Andrew Liveris

advisor of the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. I sat down with Andrew recently in Lucid showroom in New York to discuss his accomplishments and his future ambitions. So I've interviewed many business people on the show, but very rarely have I interviewed anybody who has any interest in so many different continents. So you're doing something in Saudi Arabia, we'll talk about that. You're involved in things in Europe, in Australia, your native Australia. You are now the head of the

Olympic Committee. Is that right for the next Olympics in Australia Brisbane Olympics. They won the bid last year and on the president of that to put it in place, and you know it's ten years, so that's an exciting project. In the United States, you were for quite some time, more thin a decade the CEO of Dowd Alchemical. Initially that we're called Dow and you merged it with DuPont before you step down. Isn't right, correct? So let's go

back to your beginning. You grew up in Australia. How did you manage to get to Dow and to the United States. Yeah, the the gene that got me to have wonder lust was because I grew up in a little multicultural town in northern Australia called Darwin. Lots of Asians, lots of Indigenous people, First Nations people, lots of immigrants

like Greeks that came from these very poor areas. So I had this desire to go see where they were from and understand the places north of US, Indonesia, China, Asia, and as a whole, the American into into you know, if you like. Uh knowledge that I got was listening over the radio to know things like the jfk assassination and Man on the Moon, and you know, we didn't have TV where I grew up, so I was just fascinated by America. And what had offered the world. So

that combination got me recruited out of campus. I didn't join a British company. I didn't join an Australian company. The companies that came by that were American were the ones that I was intrigued by, and Dow had the best recruiting line of them all for one year old, join us and we'll show you the world. So that combination of where I grew up, what I was exposed to, and the Dow recruiting line. Because your family a wealthy family, no blue collars, we would call them immigrants. My father

we lost our grandparents. He lost his parents and so he raised his two younger brothers. When he was twelve, he became an apprentice and a carpenter, and he and his two brothers built a small fledging building business in Darwin and Um. I was the first to go to university in my family. Grant with university and you go to work at Dow and in Hong Kong. Initially ull they sent me down to a very cold part of Australia called Melvine, which happened to have a lot of

Greek people. I got cold redefined when I went to Michigan, but I thought it was cold at the time they went. I went there for six months and there was an accident in a factory in Hong Kong and they sent four Australian engineers. I was wanted them to go work to actually help the locals adjust to operating a complex chemical environment. And so now is a very famous chemical company was for quite some time. And how do you go from Hong Kong with this Australian accent to an

American company in the middle of the United States. The visionaries that ran down in the sixties that led to my recruitment in the seventies had this view that to go international yet to hire local well before it was vogue, and they went around the world looking for people who were willing to go to these far flung locations. Hong Kong at that time wasn't a sophisticated city that it is today. And basically, you know what they did was they localized and grew talent locally, but kept a playbook.

So I was spotted early by the then Dow leaders and they started to move me around to test me in different places, mostly in Asia and then eventually to the U s where you're trained as an engineer. What was your skill set? Chemical engineering? Which you know, when I look at today's world and I think about chemical engineering, the word chemical sort of sort of puts you into a different place with the thought, it's really problem solving engineering. And I learned how to be a problem solver about

learning chemical engineering. So you eventually moved to now headquarters where is? It's in Michigan? Right? But what what small city? Is? A little town called Midland where the founder founded the company and we're still headquartered there, right, So you moved there? And for how many years were you the CEO? So just shire fifteen? Of course the last couple were in

the merged entity, which my successor. Then we've set up the d merger and we can talk about that if you like, But certainly the fifteen years included the last two as executive chairman of the DuPont entity. But I led us into the merger and the rationale behind that was a ten year remake. We put a strategy in place at oh five uh, and we executed over ten years to move us back to an innovation centric company. We had lost our way, we had commoditized, we had

rested on the laurels of all our previous inventions. And by the time the nineties and the os came around, we were really our innovation chest was bare, our cupboard was bare. So we reconstitute an innovation in the company by changing the portfolio. So you took down chemical, you renamed it Dow at one point, took the chemical out of it, and then you merged it with du Pont, and then you split the company into three different companies.

Is that right? Yes? So too amazing American iconic companies. Three hundred so years of corporatetory between them. Um DuPont founded on explosives, Dal founded on you know, chlorine. Um. You think about the corporate history and both of those the portfolios they both had assembled by the time we hit this century were across a range of different applications

and there were many things, too many markets. So what the premise of the case was, working with their green on the DuPont side, as we put the two together and separate them into more pure plays, so Dow Materials, the Agg company agricultural products, and of course the DuPont Company, the new DuPont Company on specialty chemicals and plastics. And you step Down as CEO of Down a number of

years ago. Did your wife's say, when you're done being the CEO is the time you've spent more time with me and stay at home and now you're running around the world. So was she disappointed or she happy to have you out of the house there? Did she expect me to retire? No? She knew me better. The story on the Olympics is a classic. That call came I don't know two months ago on a Saturday, We're in Sydney in our living room, I got a call from the Premier of the State of Queensland saying we'd like

to offer you the presidency of the Olympics. I said, excuse me, And you know I was aware of Brisbane at one so I didn't embarrass myself. But um, I said, can I get back to you. Can you tell me a little more and I'll get back to you. Yeah, but we want to announce it on Monday. Stop. Okay. So anyway, my wife said, who's that? And I told her and she said, looked to me in the face and said you've got to take it. And I said,

you know how busy I am? Right? And she said, I know how busy you are, but you've got to take it because you're the right person to get it done. And if it means you've got to drop some things, drop some things, but take it. That's the type of partner I have. How did you wind up to be the chairman of an automobile company when you hadn't really

been in that industry. I think the manufacturing thematic that I had throughout my whole career, wrote a book on it, making it America UH made me an attractive Canada to a whole host of different companies around the world, whether it be board or advisory. Um. Certainly the lucid experience was something I didn't predict, but it came really through my association with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who with a major investor in l Tiva, the predecessor lucid Um.

I got asked by the p a F to come in and help rebuild the company and create what you see here, which is a full fledged EV company. First greenfield site e VS Tesla did a modified site right, so we built a greenfield site and it's up and running right now. So manufacturing was a big piece of my expertise that it was attractive to joining the lucid experience. So Saudi A Ramco is now the most valuable company in the world. Is that right? Yes? And your involvement

is that you're on the board of it. Yes. And you see energy prices or oil prices coming down at any time in the near future, you think they're going to be over hundred dollars a powerful quite some time. Look commodity markets, as you must know well known your storied career, David, impossible to give you an answer other than you know, the most important dynamic of them all is climate change and CEO two emissions and how can

we make oil and gas for that? A man of cold before, But I think coal is destined to be phased out. But all in gas and our addiction to it and the transition that is needed to get c O two out of the air will eventually damp and demand EVS, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon. EVS alone, electrification of the transportation market will see a dampening of demand, But it's impossible to predict in a short term. How do you predict a war Russia Ukraine and the effect

that it had on commodity prices? So we do. We will go through periods, a zigzagged line, if you like, a pricing for some years to come. And I can't tell you whether it's going to be high or low. No one can. But Sara Arabia, which has an enormous amount of oil, seems to be interested in finding ways to do things that are not related to the oil. Electric vehicles is one of them. I guess that right. Yeah.

Diversification the vision that was put in place and you're you're quite familiar with by His Highness the ground prints has has a big piece of it to diversify away from oil and to go into other businesses and other activities that might be related, so chemicals and plastics and downstream creating a circular carbon economy hydrogen and going to the green economy solar renewables, his general wind, nuclear power.

This diversification on the energy mix is a big part of the vision and that's what Ramco and others in the Kingdom are driving. Let's talk about Lucid for a moment. Here the chairman of Lucid and it's an electric vehicle company. Um Tesla seems to be so far ahead of everybody else. How do you compete with Tessa when they have such a large share of that market. This is a technology business. So in your earlier question about how did I get involved,

I said manufacturing. Well, manufacturing is an interesting word being used for a couple hundred years in humanity, as we obviously went up the technology ladder. Humans are inventive and innovative because of technology advantages. Lucid offers a technology advantage and beats everyone right now and it's being recognized for it. Firstly, is the distance we can travel without needing, you know, to charge, and that's over five miles ep a certified.

Second is our charging time. We can actually get a recharge of up to three miles in twenty two minutes. That's technology. Those two topics are all about technology. The car and it's surrounds is esthetically beautiful, it drives fantastically. It's absolutely totally a luxury car and clearly in experience and the software that supports it is also technology. So what we've been doing at Lucid is homing in on the technology side of differentiation. Is there room for a

Tesla or a Lucid and a bunch of others? Of course, I mean we are going to see e v s as the prim remotor transportation in our lifetime. Where does Lucid manufacturers cars Arizona, Cassa Grande Arizona just outside of Phoenix. And if I wanted to go buy one, where do I go buy one? You buy him online or you come the showroom like this and they cost about five thousand dollars a piece or something like that. You are

in the right place to buy one. We can maybe hopefully solve your one as you leave the We have a retail strategy. We go directly retail and service centers around the country. We're opening up retail centers as we speak in Europe, but we have them in the United States. And this is an example of one. And know the price point is not five thousand dollars. We have a

price point at the high end, luxury end. Our competition is Porsche BMW out You're trying to be an electric vehicle for high end car at this point in time. That's our strategy. We've got the Dream, the Grand Touring, We've got the Air and then the SHUV the gravity. These price points north of a hundred thousand dollars with the Dream at about one seventy thousand. But clearly that's the luxury and the mass market end where General Motors

and Ford and others are, you know, pointing themselves. Is obviously the big opportunity will eventually get there, but we've made no announcements, and you have one of these corners I do. I was an early buyer at full price. I felt it was important that I demonstrate my support for the team. I'll never forget the the amazing drive I had in it. Have it down in Florida where

my residences. I drove it, drove to Palm Beach and drove around there, and every time I stopped, I had people looking at me, and I knew it wasn't me. It was clearly the car. And then I parked it, and I will kid you not, it was like a mob scene around me. It was one of the I think it was the second car in Florida, so clearly had not been seen. I valet parked it at this hotel where I was in dinner, and the gentleman wanted to compete with the other gentleman to valet park that

can I drive it? Can I drive it? And as I said, you know what, maybe I should puck it myself, and so it's it's it's an attractive car and it really drives supremely. Well, let's talk about the roads on which these cars drive. So you've been an advisor at the president United States on infrastructure and manufacturing. But on infrastructure, you've been involved with the legislation that was pay used not long ago. Why is the United States infrastructure so

terrible compared to so many other wealthy countries. Well, you know, I have been around US politics like you for a couple of decades and have served a variety of presidents from the different parties, and and the attitude in the United States is obviously to keep taxes low and keep the public spend under control. And the word control is interesting, but that stops forward thinking in terms of planning, and therefore the short termism around our fiscal policies has heard us.

I mean, in essence, infrastructure is a long term return and and to get a long term return, putting it into private hands is one way of doing it. But really the public side of life has to be willing to blew the forward spend, the forward spent on airports and roads and e V charging stations has to come from the public domain. Now, raising taxes to spend money on infrastructure means you've got to trust the people doing

the spending. And I think the public private model is the way to go there, which is actually create an infrastructure bank that the US public company owned or public sector owned, that has private sector matching funds. I think that sort of breakthrough has yet to occur in the United States. So where we go is tax and spent, which unfortunately one side of the aisle disagrees with. So what is it that you look back on your career with and say, this is what I'm most proud of

having done. As you know the old adage, right, who's at your bedside in that final gasp, you know it's it's your close family and and and you know, obviously I'm very blessed that way, But the wider ecosystem. Last night I did a one hour interview of Irvan Kristner, the CEO of IBM to my Academy of Credit, an academy and my alma matter. Uh and it's to teach year olds. And lately we've been introducing postgrads leadership in

the modern century. But do you think business leaders have an obligation to do more than just make profits for their shareholders. Do you think they should be more socially responsible, more worried about e s G. Than years ago? The rules are changing, what should be the new rules? Who knows who's working on them? Is a just government? No? Is it just business? No NGOs, no citizens? Yes, but many of them don't know how to direct their their inputs.

So the collective needs to get together. How problem is top down isn't working. Top down institute sans are not winning over the people they are affecting. So bottom up needs to occur and meets top down in some way. Which is what? Which is awareness groups, community sessions, town halls, knowing what your employees think, being available to them, ubiquitously

communicating to get the sentiment. What's the sentiment? The sentiment is what's going on out there in terms of inequality, lack of inclusion, this notion on environmental responsibility, digitalization, and privacy, the issues of our time need to be integrated into your strategy. Now, your first book was about manufacturing and manufacturing of something in the United States has thought by many people not to be as good at as we

were forty fifty years ago. Is that fair or not that that's the perception at least, Yes, that's fair, and I addressed it in the book because we think smokestacks and we think of rivers on fire when we use the word branding is everything, and today everything gets branded in a heartbeat right through Instagram and you name it. And as a result of that, there's a perception that manufacturing is yesterday's sector. And that is so erroneous because

pretty much everything in modern life is made. I like I used to say, now we've only got three functions, okay, to invent, to make, and to sell. The rest is overhead, and the make part is actually very connected to the invent part. China was brilliant in its strategy through the thirty years of densil being because it attracted assembly and then insisted on R and D. There were only ten R and D labs foreign owned in China. By two thousand and ten there were forty thou foreign R and

D labs. Why because they wanted to know not just how to make an assemble, they wanted to invent all the way back to the material, to the actual the battery, to the products. And to do that they needed R and D. Manufacturing R and D live together, Okay, they live together through prototyping and scaling, and the topics of invention and innovation are in manufacturing because you actually learn while you make, and then when you digitize you learn more.

Digitizing manufacturing is a massive innovation opportunity. And frankly, one of the things that the United States is for normal at is we know how to innovate and be an entrepreneurs and how to scale. But if we've lost our billy to actually make, then we start to atrophy the innovation side. The conventional wisdom is that the United States can't manufacture things at costs that are attractive to markets, so that's why we've outsourced it. You think that's unfair.

It was fair during what I call the loss of industry such as textiles and footwear and clothing, which were very labor intensive. It's completely not the case with things that make the iPhone okay, and all the circuitry and semiconductors and high end technology content parts e vs. This is where the United States is actually the best at and it's not labor cost driven. So offshoring and outsourcing

and and moving things for labor costs. Fine, they went to countries that have lower labor costs, the Bangladesh and the Vietnams. But the high end manufacturing, the quality manufacturing for two days and tomorrow's technology innovations, we should be the epicenter of that right here in this country because the labor cost is actually not the relevant cost. The relevant cost is actually the raw material, the supply chain,

and we have the market. This is one of the few countries in the world that can say I'm one country, I have a massive market and by the way, I'm endowed with a lot of people and natural resources. That's manufacturing. Now, you were an immigrant through the United States and your grandparents were immigrants to Australia. Immigrants has often said have a capacity to work very hard, to prove themselves to

move up the ladder. So do you feel you have an immigrant mindset that has pushed you to do all these things? I think my story as growing up in an immigrant family where English wasn't the first language at home. It was Greek and speak Greek? Do I do? Yeah? And that useful a lot, I guess when you're talking to the Olympic committees, never thought of that, but yes, it's probably useful for that. I think the immigrants backstory I have really drove me to work hard, but also

to make a difference and a very American trade. What attracted me to America this very day, and I don't want to embarrass you, you're a great example of it, is the amazing giving back that occurs in this country, and not enough of us know a lot about it. It gets a bit a few headlines. So I mentioned the tax and spend thing as being a detriment to building modern infrastructure. But they on the other side, Americans are charitable and give and care about making a difference

in their community. That's what Dow showed me, and that's what I and my wife Paula and I live today. That American way to an immigrant means that for the next immigrants I can make that we can make their life better. So for somebody's watching this who wants to be a successful global business leader, what are the skill sets? Is it hard work? Learning how to read well, keep continuously reading, learning, how to be a good speaker? What are the skill sets that you think somebody really needs?

One of the things that I would add to that list, I agree with all of that that I would do, and I still do to this very day, is I would prepare well before I got the job or was given the nod. I would know as much about what I was about to be offered or to do before I actually did it. I would read, I would talk well. Before the days of the iPhone, I would go to the library. I remember my father knocking on the door

was the Encyclopedia Britannic as salesman. Remember those books. There were twelve of them, right, and I would begged him to buy them, and he said, only if you read them all. And I read them all, and I was. I was twelve and so so I think preparing so that when you get the right to talk, you have the podium. When you have the right to say something, you actually have the knowledge to speak to it. I think people have gotten bored with facts, so you've got

to blend it with interest. So personalize the facts, show examples, and then demonstrate it yourself. I think that cycle of teaching needs to be introduced, certainly in no education system, but in real life, what did your parents say to their neighbors? We have an unusual twelve year older sitting here reading the ends likely Pedia Britannica. It wasn't an era where you were told to read. You know, these days, of course, parenting is forcing kids to get off the

TV and reading. But no, it was nothing I already noticed. I wasn't seen as odd. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen