William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE

a sort of parallel career to Michael Lewis. He's at Lizard Freres for seven eight years and then sometime later writes his version of Liars Poker, which is a history of Lizard Frere. His most recent book, Power Failure, about the rise and fall of General Electric, is really of fascinating history with some fun stories and a lot of really interesting gossip throughout it. It's deeply researched, deeply reported, and really a very enjoyable read. I think you'll find

this conversation quite fascinating. I know I did. With no further ado, my conversation with Bill Cohen, author of Power failure. William Cohen, Welcome back to Bloomberg. Thank you, Barry. It's great to be here. So let's talk a little bit about your career, which began as a reporter, went into M and A banking, and then went back to writing. You start writing for the Rally Times. Tell us a

little bit about what you were doing there. I was doing something I probably should never have been allowed to do, which was right about public education in Wake County, which was fine. I had uh just graduated from Columbia School of Journalism again Masters and Journalism, and I had done my thesis on public schools in Central Harlem and Central

Harlem School District. I went to one of the best schools in the district and one of the worst schools in the district and just sat there for like six weeks and tried to absorb what was going on, and no one had ever done that. I had to get special permission from the Board of Education in Brooklyn back when they still had that to do that. But uh, and then I went to Raleigh, uh and covered public schools in Raleigh. But I've never been to a public school in my life, so other than sitting in the

classrooms in Central Harlem. So it was great, but it was, you know, like anything, a total learning experience. So you end up becoming an investment banker. You work at places like Loizard Freres and Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan. Tell us a little bit about your banking background. What did you do, what sort of deals? By the way, this wasn't like I'm going to try this for six months

and go back to writing. You did this for seventeen years. Yeah, And I actually started out of business school and when had gone back to Columbia. So I graduated from business school in nine and went to G Capital for two

years financing leverage buyouts. And I also spent a year there working for the chief credit officer at G Capital, learning all the different business lines at G Capital, And then I went to Lazard and so let's stay with the Capital for a minute, because they're gonna loom large later, Lenny relevant Um. In the eighties they were really a financial arm of ge in a way to facilitate its client base. It was seems like in the nineties it

evolved into something else. When you were there, was it a financial engineering firm or was it a more traditional credit finance farm by the time I was there, and it started in the depression, you know, financing customers purchase of ges, appliances, right because credit was hard to come

by during those years. Everybody General Motors had a credit on all the big manufactors that right, G had a benefit in over other companies in that regard because they had a triple A credit rating, so they were able to borrow very cheap and then lend out expensively, and they were able to arbitrage that credit rating, which of course Jack Welch did in spades. And by the time I got there, you know, uh, you know, Jack had been CEO for you know, six years, and he was

well into turning G Capital into a financial powerhouse. So by the time I got there, it was well beyond just you know, financing customer acquisitions and appliances. I mean, we were actually, you know, I probably shouldn't have been doing it because I had been a journalist covering public

schools and NW very nothing about leverage biouts. But I was financing leverage biouts a G Capital and that was one of eighteen or twenty business lines that the business was in, and you know, just making huge profits arbitrage and that credit rating so you go from GE Capital to Lazard. Next tell us about laz Art. Well, Lazar, it couldn't have been more different than ge old school, classic partnership, managing risk, very different headspace. Oh, totally, totally.

I mean I had always been fascinated by Lizard because I had read Carrie Reig's book The Financier about Andre my Ear, which was a fabulous book. And Carrie reg was a great writer, but he died way too young. Uh. And you know, as it was, I've been a Francophile my whole life. I read that book, I wanted to work at Lazard. When I was at business school, I got an interview at Lizard with two partners who probably

are still there. Uh. And uh, they didn't even send me a ding letter, Barry, do you know what a ding letter? Thanks for coming in, thanks for we don't need you, you know, good luck to you. Don't hold your breath. They didn't even send me one of those. They just ignored me. Okay. And then two years later I tried again. Uh, and I wanted to go you know, G Capital. You have to understand, like investment banking was so hot then everybody wanted to be it was it

was monstrous. I mean, investment bankers were rock stars, right. So I was a g capital and you know, we were getting business because we had access to all this capital. You know, I became enamored of this idea of getting business through your ideas, right, And that's what happened. That was Lazar Lazard had no capital, no capital, but it got in the middle of deals. It became interstitial men because of you know, its reputation, it's brain power, and

that really appealed to me. And plus it was French and a private partnership and all these great men were wandering around like, you know, Felix Rowant and Michelle Davie Bay and Damon Metsicapa and so I, you know, wanted to be part of that. I was the only associate they hired in in nine they're like the last partnership

standing know they went public. Yeah, they've they've been. And that was my first book covered them being a private partnership to going public and when Bruce Wasserston came in and basically stole the company from Michelle David Bay, which is a story I tell in detail in the book. Uh, they went public in May about of two thousand. Uh, six and they've been public now. For the argument is they avoided trouble in the financial crisis because they didn't

have a decade of over leverage. Well, they didn't have any They had basically zero capital markets business. They had no balance sheets, so they weren't ever gonna be, you know, having securities on their balance sheet that were at risk and losing value, whereas all the other public companies had access to capital and managed to get into trouble. Of course,

having access to capital can be a big problem. And they used to say that the Goldman sex which is one of the reasons they stayed private until is because John Whitehead used to say that, you know, and I know this from writing my book about Goldman, John Whitehead used to say that, you know, not having capital forced them to make tougher choices, and other banks which had more access to capital, you know what, we're often foolish with that money. So you go from Lazard to Meryl

to JP Morgan, tell us about those other experiences. How did they compare to Lazard, which seems much more unique being in a public company versus a partnership. What was the workflow like there? I mean, I mean Lazard you were drinking from the fire hose because you know, there were seventy two partners and seventy two non partners in the investment banking group, so very small. So you know, that was not a pyramid structure. That was a rectangular structure.

So you know, there are a lot of people at the top of the funnel pushing down on the people at the bottom of the funnel. Uh And so you know, you're just constantly busy working on the biggest and best deals of all time, you know. Uh. And that's that's what I did. And you know, Meryl was of course much more corporative, was public, and the ultimate corporate was Chase, JP Morgan, JP Morgan Chase. You know, so they were

all very different. But you'll note of those uh three uh, you know, Lazard and Meryl and J. B. Morrien Chase, the only one I've written a book about is Lazard because it was so unique and you know, really the people there were quite extraordinary and fun to write about. Huh. So compared to Lizard and Goldman Sachs. I have to ask the question about ge Capital, did they essentially in the nineties nineties morep what was an industrial giant into

a financial giant in fairness. You know, once Jack took over G Capital in the seventies, and you know, once he decided that, as he told me, it was easier to make money from money than from making selling widgets, making jet engines, making power plants, making you know, it

was just easier. It was easier to do that arbitrage and if you had the people in place who could understood the risks and managing the so uh during Jack's you know, twenty year reign atop UH g E A G Capital became an increasingly large and important contributor to the bottom line and to the point of like providing of the profits. So of course it was giant. It was like the third or fourth largest banking institution in the country, and it was completely unregulated Berry, completely unregulated.

It was not a bank because no fd I C insurance, no regulations, didn't have deposits, well, they had one depositor. It was General Electric, it was it was the commercial paper market. That's quite amazing. So when I think of g E in the eighties and nineties, the three things that come up GE Capital obviously the rise of shareholder value, which a lot of people point to General Electric as a key driver of that, and then six sigma. Let's let's talk a little bit about shareholder value in that

Chicago School philosophy that Jack seemed to have embraced. Well, I think what Jack, you know, Jack wouldn't know Chicago philosophy from you know, a hole in the wall. But what Jack really understood was you know, stock price and share and as you know, shareholder value. When he took over ge it was had a market value of twelve billion, and you know, by the time he left, like a year before he left, it was the most family company in the world. So that's a nice uh, you know,

compounded rate of return over those basically twenty years. I mean, you know, we not unlike you know, sort of Tesla or even Apple. I mean, you know, really, I mean if you think about Tim Cook took over Apple, it was worth three billion, and at one point it was worth two and a half trillions. So that's inequally Jack Welchy and like or even more so, the afference between the two. I'm glad you brought that up as an example.

The vast majority of the game we've seen in Apple has been an increase in revenues and profits with a modest, very modest uptick in pe multiple. When we look at GE from eight two to two thousand under the Jack Welsh rain, it began priced as a stage industrial. And I have argued that he left this giant, ticking time bomb of a pe on an industrial with a cratering capital business that had a ticking time bomb of an

accounting fraud and sec finds about to happen. How much of the growth of GE was due to the legend of Jack Welsh and how effectively he presented the company to the world. So there's a lot, Derek to unpack. Hey, I read this giant that goes into all these details called power failure. Don't hurt yourself. So yeah, so I would agree with a lot of what you said, not all of it. So Jack had Wall Street research analysts eating out of the palm of his hand. Absolutely, Okay,

So that's important number. And he figured that out, okay,

and he played that game. And he also it was a fact that for the longest time, the research analysts that covered GE were industrial side analysts, didn't understand what was going on at the capital, so he could kind of wow them every quarter with the performance of the company and he you know, eighties straight quarters or something like that, you know, either met or exceeded the analysts estimates he had Bernie made Off numbers, didn't he just

like consistency to a degree that should have raised some red flags. Well, except that Bernie made Off was a Ponzi scheme and totally fictional where never made a trade right for his customers. So Jack was actually you know, running legit. It was just that penny or two of up or down that well, you know, you know, we could debate that, probably endlessly, and there are people who

you know, love to debate this. I mean, you know, having worked at ge Capital, I'm actually you know, sympathetic to you know, if you've got six fifty billion of assets you know, floating around including loans, uh, you know, actual buildings because you're in the real estate business, warrants in companies, equity stakes and companies, you know, and if you have those assets and you can monetize them at some point during a quarter to achieve what you told

Wall Street Research analists you were going to achieve. If you don't do that, then I don't know, you're committing some sort of financial malpractice, it seems to me. And if you do do it, then people accuse you of financial mal practice. So well, we'll get to the SEC finds and that stuff later. I want to stick with the analyst community. Yes, Jack having them eat out, and he also had the media eating so that's where exactly where it's gonna go. G E owns NBC Universal. NBC

Universal has on its platform CNBC. Jack created c NBC. He created MSNBC. So it's different today when the media ratings for financial television are all off. Regardless of which television channel you're talking about, the numbers are way down from the nineties. You'll get a spike during the financial crisis. You're getting a spike during the pandemic lockdown. But that's more like a cross between ESPN six Australian Rules Rugby

and the Weather Channel. Right when some disaster happens, everybody turns to it. But look, we both came up in the eighties and nineties. At that time, if a CEO went on CNBC and said here's what I'm gonna do, and then he went out and do it, the entire investment community was hanging on that. Every word, which raises the question how effective was Jack Welch as a media spokesperson and how challenging was it for him to go

on his own channel and tout his company's stock. Well, he obviously had a conflict a little, but I guess they got over that. I mean, did you ever meet Jack ever so briefly at CNBC for like thirty seconds in a green room getting he was getting makeup on and I was coming in for cud Low and Cramer and maybe it was eight seconds. Well, then you have a hint of what he what he was like. I mean, I spent you know, hours and hours and hours with him before he died, and he even is an eighty

year old man. He was incredibly charming and magnetic and had a larger than life personality. So you know, when he would get on television, you know, with that cranky sort of New England, the accent that I managed to get rid of, and he didn't, even though we grew up near each other. He was magnetic, so you know, in captivating. So yes, he had the media eating out of the palm of his hands. He had the research

community eating out of the palm of his hands. He had shareholders eating out of the palm of his hands. And when you have that kind of performance as a as a CEO over that long period time, don't forget he was around for twenty years, you know, he would he became sort of an imperial CEO. There was an I'm trying to remember which magazine it was. It might have been Fortune declared him the greatest CEO of CEO, the manager of the century, manager of quite impressive. Yes,

you know, don't forget. At that time, Ge was the most valuable company, was the most respected company, and Jack was the manager of the century. So would be like Apple, Google, Microsoft, all rolled up into one, and you know that was g E. It was, you know, original member of the Dow Joe's Industrial Average. It was a triple a credit rated company, had been paying dividends for you know, fifties, sixty, seventy years. It's like they invented the light bulb, and

they did. And it was a true bell weather. Remember that phrase, a bell weather. They don't really use that anymore, but it was a bell weather of the market. Amazing So power failure, the rise and fall of an American icon. You know, when I saw the title of this book, I thought it was gonna be about the modern GE. You really do an amazing deep dive into the early history of the company, I mean the foundation from when they before they were a company, when it was just

a gleam in h Thomas Edison's eyes. Tell us a little bit of about the process of researching something this substantial, very very painful. Well, you do this in all your books, You do a giant dive. I feel like that's you know, I write the books that I want, I would like to read, you know, so they have to be sort of part oral history, part real history, part you know, investigative reporting, part documentary. Uh, you know, deep dive and evidence.

And you know, I like to get at the d n A of these firms or these companies right there. And the d n A of g E goes back to the late nineteenth century, right, So I had to figure out and I didn't know what it was. So I had to figure that out because you know, the myth is that this GE was started founded by Thomas Edison. Well, within a minute of or two of researching, I discovered that actually that's not true. But they play that up at nauseam. And I don't blame him. I mean how

can you not play up Thomas Edison and the light bulb. Well, the light bulb is real he he did, you know, uh, developed the light bulb, create the light bulb. But you know, the business started as a you know, electricity power generation up. Let's talk about that, because the lightbulb is useless if you and plug it into the At the time, it wasn't candles. If you heard of whale oil, have you

heard of fireplaces? I mean, you know, this was an incredible This was an Internet like leap forward in technology. So General Electric plays an integral role into electricity, at least starting in the northeast of the United States. Tell us a little bit about that process of electrifying New

York City, electrifying other parts of the Northeast. Well, basically what became General Electric, which was a merger of two companies, uh, you know, sort of was a pioneer in bringing electric power, the generation of electric power, and then creating the electric power grid. Remember, there was you can create electricity, but but if there's no way to deliver it to businesses, and then by the way, you know, you have to convince people to like connect to it, and it's invisible, right,

and if you mess up, it's deadly. So other than that, it seems other than that, it seems like a simple thing. And then and in the early days, there were like fires, you know, and people's businesses burned down, so you can imagine that wasn't exactly the greatest recommendation for this product. But over time, you know, the miracle accord. And part of the reason the miracle occurred is because you know, there were electric subway cars and electric trams above ground.

And you know, I don't know if you you you probably didn't watch this, but the you know, the Gilded Age Show, Okay, so I mean there's there's an episode, I think the second or third episode in there where they actually have a big social event in downtown Manhattan, in a square mile in downtown Manhattan around City Hall where they were, you know, electrifying that square mile of

downtown Manhattan. And that was GE doing that, Okay, that was General Electric doing that, and that was like a major league event in New York City's history, you know, electrifying a square mile of downtown Manhattan. And there was like a big social event, and you know, Page six covered it, Bloomberg covered it. You know, everybody covered it. I don't think Bloomberg covered it might have been before

Mike was born. It might have been. But when you think about people seeing street lights that are running without revolutionary this is maybe not as quaint. Well, this is before the days of fomo was called fomo. But how attractive was the idea of clean accessible light? How long did it take for this to catch on it? It

happened quickly. Obviously it was a major, you know revolution, But I mean people had to get comfortable with it, and the and the grid had to be built out, and and the power had to be able to be manufactured. So as the demand crept up and continued, then the supply rose to meet that demand. So let's talk about how that was done. Tell us about the merger or in the early days that gave us General Electric, and

who ran that company. It wasn't Thomas Edison. So Thomas Edison was completely against the merger of what became GE. So right off the bat, I'm thinking, why do they

keep talking about Thomas Edison? Like I get it from the technology point of view and the entrepreneurial point of view, but the actual merger, So right off the bat, we're talking about M and A, which of course intrigue your wheelhouse, right, so you know, and and how I mean there was probably no bigger acquirer and seller of companies over the years than g So M and A was in ges D n A. It's like an investment banker's dream ge

and so. Uh. Edison had a company called Edison General Electric but by uh it had about ten million of revenue, it wasn't doing that well. He was just basically a shareholder. And the other big air holder was JP Morgan, the man. And then it was you know, run by you know, a different CEO and who was also a venture capitalist friend of JP Morgan's. And uh there was another company called the Thompson Houston Company, which was owned by a

guy named Charles coffin up in Massachusetts. Uh. And he was from Maine, but his uncle owned a shoe manufacturing business in Lynn, Massachusetts. He went to work for his uncle and decided, like many you know, entrepreneurial minded people, that the shoe business wasn't all that exciting, but what was exciting was the electric power business and the generation

of electric power. So he ended up buying the Thompson Houston Company, which had was started by two high school teachers in Philadelphia, moved it up to eventually up to Lynn, Massachusetts, uh and started uh you know, running it, and he ran. He was a very good businessman and he ran at

my such more profitably than Edison's company. So basically JP Morgan and the Boston venture capitalist backing Thompson Houston Company backing Charles Coffins business wanted to merge these two businesses, and the merger took place in over the serious objection of a guy named Thomas Edison. He wanted nothing to do with it. He became a minor shareholder, eventually sold his shares and like started working on like limestone mining

in New Jersey. So did Edison profit from when GE eventually went public or did he he you know, he wasn't a very good businessman and no, h and you know, I'm sure he made money because he started the company. But he ended up like a ten percent shareholder of GE. Right, well you know when it went when it went public, but you know, we're talking about relatively small numbers. But at the time, I'm sure that was you know, more money than most everybody else. He was fine, don't you worry?

But you know, JP Morgan and Charles coff and and others made a lot more money. That's really interesting. So let's roll into the twentieth century, the teens, the twenties, the thirties. GE has electrified a lot of America. They're adding businesses, is a lot of M and A. And it turns out that you know, this competition thing, it's hard, and it's much easier if we all kind of agree, don't tell anybody will meet in the hotel room, not

in the conference facility. But let's all kind of fix our prices in a way that works out best for everybody. This is good for everybody, isn't it. What happened with that? Yeah, you're you're you're referring to a major league you know, electrical conspiracy, as it was called. I mean, you know where we're Westinghouse and other other manufacturers of electrical equipment basically conspired together at the prices. And by the way, these people didn't innovate that. This is fairly common. It's

why we have any trust rules. At the time, this seemed to have happened pretty regularly, and you know, they would sort of get caught or they would decide that it wasn't such a great idea. They would try to stop it, and then or they would cheat amongst themselves, cheat amongst themselves, and and then then then they would realize, you know, this probably isn't great what we're doing here, let's wind it down. Then they would be told to

wind it back up again. It was incredibly unethical, immoral, illegal. People went to jail, you know, no doubt. After about ten years it was flushed. What was so fascinating in the book, the way you describe it is when these sort of quiet coalitions and trusts would start to break down, the price competition became fierce, and the penetration into the market and the ability to get new products like capitalism

turns out to work. It's a test case that shows you the importance of competition and collusion does not really work out for consumers. So, you know, there's a reason we have anti trust. There's a reason you know that's still being you know, litigated even today we see you know, anti trust litigation now ramping up again. So competition is important, and collusion really is not great and is illegal. You know, the differences between the twenty one century collusion and the

twentieth century. You hear about Google and Apple and Microsoft trying to cap prices on certain software engineers salaries. This was just massive effected cities. It affected businesses like there was a real hard number that you couldn't buy a turbine from, which was enormously important. Now, I'm not saying what Apple and Google did was right, it was wrong. It just seems like it's so much smaller than the collusion from the good old days. Or maybe if there

is collusion to let's just make it hypothetical. Uh, it's sort of more insidious because you're not exactly sure how. You know, it might affect, you know, the pricing of software products, or it might affect you know, whether there's you know, cookies that are taken you know, from our data, you know, and how our data is using. You know. Back then, it was okay, we need to build the power plant in Florida, and you know, you guys make

your bids at Westinghouse. You make your bids, You make your bid and oh these bids seem awfully similar and you know, identical. In fact, what are you are you guys colluding And you know I'm gonna go around you know, and kind of deals, you know, So it was sort of amateur hour, if you will. It really was kind of amateur hour, which doesn't make it any less illegal

or immoral or unethical. But you know what, you can probably get away with unbeknownst to people nowadays with and again I'm not saying that it's happening, but if it were to happen, uh, you know, it's probably much more insidious and hard to track down. So let's fast forward a little bit. Um, G E plays a huge effort during both world wars. Tell us a little bit about what GE did. How did they affect the ability to fight a global conflict like that from here in the

United States. Well, G was, you know, for a long time a very big defense contractor. UH made jet engines for you know, fighter jets, um, but and you know, made nuclear power plants and probably had a role in making you know, nuclear bombs and triggers and things, and disclosed none of that. We know, you know, we know, no, we know you know they were you know, nuclear waste dumps, etcetera.

Probably at one point that GE was involved with. UH. What I found to be the most interesting thing was sort of in World War One, GE created the radio technology uh you that we may be even using today. I don't know right now. Uh. That allowed people to communicate with one another and uh it was a real technological breakthrough and helped the Allies win the war. And so GE created this technology. Uh, and after the war wanted to sell it to Marconi, which was the big

British company. They had an American subsidy called American Marconi, which was a public company, and basically the government would a Wilson's administration blocked the sale too valuable, and UH essentially forced g E to create what became our c A, the Radio Corporation of America inside GE, and forced GE to buy American Marconi and create what became our c A inside GE so that the British wouldn't get access to this technology and dominate the radio, which is funny

because they're an ally of ours. And then I'm a recalling this correctly, wasn't the subsequent event of that And now that we've done all this, you have to divest our c Yeah. So that was like you know, in nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen, nineteen, nineteen, nineteen twenty, and then in nineteen thirty two for reasons that actually kind of

I still don't quite understand. The Justice Department decided that g E owning r c A was anti trust violation, forced GE to divest our c A. That's when our c A became a public company run by David Sarnoff. And then you know, in nineteen eighty six, our hero Jack Welch buys back our c A for six point four billion dollars at that point, the largest M and A deal in history, and everybody like Harald's Jack Welch is like this hero for doing this incredible deal, which

by then r c A also owned NBC. That's how g got NBC. And in fact, Jack was just buying back something that he had started. He's getting the band back together. He's getting the band back together. But of course nobody has that kind of a memory, and so everybody was like, front page of the New York Times was Jack Welch buying back r c A and the biggest M and A deal of all time, and now he's got NBC. But Jack was just buying back what

had already owned. So let's and I didn't know that, by the way, and I had worked there, and that was one of the major That was a big revelation to me. I was fascinated by that. So let's stay with the chronology. Well, we're two ends. They come out of the war with a burgeoning defense business. Jet engine is invented during World War Two, but not deployed until after the war. I don't know if we had any jet fighters during the war. The Germans had a couple.

It certainly didn't affect the tide of the war one way or another. I mean, I think, you know, the g E perfected, you know, the jet engine by going up to Pike's Peak, you know, I'm sure story they have to drive up there. It's the highest point that you can get to by truck because there's a road up to the top of Pike's Peak. And then they test the engine because they needed to test it. It out that a propeller engine, not a jet engine, right,

I think that was a jet engine. But you know, but the whole idea was some of the fighter planes were losing altitude. They would get up to a certain power, they would lose power, and so they needed to test a new jet engine to see whether it would maintain its you know, velocity or firth thrust at that at had a I altitude, and obviously GE perfected that on top of Pikes Peak and that made a huge difference for the speed and the you know, viability of these

fighter jets. So they come out of the war with this huge book of patents, all these new products, essentially an entire new line of aerospace and and defense sectors. It seems like the post war era really began the modern period of General Electric becoming a dominant conglomerate. Fair statement, I mean yes, I mean you know they would you know, GE kind of ended up, for whatever reason, doing some of the largest M and A deals you know up

to that point. Like, uh, you know, Jack's predecessor, rig Jones, bought something called Utah International, which was like a mining company of all things, because he decided that, you know, owning commodities would be a good hedge against nineteen seventies inflation. So that was like a two and a half billion

dollar deal that was again Utah International. That was the largest M and A deal you know up to that point prior to our c A. Right, so which Jack had done a decade later, and of course when Jack became the CEO in Night, he hated the Utah International deal. He was against it, but nobody listened to him. And the first thing he did was divested. So Jack divests, you know. So that's not unsurprising that the new CEO, you know, wants to undo Jeff em All wanted to

un Jack Ge. Jack wanted to, you know, make changes to the way Reg Jones ran GE. And so I think you know, it was under Jack really that GE was just buying and selling so many companies all the time. They were really an M and A machine, you know. And they hired this guy, Mike Carpenter, you know, from McKenzie, to be the M and A guy, and you know, just create a strategic planning department just to do deals. And they did a ton of them, didn't That did

a ton of deals. So I have to start by asking you begin the book telling a story of driving with Jack to the golf course. Tell us a little bit about how you met him and what that set of conversations were like. So once I decided to to see if I could do this book in August of two eighteen, Uh geez, that's a five year process. Huh, Well, I mean it took me probably two and a half years to write it and research it, and then another,

you know, fifteen months to get it published. You know, getting a book published in the middle of a pandemic is not that easy. See I would think it's easy because you're at home there. You know, it was easy for me, but you know, we're talking about paper supply and printing, time on the printer and things like that really got bogged down, and not just for my book,

but a lot of books. And getting time on the press was very hard to do, and finding the paper was very We had supply chain issues with supply chain paper for books exactly, and time on the press. I think I actually started it in October two eighteen. But one thing I did was, you know, I figured if Jack weren't going to talk to me, then I would have to think about whether I wanted to do it. But he was. You know, I had a home in Nantucket. I was there. He had a home around the corner

for me and Nantuget. I would see him occasionally. Did you know him when you worked at the capital? I mean, of course we all quote new. Did you meet him? Did he chat? What was he familiar with you prior to I seriously doubt it, but I think I was, you know, Pip Squeak, way down the way down the

food chain. And I think over time, over the years, he became aware of who I was writing the books, and and when I reached out to him, he surprised me by saying, yeah, let's have a meeting, and let's meet at the Nantucket Golf Club, which you know was where he was a member. Uh, and we met. I love the story of him like kind of rolling up in the car to the valet to us and the kid the keys to tell us a little bit about

what that was. So so I you know, I uh, you know, when you I walked into the Nantucket Golf Club and told him I was meeting Jack Welch, of course, you know, it was like I was meeting Royalty. And so we go out. I love this story. We go out onto the verandah, which was the porch you know for lunch. Uh, and he was already seated there and

at the next table there was Phil Nicholson. It was a Wednesday, okay, and and the Thursday was when this uh like the thing the Deutsche Bank Golf Tournament, the annual Deutsche Bank Golf Tournament happens in Massachusetts, right, So the professional golfers were in and around Massachusetts, and Phil Mickelson, lefty, was doing a practice round at the Nantucket Golf Club

the day before the tournament started. So he was there having lunch, and he was seated at a table with Bob Diamond, who had been the CEO of Barkleys and I think had been defenstrated by then. And he was with Paul Salem, who I knew from growing up in central Massachusetts. And Paul was one of the founders of a private equity firm, Providence Equity Partners. And so they were having lunch, and you know, one after another they

came over and paid their respects to Jack. Everybody was always paying their respects to Jack, uh and this was no different. And so and I knew Bob and I knew Paul. So they're probably wondering, what the hell is Bill Cohen doing sitting and having lunch with Jack Welch. The first thing out of Jack Welch, as I tell the story, in the out of his mouth, was that, you know, he had messed up. He didn't use messed up, but he used something he was not afraid to use.

Salty line. He was not afraid. Uh. And he had messed up the succession process, and he had messed up the selection of Jeff Immult, which was basically who was his hand picked successor. And he felt, you know, by two teen, Jeff of course had been fired. He you know, he had been fired a year earlier. And uh, John Flannery was the new CEO. Now I had worked with John Flannery. John Flannery and I had started a G capital together and shared in office together. So I knew

John for thirty years. Uh, and you know, it was great that John was the new CEO. And but so the first thing out of Jack's mouth is how he had messed up the process. And I'm thinking to myself, whoa Jack Welch is telling me that the person he had hand selected as his successor, he was completely disavowing and like saying, I messed this up completely. And but I said, Jack, you chose him. Yes, I know, but I screwed it up. And this is on me, and this is going to affect my legacy. At that moment,

I kind of knew I was onto something quite special. Yeah, And he had already published his his memoir, his memoir came out literally on September eleven too as one. In fact, he had been on the Today Show that morning and had finished his segment about his book when Memory. If Memory serves his ghostwriter, a co author, eventually becomes his third wife, second wife. No, it was. The co author on that book was a former Fortune and Business Week

reporter John Byrne. I'm pretty sure and and Jack Welch were not. Did not get married a woman that he ended up Okay, So so then this book comes out and there's a woman named he's married. Uh. This book comes out on September one, but because of the events of that day, it was still a best seller, but the publicity disappeared and they didn't pick up the publicity again until October. So it's part of the public city that got picked up in October of two thousand one.

By the way, the book was a big bestseller straight from the gut h and as part of the publicity, they got picked up again in October two one. The woman who was the editor of Harvard Business Review when by the name was Susie wet Louver was the editor of the Harvard Business Review, had been a former journalist Harvard Business School graduate. Uh interviewed Jack came to New

York to interview Jack. They had launched at the twenty one Club, which I think no longer exists, and then, you know, pretty much soon after that they became shall we say an item, and you know, next thing, you know, Jack was divorcing his second wife and marrying Susie, who was leaving her husband and her three kids to be with Jack. And then they wrote the two of them, you know, had a column in Business Week together, wrote

books together. Okay, so I got the chronology wrong, but more or less, this, by the way, is an issue we'll circle back to because this has come up previously in his tenure. But let's roll back to Nantucket. You're on the veranda, everybody. So we we have our lunch and we have our first interview. Uh. And my wife had dropped me off there because she wanted to take our car. We had one car, and she wanted to take the car to you know, go around and do things.

And so Jack was going to drive me home because he lived near me. Uh. So we have the lunch and usually I would see Jack around Nantucket driving his uh Mercedes, you know, coupe uh, convertible. It was that's right, It was. It was right. And so you can always see this sort of like you know, you know Mr Magoo type character because he's a little he was a little fellow, just sort of his his white baseball caps, sort of sticking a of you know, the drive, the

steering wheel you know, around town. Uh. And he had this, you know, it was not a late model convertible. It was sort of an older ish but not really old version. So anyway, I was thinking, that's what we're going to drive home in, but it turned out it was his you know, grand Cherokee. One thing that they sort of do at the club, which was quaint, is you know, they bring the car around and they opened both doors

facing out so and they turned it on. So all you have to do is like hop in and drive off, you know, like you're some you know, person out of a James Bond movie or something like you're some CEO of a giant job of the most valuable company in the world. And so, you know, I get in and I put my seatbelt on, you know, and Jack had a uh, you know, either a walker or a cane at that point, and I was wondering He's eighty or something at this point, and I'm I'm thinking, you know,

when he wasn't in the greatest health. His mind was all there, but physically he had started to tear it, and I was wondering, how is he gonna hop up and you know, being the driver's seat, let alone drive us home. And but so he, you know, he scrambles right up there and but sits on the seatbelt, won't put the seatbelt on, and it's dinging, dinging like it is, And I said, Jack, you know, put your seat you know, why not put your seat belt on? Jack? You know, uh,

still at least to stop the dinging. Yeah, I don't like those things. So he decides he's not going to put his seatbelt on, So he sits on the seatbelt.

The dinging is going the whole way home, and he drives, you know, there's a long driveway out of the golf club, and we finally get to what is Milestone Road, the long road between the town of Nantucket and Ensconsin where we both live, and he took a left to go back down to the village Ofisconsin, and instead of driving on the right side of the road like we do

in America. He decided to drive literally in the middle of the road, right down the two tires on the tires on either side of the center of the car were you know, straddling the yellow double yellow line. And of course cars come in the other direction. We're freaking out, pulling off into the uh, into the grass, and I'm thinking, well, okay, if I perish right now, at least my O bit will say that I was, you know, driving in a

car driven by Jack Wells, the former CEO of g Neutron. Jack, you wouldn't be the first person eliminated by Jack, That's right. I just picked in the book. I just kind of picture him careening off of cars on either side of the road, just just you know, pin bowling down the road. You know it's close. But what what really was happening is cars come in the other direction. We're all pulling off into the grass, and there wasn't a lot of grass because it's sort a lot of trees and stuff,

you know. So, UM, let's discuss his career at General Electric from the beginning, rather than his latter days as a demolition derby driver. Um, this is pretty much his entire career is at a general Electric. Tell us a little bit about where he began and how he rose through the ranks through plastics and everything else. Yeah, I mean he was an only child and uh, his mother

was a stay at home mom. He grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, and his father was like a conductor or you know, on a train train, right on the train that went from Boston to the North Shore, which was a train that I grew up taking all the time too. So I might Jack Welsh's dad have punched your ticket. It's not inconceivable, but I doubt it because I probably would have been, you know, too young to have taken the

train by myself, but you know that idea. Uh. And then you know, Jack was actually a bit of an athlete, even though he was small and his uh and he also stuttered. He had a stutter, and his mother got him over through. His mother was as great as champion. Uh. You know, he got him through. The stuttering, got him thinking, you know, made him seem like he was uh, you know, ten feet tall and a huge athlete, even though he really wasn't any of those things. But he was athletic

and he was on high school teams. And then he went to u mass in Amherst, Massachusetts. UH and then you know, from there, got a ps PhD in UH chemical engineering at the University of Illinois UH and got offered a number of jobs back then h including an Exxon and other places. UH. GE he was offered a job at g which paid him a little bit more so that's why he decided to take it. UH and he moved to Pittsfield to basically try to figure out

how to commercialize gees plastic pellets business. Gee had created these plastic pellets and you know, how do we make these useful to American industry and industry are all around the world. The plastic was used as an insulator on electrical wires, and it had all sorts of other applications that melted down and put it in cars like car bumpers, I mean, and all of a sudden, you know, potentially

a huge business. Potentially a huge business. It was Jack's job to figure out how to commercialize that, and of course he did it fabulously. You tell the story of them hitting a roadblock and then ultimately one of the engineers who was working on this had left GE in a huff, but left all of his books behind his notebooks and someone said might have been Jack said, let's go through the notebooks. Literally the solution to the engineering

problem written down waiting for them. Very true, and they ended up, you know, having to compensate that guy who they had I think who. Yeah, And but that made a you know, huge uh difference in Jack's career. And you know, he once was responsible for a chemical plant that blew up at ge and you know that literally the roof blew off. He thought he was gonna be fired,

but he wasn't. Uh. You know, he did things like complain about his compensation because he was concerned that you know, he thought he was doing this great job and he was getting the paid the same as you know, the other people he had started with, and he didn't like that. So you know, even a year after he started, he threatened to quit, uh, and was literally given a going

away party. Uh. And then he you know, one of his person who became his rabbi, uh, you know, had detected by then his talent and convinced him to stay paid him more. And you know, this guy became his rabbi. He sort of circumvented the guy who paid him the same as other people and you know, Jack really uh, you know, began to differentiate himself. Um for the quote the Rabbi tells him when the building blows up, Hey, you know, that's what happens in the chemistry. Stuff blows up,

stuff happens, Stuff happens. Although that's not the exact quote. It's not so. The other thing that really stuck out to me from the pre CEO period with him was the Hudson Valley PCB issue. There was one of the plants that General Electric had up the Hudson legally, with the approval of the federal government in the state, is discharging right into the Hudson, And decades later we find out, hey, this stuff is really dangerous and kills people. Uh. And

it was a giant overhang on General Electric. He seemed to negotiate a deal that everybody was happy with, Very rare when you're dealing with regulators, politicians, and big companies. Tell us a little bit about that deal. First of all, Jack is a chemical you know, engineer or PhD. And did not agree, did not think PCBs were dangerous. Isn't the science Like, hey, you know, given a choice, you

probably don't want to be drinking PCBs. Well, look as you said again, and I'm just being reportorial here, Okay, So I'm not a scientist. I don't know what the science is. I know it's very controversial. The PCBs were discharged into the Hudson, pretty far up the Hudson, with

knowledge and approval. With knowledge and approval, you know, then all of a sudden, V p A began to think that you know, there were reports of PCBs in like the milk in Japan making people sick, and you know, so there was starting to be some data and evidence that this chemical you know, could be dangerous to people, but not necessarily completely definitive. And Jack, for one, you know,

do not believe they were dangerous. So then you know, it became his problem to clean up, like Greg Jones gave it to him to clean up, maybe because you know, Pittsfield was near the Hudson, and he was up there anyway, and he was a go getter and if anybody could, and a local guy. So Jack negotiates a deal, uh and g E pays three million dollars to three million. Three million. That was the original deal. I thought it

was three billion. No, no no, no, the original deal was three million it was absurdly low pencils for the month exactly three million with the state. And it was you know in the New York Times, Uh, the picture of Jack, you know, reaching a deal with with the state and uh, long story short that again, the e PA got involved and other you know, state conservation people got involved, and that whole agreement, even though it was signed and G I think being paid the money, h that got all

completely overturned Jack, you know, thought it was ridiculous. Then over time and it went on through Jack's tenure like decades, decades, and eventually G had to pay like five million dollars to have the Hudson dredged. They literally sucked all the PCBs out of the floor of the river, I mean where they had where they had rest come to rest. And some people think that that made it worse, made it worse. It's like asbestos, if it's there, leave it alone or cover it up, but don't Well, of course,

you know asbestos is much worse than PCBs. But whatever, G E. You know, the whole thing became you know, caused lebt that went on for decades net net. It was a billion dollars by the time they're done. Whatever they have to pay to dredge the Hudson River. And we're not talking about like a little segment, no huge second. Miles miles, Miles, that's right. I mean, I can't even imagine. But ultimately this is a feather in his cap because

they give him this assignment and is it. Well, he solved it three million dollars, you know, he solved so for Jack it was. But of course then then it got relitigated during his tenure and he was against it the whole time, and then even you know, it was ultimately Jeff emials Ge that had to pay the money to dredge the river, which is kind of ironic. But he ends up cleaning up a number of things after Jack, which is kind of ironic that Jack is not thrilled

with him. But I want to roll back to Susie and the history the building blowing up. It seems like there's a lot of red flags in the early part of his career, alright, So he blows up a factory. Everybody's trying to get people to return to working from home.

They had a hard time getting him to come into the Lexington Avenue headquarters, which is right down the street from us, which is actually a gorgeous Art Deco building which g E got as part of the divestiture from our right that was originally the r c A building, And it's the spectacular, spectacular crown of that building is gorgeous, which I think was in the movie Mr Mrs Smith. And the base of it is fabulous lobby, the elevators,

everything right down the street from the priceler buildings. So it's a little overlooked because of that, but a fantastic building. And he's listen, I'm on the road anyway, two hundred days a year. What does it matter if I have a desk here or a desk in Pittsfield. So there's that, there's the drinking. There's if there was an HR department, he would have been in a lot of trouble. There was, and then there was if he were, he would have been canceled. Today. A lot of womanizing going on back in,

the lot of insulting, fat jokes. Really, oh yeah, a lot of that. Like he would go into manufacturing plants and he'd take the scale out and he would force people to weigh themselves, men and women, not not just the females in the man too, men too yet right sore.

And in fact, once when Jeff Immolt was working his way up and was head of major appliances, Yeah, I guess he had gained a lot of weight and was weight like pounds or something, and and well he had played football at Dartmouth, but he had sort of bloomed up because it was a very stressful time and just testing all the cooking, and he blamed it all the business wasn't The business he was running was the g's

toughest business before they sold it. Uh, And Jack basically told them like, if you don't lose weight, you're not going to be ever be the CEO of this place. So let's talk a little bit about succession planning. And there were a couple of things that really stood out first. It seems like for all the criticism about Jack's succession planning, he really groomed and created a lot of people who

became successful elsewhere. Now whether or not that was because Jack wasn't going anywhere, and people figured out pretty quickly, hey, if I want to be CEO, I gotta find a different home because it ain't gonna be a e um. But still, there have been a lot of leaders groomed under Jack Welsh tell us a little bit about that. I mean, I think that there's an analogy to be made with you know, Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan Chase. Right, Jamie has been there since whatever two thou five, uh,

and so that's you know, eighteen years. Jack was there for twenty years and he just got the stints, so he's good for another ten years. Jamie ain't going anywhere, uh, as far as anybody can tell. And but you can see even with Jamie, a lot of top executives have left and they've become CEOs of other financial institutions. And you know, the Jamie Diamond coaching tree is large and influential. You know, the Coach k uh coaching tree is large

and influential. Jack Welch's coaching tree was large and influential. Uh. And you know, Jack, and I'm sure Jamie is the same way had no hesitation in telling potential CEO candidates that they weren't going to make it and and firing them. Might tell the great story of Dave Cody, who was also ran the major appliance business for a period of time. Jack called him in and of course Dave Cody went on to be the CEO of Honeywell, and Honeywell was

incredibly successful. You know, of course Jack could have bought Honeywell. That's another story. But Dave Cody went on to become CEO of honey Well, and honey Well's market value exceeded gees uh for for a long period of time. So uh, And Jack admitted to me that he made a mistake by getting rid of Dave Cody. But uh, and Dave Cody is a great guy, by the way, and uh, but Jack, you know, he was running major appliance business, which was their most difficult business, was like thirteen out

of thirteen in the GE portfolio. And Jack called him up one day and basically had dinner with him and said, that's it, Dave, you're out. And Dave tried to you know, he'd been at G's whole career too, and you know, tried to discuss it with Jack and try to you know, buy himself more time, and tried to have Jack explained to him why he was being like, oh, Jack, you know, basically just wanted nothing to do with that conversation, just kept repeating over and over and over again. You know,

it's over, Dave, just take your stuff and go. I want you out by the you know, you know, the end of the year, whatever it was, and just go. And so Jack, you know, once it was like a light switch. Once he had made a decision and that was it. You're out. So uh, either he had that discussion over and over again with people or they realized

they weren't going to make it on their own. And so you know, they were constantly being headhunted because you know, of G of course had Crotonville, which was the Management Development Training Center, which was you know, world famous. You know, they had you know, executives were schooled in six signal whether it was worthwhile or not, I mean, you know, and they were rotated around in all sorts of positions.

So they you know, had a very declared eclectic and diverse both manufacturing and finance background, most of them, and so they were very desirable as CEOs of other companies. So head hunters would of course go there and pick him off left and right. So now that leads us to Jeff em Altz. And let me just preface this by saying I had him alt on the show during the pandemic while he was out in Stanford where he's a professor now. And I gave him a dozen opportunities

to toss Jack under the bus. And remember Jack is by this time gone, so there's not gonna be any tit for tat, And he absolutely refused to rise to the bait, continuously said, hey, he left you a ticking time, um, paying for the Hudson clean up, cleaning up the SEC accounting scandals, cleaning up the ge Capital subsequent fraud, all this other stuff, uh, and an industrial with a pe

ratio of He refused to do that. You know. So I spent a lot of time with Jeff immult to uh many many hours, um, just like I did with Jack. Of course, I've read Jeff's book, uh hot seat many times. Uh, you're right, Uh, I know Jeff privately was quite miffed at Jack. Don't forget. In whatever was April of two thousand and eight, after Jeff announced that the first quarter of two thousand and eight was going to be a

major miss. You know, he had promised he was gonna make X amount of money and then it was a major miss. He didn't do any of things because don't forget, bear Stearns went down the tubes, and you know, the levels that he might have usually pulled weren't available, Like selling G capital assets was not an option. Right. The financial chull crisis kind of revealed the black box of G capital and suddenly the scales fell from the analyst

size totally. The financial crisis of two thousand eight, where everybody was focused on Wall Street banks and even the car companies, the dirty little secret of the two financial

crisis was G and capital for sure. So Jack goes on CNBC in April of two eight to criticize Jeff and GE for missing the first quarter of two thous earnings and he says, on national television, you know, if Jeff Emma misses earnings again, I'm going to take a gun out and shoot him on national television, which, you know, can you imagine the hoots of this guy who himself has been engaging in the sort of behavior manipulating GE capital,

manipulating some big word. But okay, alright, but the SEC used the phrase accounting fraud, earnings manipulation action and find ge was it two d thirty million or three thirty million for their earnings falsity? Under the one and only Jack Welch Well, I don't know if there's a question there. Again, I go back to what I said before. And maybe it's because Jack repeatedly made this argument to me. Maybe

it's because I worked at G Capital. Maybe it's because I understood and understand how the two pieces of g E fit together. It's a fabulous combination. When it's working, there's no doubt about it. So if you have those assets and you've promised research anial, you've promised the street you're gonna do X dollars per share, and then you don't do it, then obviously people are gonna fall out of love with you. And if you do do it,

they're gonna love you. And if you do it because you're you know, selling a building that you own, or or selling warrants that you own, or or monetizing the equity in a business that you own in the market to make up any shortfall going on in the industrial side of the business, that's not manipulation, that's not fraud. That's just telling people doing what you told people you're gonna do. Why don't Why is that a problem? The problem that if it was just selling the building, that's

one thing, But there was a lot of paper transactions. Look, when I'm an investor in ge I expect them to sell a certain amount of widgets, whether that's industrial or financial widgets, and generate a profit. And if they're playing with the levers and this is what this is what what did happen was what I call ocation, constant obsucation. They would make big acquisitions and then of course everyone would say, oh, well, now everything has to be integrated.

You know, the special charges, you know, discontinued operations. You know, we're gonna have to wait for this to get all smoothed out. And that would go on year after year after year, constant inability to compare apples and apples and apples and oranges. And then after Sarbanes Oxley passed, you know, the g E annual report became like a textbook, so you couldn't parse it even if you knew what you

were parsing. And the accounting mumbo jumbo that was contained in there, Yeah, there was an awful lot of that you could never figure out with you are you still cannot? If I may figure out GEES earnings, it's always well, you know, we can't compare this quarter to that quarter because in this quarter there was this distinctntinued operation or that special charge and oh, by the way, the pandemic and blah blah blah blah blah. I mean, so to me, when I walk into a room full of manure, I

don't say where's the pony? I say, hey, there's a lot of bs in here. You're looking for the pony. You're more generous than I am to fair Well. I mean I am more generous perhaps to Jack and what he was doing than you are. Yes, you know, maybe because I have yet to meet a person who spent any time with him, people who who we fired. If you if Dave Cody was sitting here today, they would say how much he loved him. Right, It's amazing you

could fire people and they still said. This guy, David Zaslov, the head of you know, Warner Brothers Discovery, loves the guy. I mean, you know, people who left Ge and worked for him loved the guy. I mean. And so manipulation and fraud those are big, big, big words. Okay. Another more charitable way to look at it is, you know, and don't forget he managed the earning. He managed the earnings beautifully. Okay. Remember our friend Harvey Marcopolis, Harry Marcopol

from from the Bernie Maynoff scheme. Remember a few years ago he also took his vast accounting skills and and forensic skills and applied them to ge working for a short seller, and he produced a document that was supposedly, you know, definitive, and that became pretty much totally debunked. Could one person ever in a given lifetime figure out the full earnings report? But to me that lack of transparency is kind of telling. Of course it was telling.

But we're talking about a major Can you figure out in fairness, can you figure out Amazon? Can you figure out Google? I mean you're yes, this is going you know what you're advertising? Can you figure out Meta? Can you figure out I mean yes, I can figure out Apple. I can figure out Meta because they have certain revenues and they have certain costs and they line up fairly certainly. I'll tell you of all the companies you can figure out, can you figure out JP Morgan? Chase? You you took

the words out of my math. That's although of all the banks, that's the easiest one to figure out. Can you imagine a business that was like half JP Morgan Chase and half and half honeywell and try to figure it out. I mean, so you could have made that more transparent if you wanted to. It's a choice to say we're gonna move the meter, which, by the way, leads me to a funny little story with Jack back during the financial crisis, post financial crisis, when Obama was president,

after Bush had left and McCain had lost. I want to say, it was like or where the economy is coming off the lows and you're finally, after three years, seeing the employment data improve, which is what you would expect with zero percent interest rates and a fifty seven percent market reset. Welsh had a line I'm paraphrasing, but the BLS report comes out one Friday, and Welsh tweets leave it to those Chicago boys to cook the books, meaning Obama and BLS. And I responded immediately, if anybody

knows about cooking the books, it's Jack Welsh. And one of my greatest memories is Jack Welsh, you know, cursing me out on Twitter, and I was thrilled to death about that. I'm not sure there's a question there, but I can tell you that Jack did not like Obama clearly he was veriolently anti Obama. I remember going to a talk that Jack gave with Bob Wright in Nantucket at the Nantucket High School, and I was in the audience and they were up on stage talking and I

think David Gregory if I'm not Bob Bob. Bob Wright also lived in Nantucket and ran NBC and then NBC Universal for a long time was a vice chairman of Jack. Brought him in Jack and a rock star. Well Jack, he was the lawyer that worked for Jacket Plastics. I mean, Jack had the vision to make Bob right, you know, into a media and he did fabulous job, even though most people doubted that he could ever do it. And up on stage and this was I think during the

Obama years. Uh it was, and Jack just lit into it was offensive almost how how veriantly anti Obama he was. So, you know, Jack was to the right of Attila the Hunt, I think, you know kind of thing. But he did not like Donald Trump. I got to talk about some of your other columns and books. You're writing for Puck. You're writing for Vanity Fair, not writing for Vanity Fair anymore. So now it's all Puck. It's all Puck and other things. Previously, you wrote for The Times, you wrote for a Bloomberg,

You've written for all over the place. I want to do one Vanity Fair story, And I mean I wrote for Vanity Fair for thirteen years Undergraden and then by the way, Great was the publisher. You'll remember this in the eighties of spy magazines he was, which was the greatest publication of Old Times. He famously called Donald Trump a short fingered vulgarian. And we'll come back to some of your quotes on Trump, which I found to be quite fascinating, some of the stories. But let's stick with

the pandemic. You're writing about the meme stocks, and uh, this is effing unbelievable. Bankrupt hurts is a pandemic, zombie meme stock. Tell us a little bit about what was going on when you were writing that piece. Well, you know, when I was at Lizard, I did a lot of restructuring advisory work, both out of bankruptcy and in bankruptcy. So I mean the law, well, I know the rules anyway, I know the rules, and I know the financial side of bankruptcy. So do recommend people by companies that are

publicly traded and have declared bankruptcy. Absolutely not, because in nine hundred and nine times out of a thousand, the equity gets wiped out. For instance, when Revalon filed for bankruptcy last year and next thing you know, it became a meme stock and the equity like went up six times. I had I wrote and said, this basically is insane. This is insane. The equity is going to get wiped out.

Here you are, you are making a major mistake. And of course the equity got wiped out in their structuring. Now once every thousand times something weird happens, and that's what happened with Hurts. It's a stub. You don't ever

see a hundred cents on the dollar. You'll see some fraction of it unless someone comes in to make the creditors who well, look, you know, usually in a bankruptcy, you know, a company files for bankruptcy because they can't pay their creditors, They can't pay their bills as they become do right. That's what happened with ft X. That's what happens. People. Companies go into bankruptcy because they literally cannot pay their obligations as they become do so to clarify,

It's not a buying opportunity on the equity side, is it. No, it might be a buying opportunity on the debt side. Sure, you pick them up for pennies on the dollar, and then you convert that debt to equity and baba being there are people who loan to own on the other side of the bankruptcy proceeding rights, and then you convert that debt to equity in the new in the reorganized company, and then you know, maybe that will become worthwhile. Maybe

it will, maybe it won't. With Hurts, what happened is that the people there was like a bidding war for Hurts in bankruptcy. And you know, once you make the creditors hold, then you know you can control you know, the equity, you can control the action. And so you know, this is apparently something that these hedge funds did and and made a killing from the equity side, or the death from buying the equity. I mean, and you know,

I'm not sure. Well, I mean it was pandemic related because you know, everybody was, you know, not going anywhere, and and the and the demand for rental cars evaporated, and I guess they figured correctly that it would rebound, and they were right. So let's talk a little bit about a more recent piece you wrote in Puck about Bob Iger's Nelson Peltz saga. Let's talk about what's happening

over there. Well, of course, you know I've known, uh, you know, having done all this restructuring work at Lizard and working with private equity firms at at Maryland, JP, Morgan, Chase, Uh and Uh. You know, I was extremely familiar with uh Nelson Pelts and try On Uh. And of course they had taken a two and a half billion dollar position in GE and Jeff Immolt had been friends with Ed Garden's brother. Edgarden is Nelson Peltz's son in law.

So after Jeff Emil decided to sell G Capital in two thousand fifteen Project Hubble, he also decided it would be you know, a great idea to invite try and partners into the GE Capital shareholder base. It's sort of a way to ratify Jeff's strategic initiatives, you know, to refocus the company on its industrial origins, to get out of G Capital. He had by that time gotten out of NBC Universal, He had doubled down by buying uh Alstom, the big you know, power generation business in France, and

was remaking the company. And he thought, well, he had been told that activists investors were going to come into the company one way or another. So Jeff decided he would invite someone in who we thought would be friendly to him because he knew Ed Garden's brother from Dartmouth, and he had known the Gardens. He used to go to their house on holidays and steading going back to Cincinnati.

They lived in Melrose, Mass And Uh, Jeff would go down there for Easter and other holidays, Thanksgiving and things like that. And so he thought bringing, you know, Nelson, and he would talk to Nelson and get advice and invite him up to Crotonville and things like that. And he thought that he was going to get a sympathetic partner by having try and partners in by two and a half billion dollars worth of stock. Huh, that's not

how it works out. It's fine if you you know, make your numbers and the stock price goes up and you do everything he wants you to do. But you know, Jeff got overtaken by events. It didn't work out, and uh, you know, the smiling crocodile and Nelson Pelt's Bard's Tea and basically was responsible for Jeff Mo being fired. So and basically being responsible for firing John Flannery after fifteen months and bringing in Larry Culp who is still there and sort of Larry Culp sort of executing the try

and playbook. Uh. And so then when I see uh try and you know, making a nine D thirty million dollar investment in Iger and Iger kind of and asking for a board seat, and I kind of showing him his hand. Uh, well that I couldn't I couldn't resist writing that. That is a big mistake. We've seen this movie movie repeatedly, not just at G but in other places to you know, P and G and du pont. I mean, you know, come on here, Bob, the Leander leopard doesn't change its spots. And uh, you know, why

does scorpions Stingbob? Because that's what they do, right. So, but Bob Iger is going to learn the hard way. I think the scorpion in the as a perfect metaphor. Um, let's talk about some of your other books. This is an embarrassment of riches. I don't know where to go first, Goldman, Bear, Lizard, we only have you for a limited amount of time? Which was the most fun to write? Which one do you like talking about the most? Lazard seems to be the most fascinating and least well known of the three.

I had a great time writing about Lazard because that was, first of all, was my first book. And of course it was challenged who who was I to think I could even write a book. I mean, I hadn't written anything in twenty years. But I decided, well, you know, this is what I was going to do. And I knew it was a great story. I knew the characters were great, and I knew that because I had worked there even though it was you know, ten years before, so uh, and I didn't take a single note or anything.

I had no plans ever to write a book, so you know, to me, it was every you know, every page was kind of a revelation, you know, going back and trying to figure out the history and then unearthing various scandals which I had heard about but no one ever talked about, and so it was just I was just a lot of fun, money and power. How Goldman Sacks came to rule the world do we still think

today Goldman Sachs ruled the world? Have they been bypassed a little bit by other companies or are they still you know, the company that fills all the seats in the federal government, Department of State, Department of Treasury. I mean there used to be former Goldman execs wherever you looked in d C. Yeah, it's two different questions. I think there are still Goldman execs who managed to make the leap into government all around the world, you know,

better than any other bank. Uh. And their influence continues to be, you know, unparalleled in the halls of government. You know, obviously depends on the administration, like in the Trump administration, they were kind of everywhere, you know, in the Biden administration less. Oh, but there are still examples. Uh. Then there's a question about Goldman as a as a bank, h and as a financial institution. Uh, you know still

you know, uh, highly respected. Uh still probably the number one place that you know, college graduates want to work and nbas want to work. Probably number one still in prestige. Certainly you know, number one in many investment bank care categories, including M and A, and has been forever basically, but it's no longer. Uh, you know, it's trading below book value. It went public at like four times book value. It's trading below book value or at book value. Uh. Morgan Stanley,

it's a longtime rival. Trades at one point seven times book value. You know. James Gorman, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, diversified Morgan Stanley into wealth management and asset management. Bob Smith, Barney, you know, Goldman has sort of been stuck. It's the truth is, it's not very good at doing M and A deals for its own account. The ones that it's done have not worked out particularly well, except for perhaps Jay Aaron, which got them a lot of management talent,

but basically hasn't haven't worked out. Whereas you know, Morgan Stanley has been much more successful at doing deals and diversifying its business away from the volatile investment, banking and trading businesses two more steady fee income and it's gotten rewarded. Now trades at one point seven times book It's market capped is like forty to fifty billion dollars higher than than Goldman's now. Uh. And uh, you know, so Goldman's valuation is around you know, hundred ten hundred twenty billion

and Morgan Stanley is around one seventy. You now, meanwhile, J. B. Morrigan is was what four fifty I don't know what it is today, but you know, so JP Morgan Chase, you know, Jamie Diamond of course is you know, the biggest bank, the most powerful financial institution, and that used to be Goldman's role. But you know, Goldman has not diversified well or easily. And you know, obviously now everybody's wondering about David Solomon in his tenure and how long

he can last. You know, his effort at diversification into consumer banking was very expensive and so far on rewarding trying to get into commercial banking and banking generally. Basically, Goldman needs to do what the FED won't let it do, which was you know, by a balance sheet merge with a big bank, you know, like you know banking New York, Melon or something which doesn't have h investment banking so

that you don't be on then overlap there. But it's has a very big asset management business in a very big sort of back office custody will be I mean, it would be a great merger with Goldman, which ironically, is the thing that John Corson was trying to do in the late nineties do that merger. And he was trying to do it without the approval, as I write in the book of his partners on the management committee, like Hank Paulson, and that got cor designed zoughts and

they and they probably missed their window. Let me ask you one last question before I get to my favorite questions, which is, you've had some really interesting columns about Donald Trump, who spoke with you on frequent occasion and liked a lot of the stuff you were writing, even though a lot of it was fairly critical. Tell us a little bit about what it's like to get that phone call from Trump inviting you on Air Force one. No, no, no, I never got invited. Weren't you supposed to take a flight.

Maybe it was before he was elected, you were supposed to take a flight with him? And then yes, well, well, so I had written a piece in the Atlantic about why nobody does business, why nobody on Wall Street this is except for Deutsche Bank, right, But this is why you like mainstream Wall Street doesn't do busines with Donald Trump. And this was in like two thousand thirteen, beginning of two thousand fourteen. Uh, and I talked to the Donald for that. You know, he was not he was a

pretend candidate at that Uh. So, you know, I spoke to him several occasions. And then he didn't like that article. It was critical of him. And then I wrote an article in Vanity Fair about Trump University and Eric Schneiderman, then the New York State Attorney General, going after Trump University, and I spoke to him again as well as Schneiderman, and they basically went at each other in this vanity

Vanity Fair article and that was fun. That was great. Uh. And then Graydon and so then he announces he's you know, he comes down the escalator in June of two thousand and fifteen and he announced he's going to be a candidate, and he's like campaigning. And so Graydon said, well, you're the only one that because of course, as you pointed out, Graydon had referred to Donald Trump as a short fingered bulgarian in Spy magazine. So let's just say Grayden and

Donald Trump didn't get a very well. Among other things over the years that Graydon had done to Donald oppresciently, I might add Uh. And so Graydon said, well, you're the only one that gets along with him, can you, you know, see if he'll let you follow him around

on the campaign trail. So at that time, as you'll remember, what Donald like to do is he would take Trump Air out for the day and he'd fly to you know, Iowa, or he'd fly to Minnesota, or he'd fly to Chicago and they'd fly home to you know, sleep at Trump Tower. So I I asked him if I could go on a day on, you know, go with him. Uh. And Hope Hicks, who is his communications person at that time, you know, uh, you know I was in touch with Hope, I mean, and Hope basically said, yeah, you know, we

can get you, we can get you on. I think this is gonna work out, you know, Uh, let me work on it for you. But I think he's he's basically favoritely disposed to this. And I'm getting ready to go, and then I get an email saying, you know, no, no, Bill, Uh, he's changed his mind. Uh, he's not gonna let you go with him. But he did want me to ask you this question. What happened to you? Bill? What? What what happened to you? Why the implication being, you know,

I thought you were a fan of Donald Trump's. Now you seem to be so against him. We can't have somebody who's this against Donald Trump, you know, uh being going with him and reporting on it. You really weren't editorializing against him. And you had said, Okay, the guy cheats at golf, hold that aside. But you also said, hey, he used to be a terrible business who would put businessman, who would put his own money at risk. Now he uses other people's capital. He slaps his name on stuff.

It's a cash cow. In fact, Barry I said that on Bloomberg TV air. Okay, so can I tell you this story? This is like so I had written this article in the Atlantic about why nobody on Wall Street does business with Donald Trump anymore except for Deutsche Bank, And I talked about in that article how he had evolved as a businessman where instead of putting his own money at risk and when losing it oftentimes you know, Trump Air and Trump Steaks whatever it was, he had

decided to license his name and just take fees. And you know that, you know, much better business model, much better business model. He was capitalizing on his uh name recognition and his you know, so called the business expertise. So this is after the Apprentice, after the election. He had a brand. He had he had a brand, I mean, and of course, as we all know, he capitalized it

on two thousand sixteen. So so I come on TV here and uh, the anchors who I don't remember who they were, but they were asking me, you know, to uh. They were saying, but you know, Donald's not a very good businessman, is he, you know, know you're writing your article. I said, well, actually he was. You know, he evolved. He wasn't a great businessman, but and he's probably not worth as much as he claims to be, but he is evolved, and I have to give him credit for

evolving his business model and becoming smarter about that. He had invested forty million dollars in the Chicago Tower, which he lost, but you know, basically that was chump change as far as Donald was concerned. He was using other people's money. He was taking fees for licensing his name used, and I thought that was pretty smart, even though Wall Street won't do business with him. And I understood why because he, you know, was famous for not paying his

bills and stiffing creditors. So but he had evolved. So then, so that was the Atlantic article. Then I called him up and I say, I want to do this article about Trump University. And I didn't know whether, you know, he was gonna I knew he didn't like the Atlantic article because he had written me they didn't like it, but I didn't know whether he was going to talk to me. But I figured, okay, he called me up

and he says, William. He called me William mean, you know they I won't do his voice, but I could, but I won't come, he said. He said, you know, Bill, uh, you know, I thought that that Atlanta article you rode was a bunch of crap and um. But then I saw you on Bloomberg talking about it, and the anchors wanted you to say bad things about me, and you wouldn't do it. And I really appreciated that. And so as a results, he told me he would talk to

me for the Trump University article. And then he told me my favorite line of all, which is he said, to me, like me, Bill, William, Like me, William. You're a good looking guy and you have a great head of hair. And I thought the like me part was my favorite thing ever because we all know that hair whatever that is on top of his head is not hair.

That what I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is, but it's you have a full You and I both middle aged guys, genetics something that whatever whatever that orangutan is on top of his head, uh, that is not And the pictures of him, you know, making it up in the wind and then making it up in the morning are like my favorite thing ever. So in the last few minutes we have let's jump to our favorite questions and we'll we'll make this a speed round. What are you streaming these days? Tell us

your favorite Netflix? Amazon Pride. Yeah, I mean I've I've been doing Bad Sisters. I have to say, I really okay, they really are bad sisters. What they're great now watching Dairy Girls, which is you know, crazy fun. But you know it's been like call my agent and and uh the Americans and yeah, a big Francophile. So my wife and I went to Paris for like two weeks for anniversary. So we loved Call my agent and we watch Emily in Paris just because the scenery is just the it's spectacular,

and you know, it's a goofy sec. I have not watched that, but but if you just mute it and just let it roll, it's fantastic. Um, tell us about your early mentors who helped shape your career. Uh well, I mean, I think, and I've talked about this in my books. Someone. I mean, you know, I had two careers. I had invested banking career, h such as it was, uh and uh journalistic career, and uh you know which

probably been better. Uh So I think you know, one of my important mentors was a guy named mel Mencher, who was a professor at Columbia Journalim School who basically told me something I've never forgotten. And you know, he was a very tough professor and most people could only take his course for one semester because it couldn't stand it. He was very rough and gruff and abusive. But I of course love that, and uh took him for the

whole year. It was a one year program. And he always used to say, you can't write writing, you can only write reporting. And I never quite understood what that meant for a while, but but I figured it out now. And basically, if you don't do the reporting, you can't write anything. So you have to do the reporting. You can't just you can't. You've got to do the reporting. And so that's why these books are so full, chopped, full of reporting, because if you don't do the reporting,

you can't do the writing. Every page is rich with research and details, and you know, it doesn't make for a fast read, but it makes for a very satisfying read. I don't know if if anybody has ever told you that, but I found myself going back and saying, let me just make sure I understand this chronology, because it's so detailed and so rich. So you put that advice to work, right, Thank you well, and and and and Melmenter was the proponent of that. And then you know, in banking, you know,

I think about guy was still my friend. David Supino at Lizard was a Lizard partner. He's also a renaissance man. He loved art and collected art. Is you know, I love art and he's a real collector. And he's also a writer. Uh David, Uh. You know, he was a lawyer at Sherman Sterling and then he went to Lizard as a partner. He was head of the restructuring, bankruptcy effort.

I mean he was a true renaissance man and he's written you know, bibliographies of of great writers and uh he's incredibly uh incredibly important to me, uh in my banking and writing a career, and um so I think of all Uh, you know, I didn't have many mentors at Javid Morgan Chase. I had sort of uh colleagues who were very competitive. It was more of a I mean, Lizard always seemed like a viper pit. But uh, and of course it was if you were a partner, but

I wasn't. I I left before became a partner. But Jabe Morgan Chase it was a true viper pit, at least before Jamie Diamond got there. And uh and you know, people were at each other all the time. Speaking of art, doesn't Wizard have quite a storied art collection? Not inside

the firm? The partners had an incredible art collection. And one of my favorite parts of the Lizard Book was when I went and spent time with Michelle David Bay, of course, the the descendant of the David Bay family who owned the firm before Bruce Watterston came along, as I said, stolen and took it public. Uh, Michelle and I would meet his apartment on Fifth Avenue and it

was just filled with art. And then I met with him once at his incredible uh uh full block uh town house on in Paris, which is filled with this incredible art collection and and and he walked me through

his collection. Uh. He basically didn't explicacion de text of his collection and how it had been stolen by the Nazis during World War two, and you know, he had to fight to get it back, and he basically got back his father's and his grandfather's a large part of that collection, and you know, it was just surrounding him and his party. It was an incredible collection. But I mean Andre Meyer collected art, and Felix wrote and collected art, but Andre but it was Michelle was annually named one

of the best two collectors in the world. That's amazing. I actually just watched A Woman in Gold when we were traveling about that whole story and the recovery of Nazi I was it was really quite fascinating. With Gustaf Clempton and all that. Speaking of books, tell us about some of your favorite books. What are you reading right now. I'm finishing up The Divider by Peter Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, who are my friends. I mean, it's it's suh,

it's a great book. Uh. I hate to read it because it's reliving of course Donald Trump era, which you know, I hope we all don't have to relive again, but I fear that we you know, there's probably better than that we might. Uh. And uh, you know I've I've read, Uh, I've been blurbing books. So there's some new books coming out which you'll probably want to have people on your show about. Uh, you know, a book about Mark Spitznagel and it seemed to lab. Uh that's coming out by

a Well Street Journal reporter who's Scott Patterson. That's a very uh interesting book that I just blurbed, which is coming out soon. You should have Scott on he wrote the Quantz and Um. So you know, Uh, it's it's hard when you write as much as I do to actually you know, be constantly reading other stuff. But I'm always reading, you know, articles, and so so let's get to our last two questions before they toss us out

of here. Um, what sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad who was interested in a career in either investment banking or journalists. You know, Uh, my father, who's still I've never wanted me to go into journalism, Uh because he knew intuitively and correctly that it is extremely low paying profession. Uh compared to others. You didn't want to be an ink stain wretch. He

would rather have you in investment banking. Well, I think he wanted me to be able to, you know, uh have a good life, you know, an affordable uh make a good enough living to afford a style that I probably had become accustomed to, so to speak. And uh know that being an ink stained wretch. You know, I was making thirteen thousand dollars a year working for the Raley Times, which was fine. I was a single guy, but that was clearly not going to be sustainable long term.

So uh, you know, I don't know, it's it's very tough. Profession has gotten no easier. I mean, don't forget when I was making thirteen thousand dollars a year. Uh, the Ibadam Margins in the newspaper business was sixty and the paper I worked for, the News Observer Publishing Company, got sold by the Daniels family for three hundred million dollars to to McClatchy. Uh, you know, the Louisville Courier Journal got sold, uh you know, to Gannett for whatever. You know.

That's before eBay, Craigslist, Google, before before everything. Okay, And so now we're you know, sort of having a media meltdown. And of course, you know, I'm a founding partner of Puck and We're trying to to make, you know, a go of it, and I think we're doing knockwood. Uh, you know quite well, but uh, you know, so I

don't know that I could. You know, And my younger son, my oldest son is a lawyer here and tell my younger son works in l A and sort of has aspirations towards writing and journalism and he's doing documentary films now. So you know, that's tough. It's great in the abstract, you know, it's great for people to get into these line of work because you know, it's obviously endlessly fascinating and riveting, and you know, every day is a new day and you learned so much. It's great if it's

not your child. When it's your child, and you know, it's can be challenging, you can understand your own father's concern. Now I can, and and you know he encouraged me to go back to get my m b A. And well, I didn't want to do it, just like my younger son didn't want to do it and he hasn't done it. I did do it, and it worked out great for me. Uh.

You know. One of the fleetings I wanted to do was to get a job working for Business Week before Mike Bloomberg going to I know, I know Joe Weber, I know Joel, but I mean before, but when it was owned by McGrath hill, I wanted to work there and I couldn't couldn't pull it off. I wanted to work at the Wall Street Journal, and I couldn't pull

it off. So that's why I. In fact, I told the editor at the Wall Street Journal, whose offices I had managed to get myself an interview at, and he I was in his office when he came in, and he couldn't figure out what I was doing there, and I said, I'm here for a job interview, and he said, well, forget that, my friend, Yes, you forget that. We have a hiring freeze on this either. And if we didn't

have a hiring freeze. We're gonna hire this person from Fortune and that person from Forbes, so you know you can take your Abbott M B A and and shove it and and I said, well, I mean they're gonna go to the Wall Street Journal or Wall Street and he said goodbye. Wow, that's fascinating. Our final question, what do you know about the world of finance, investing and journalism today? You wish you knew forty or so years ago when you were first getting started. Really thirty or

so years ago when you were first getting started. So I'll tell you one of another one of my favorite stories. Since we seem to have endless amount of time here, I told you I get you out by dinner. You did you mentioned that? Uh? And endless? So when I was at Lazard UH as an associate. Um, it was about I used to have a quotron machine. Do you know what a quotron machine? Of course you do. Now

we have Bloomberg's streaming real time information. The quotron machine, you would put in the ticker and out would come the price or something resembling a price, so or less Lawrence who knows what? Certainly no desktop streaming of real time financial information which enables us to be sitting here today. Uh. And so I decided I wanted to buy some Berkshire Hathaway. I had become enamored of Warren Buffett. He had gone

to Columbia Business School. I had gone to Columbia Business School, and I just thought, okay, uh he's you know, there's something about him that's captivating to me. Uh. So this was what thirty plus years ago, and the Berkshire huh so I Uh. I went to the quotron machine. There was one on the floor. One one. I went to the quote on machine floor. I put b r k into the quotron and up popped hundred person. Well, I'm thinking, okay,

twelve d per shire. I didn't have much money. Uh. And you had to put the trade through the Wizard trading desk, even though there was like one person or a quarter of a per person who was the Lizard trading desk. Uh. And so I said, I want to buy ten shares. So I thought, okay, I have twelve thousand dollars barely, I'll buy ten shares of Berkshire Hathaway. There was only Berkshire Hathaway a there wasn't Berkshire Hathaway b uh so I They said, okay, do you want

to do it at market? I said, sure, I'll do it at market. Call I'll call you back. Call me back a half hour and say, okay, you're done. Uh twelve ten shares of Berkshire at Uh. How do you want to pay for it? I said, I'll write you a check. So I'm thinking I'm gonna have to write a check for twelve thou dollars. He said, it's a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. How do you want to pay for it? I said, what are you talking about? I'm literally having a heart attack. Hundred twenty thousand dollars.

I went to the quotron and it said twelve hundred times ten. That's twelve thousand. What am I missing here? No? No, no, no no. The quotron only went to four spaces. It's twelve thousand. You owe me a hundred twenty thousand dollars? You know what? What do you? What do you want to do? I don't have a hundred twenty thousand dollars. I thought, okay, well I there goes my career at laz Art. I will buy two shares, I will write you a check for two thousand. So I did that,

and it's okay, we'll sell the rest. I said, sell the rest. They sold the rest. No one was hurt, no foul. I gave them food dollars. I kept my two shares. I still have them. And and what are the Asia strading at today? Well, I don't know four So are you happy you made a million dollars in the trade or are you thinking about shares? You left the other eight shares, so you want to know what my advice would have been? Right, the check for the

whole hundred twenty thousand would have been my advice. Thank you, Bill for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Bill Cohen, author of many fabulous books. The most recent is Power Fail Year. I wish we had a little time to talk about your history at Duke and the lacrosse team in the book you did there, but we're completely out of time. It's been four hours and there's only so long they can leave us with this. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and check out

our other four hundred and eighty nine previous discussions. You can find those at iTunes. Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your favorite podcast from. You can sign up to see my daily reads at rid Halts dot com, follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. Be sure and check out the entire family of Bloomberg podcasts at podcasts on Twitter. I would be remiss if I did not thank the correct team that helps with these conversations together each week. Paris Wald is my producer. Sean Russo is my head

of research. A Tika val Bron is our project manager. Justin Milner is my audio engineer. I'm Barry Rihlts. You've been listening to mass sts in business on Bloomberg Radio