Um. You know, and what I think is more important is to just go deeply into something for a while. Don't just skim the surface. Really learn at least some areas, some area, even if it's not what you ultimately want

to do. UM. I mean I've given this advice, you know, to my own children, you know, and and so because I think it's in going deeply in something. And this also gets us back a little bit to the meditation as well, which is that it's the going deeply into something that crafts us. You know, it's easier to stay

on the surface, but it's when things get rough. It's when you know you're you're having you know, difficult time getting a project down, or a hard time with a boss, or this material doesn't make any sense, or you know, like meditation is really hard, or I don't understand this point of philosophy. Whatever it is, it's that's what shapes us, you know. And so you know, I take an analogy

like to a mountain. If you want to, um, if you want to climb a mountain, you have to pick a path um and if you're constantly circling around looking for the best path, you'll never climb the mountain. And so reference that we were just circling. So I say to young you know, you know people as well climb a mountain. You know, it doesn't have to be the

ultimate mountain or the only mountain. You know, there a lots of mountains to climb, but but at least climb a mountain and then go through the rigor of that, and then you'll figure out what the next mountain is. And and our final question, what is it that you know about the entertainment industry and and running a company such as picks are that you wish you knew twenty five years ago when you started on this endeavor? Oh, I don't know. You know, that's a that's a really

good question. I kind of go into everything with the fresh mind, you know. I I just I didn't wouldn't even know how to answer that. You know, there's I wouldn't change it, Like if I'd known more than I wouldn't, the experience wouldn't have been the same. I'm asking a Buddhist and I as I was saying the words, I know the correct answer is it is the path, not the destination. So I as the but I asked everybody that, and I knew I was going nowhere as soon as

the words stumbled out of my mouth. Lawrence, thank you so much for for having this conversation with us. It's really been fascinating. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an inch or down an inch on iTunes and you could see any of the other I want to say a hundred and twelve or so conversations we've had over the past two years. We love your comments and feedback. Be sure right to us at m

IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank my head of research, Mike Patnick and my booker Taylor Riggs for helping out. I'm Barry Ritults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio M brought to you by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, committed to bringing higher finance to lower carbon named the most innovative investment bank for climate change and sustainability by the Banker That's the Power of Global Connections.

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