This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week.
I mean may not have an overall recession. We're having a rolling recession. To Kanye roll looks pretty strongly is when it comes to jobs.
The financial story is that shape are worth.
Three major regional bank failures send shockwaves through the banking system. We're all trying to figure out what to make of generative AI.
Through the eyes of the most influential voices.
Welcome down, Doctor Paul Krugman, Ryan Moynahan, a Bank of America, deebro Lair of the Paulson Institute, Len Hubbard of the Columbia Business.
School, Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
The Law of unintended consequences for the Fed, for Biden, and for India. This is Wall Street Week. I'm Romain Bosting in for David Weston this week, The geopolitical wins blowing in India's favor. A conversation with Rockefeller International Chairman Rasher Sharma on the Rendramodi's economic ambition.
You'd have to be a very big contradiant to take a bit against India.
Plus The Business of Sports with Boston Celtics co founder ce Felauca on the high stakes deal making in basketball and soccer.
A lot of these valuations have been drown up by the fact that certainly basketball and soccer are global game.
At HPE, CEO Antonio n on the rush to strike.
While the AI iron is high.
AI will be a huge boost of revenue growth.
It was a compressed trading week in US markets, markets that for a second week in a row, orbited around one J. Powell, the FED Chair, making a semi annual pilgrimage to Congress, two days of questioning before the House and the Senate on the outlook for interest rates.
It only makes common sense to move at a careful pace. We don't want to do more than we have to, but overwhelmingly people in the committee do think that there's more rate hikes coming.
Lawmakers also press Powell to explain how the FED will strengthen the supervision and regulation of our banks.
We need to update our thinking around liquidity regulation, which was based on a certain speed of bank runs, which now looks to be outdated. Really, the liquidity regulation was just not It was not appropriate.
The rise of interest rates and the regional bank fauled out have already had considerable consequence for the housing market, the number of homes for sale in the US dropping to a record low, homeowners opting to stay put since moving would mean giving up a cheaper mortgage.
Those that have that three percent four percent mortgage are going to be very reluctant.
To give up that interest rate.
They have equity in their home. They have equity in their mortgage.
Then there are the consequences of high inflation.
Central bankers around the globe this week making clear that the battle.
Decurb price pressures far from over. Fresh rate heights from Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, and the UK.
The Bank of England unexpectedly boosting its benchmark rate by a half percentage point, a day after core inflation unexpectedly surge to a thirty one year high.
Well, today's figures strengthen the case for the government to stick to its gums. No matter what the pressure from left, right or center, we wouldn't be pushed off course.
Meanwhile, the consequence of a single word. The week started with US Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln making progress on thawing relations with China, but by the end of the week that progress was undone. An unscripted comment from President Biden at a campaign event, preferring to Jijian PINGUS quote a dictator.
We had an incident that caused some confusion, it might say, But the Secretary of Blincoln had a great trip to China. I expect to be meeting with President she sometime on a near term. And I don't think it's had any real consequence and.
The consequence for poor US China relations. It's looking to be advantageous for India Prime Minister voting in his first official state visit to the US, making the case for corporate CEOs and government officials to view India as a partner in technology and a counterbalance to China in the pond.
Few YUS that have been many advances in AI E at the same time that help been.
Even more momentous development in another AIA.
I made it long and India.
Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, global stocks notching their worst week since March, the SMP and the Nasdaq down more than a percent on the week, the socks six hundred, Europe sliding three and the World beating NK in Japan
ending a run of ten straight week of gains. The money flowing out of equities did find its way into the perceived safety of government bonds, and that did push yields lower, deepening the inversion of the treasury yield curve, and that in turn prompted a flight into the dollar and a flight out of commodities. It was a somewhat
confusing and chaotic week four financial markets. Financial markets that have been on an unexpected rally this year in defiance of mixed economic data and Hawker's central bank actions.
Investors now left.
To decide what's worse, the fear of missing out or fear of the next shoe to drop. Joining us now for our roundtable is Chris Alman, the chief investment officer over at Calsters, and Sarah Ketter are the co founder over at Causeway Capital. And Sarah, this is a question that I think is going to be debated for weeks, if not months to come here. Looking at this rally that we've had so far this year, do you think that whatever tail winds caused that rally will persist into the second half.
Of the year.
Probably not, And for some of the reasons that you've opened the show with today, the economic situation is likely to slow, certainly overseas. Europe's already slowing. UK has a terrible inflation problem, is doing its best to contain it. And as for the US, I mean even more inverted yield curve plus the fastest FED funds rate rise up to five percentage points that we've seen. I don't know
how long. What's going on in credit and tightening a credit and there are numerous reasons why the stock market in the US and oversees may have gotten ahead of themselves. It doesn't mean to say there aren't stocks to own, just the broad indices might have a bit of a setback ahead.
The KBW Bank index is falling more than five percent this week amid what Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo said is a combination of a bank crisis discount, a recession discount, and a regulatory discount. The results of the stress tests are set to be released next week and could provide some insight into the potential for higher capital requirements for the biggest lenders out there, and insight of course, and
to the feed through into bank lending and economic activity. Sarah, there's sort of two components here when we talk about the banks, and I guess what we want out of the banks, right, there's that extension of credit, I guess, to the economy, to folks that need to borrow. There's also the issue of capital returns to shareholders.
Yes, and the conflict at present in the US. US banks, certainly the regional level, are under quite a bit of pressure and as long as rates remain high, they have a series problem both their assets and their liabilities, flight of liabilities and markdown and assets. So what are they going to do? I think they just just embrace against time.
For them, they've got to hold it all together.
You think they're somewhat unsavory place to be investing at present. In contrast, European banks over capitalized in general and returning capitalist shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. That's you know, it's interesting to see the turn of the tables. After all those years of European banks being under performers versus the US, it has all changed.
Chris, I am here is when we talk about economic conditions, or at least we try to read the tea leads of what those economic conditions might be. We do know that well having credit, basically banks lending money to consumers and to businesses is a big part of the grease for our economy here and their concerns that that grease just isn't there, at least not into the level that we want it to be.
Well remain I think the banks have really slowed down their corporate lending in their direct line programs as a result of the regulations that came in two thousand and eight, but I did definitely being more conservative. The regional banks.
Hold a lot of real estate debt in office real estate debt, and you guys have talked a lot today about how the real estate market is due for write downs and declines in value. That's going to put pressure on their balance sheets, as in some cases the owners throw the keys at them.
So I'm worried.
You know, there's still a lot of private credit that has now come in from institutional investors into the market that can fill that financing gap. Those rates of return look pretty attractive now that there really are yields and fixed income. That said, I think the regional banks are going to continue to feel pressure just because their natural market is certainly compressed. They've got better interest rates to help them, but it's going to be tough.
That natural market is compressed right now. Chris So and you mentioned commercial real estate. That's obviously a big focus as well. But then even j Powell, when he was on Capitol Hill this week, was asked about the need for additional or I should say, higher capital requirements, and he pretty much, at least in the way that Jay Powell speaks, affirm that.
He did.
Romaine and I think that you know, they would like to see stronger, safer banks. We took a lot of time to look deep into Silicon Valley Bank and understand that exposure first reserve bank.
They really were outliers.
When you look at the inflows and outflows to banks, their capital structure, the regional banks, there are some that are weak and some that are strong.
The money center banks really are in very good shape in the.
US, say Sarah, you're probably a little bit more of an active manager than what Chris would be.
I am curious.
Does what happen with the banking crisis, the regional banking crisis back in March and the potential sort of specter of additional regulation, does that change your broader investment thesis overall?
No, it doesn't. That we're value managers.
It causeway in our fundamental portfolios, international and global and We're no matter where we are in the economic cycle, whether we're in a slowing phase or an expansion, We're looking for companies engaged in operational restructuring, so something has gone wrong with their earnings and then new management or the reformed management is there to fix it and reaccelerate. And those companies exist all over the world.
This is a great conversation. Sarah Ketterer over at Causeway Capital, and there on the other side of your screen, Chris Ailman over at Cawsters. Two big and really smart people here to talk about the week that was and maybe the weeks to come up ahead. Coming up, norendromodes high fline ambitions and a fresh opportunity to sell the world. On India's economic future, Rockefeller internationals Rashier Sharma says there's still a long way to go.
India's China shouldn't be or wait, China was about twenty years ago or so.
That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
India is now the world's fifth largest economy and it is big plans to step out of China's shadow Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing Congress in.
His first official state visit here to the US.
Laying out an economic model for expanding India's manufacturing nohow welcoming foreign capital and solidifying his government as a premier partner for the US and his technology companies.
India willive be the our largest economics soon.
The World Bank estimates that India's GDP will expand by six point three percent in twenty twenty three, outpacing China's five point six percent forecastid growth. That's drawing a lot of attention and a lot of money from foreign investors, a rotation to India, particularly among those worried that China's economic recovery is sputtering and in need of a fiscal boost.
I think the Chinese have a very difficult set of challenges ahead of them.
They're very serious financial overhangs.
It's not just India's economic road that is giving China a run for its money. India has taken away China's title as the most populous country in the world. That's according to estimates by the UN's World Population Dashboard.
Projections indicate that the size of the Chinese population could drop below one billion before the end of the century. In India, by contrast, the population is expected to continue growing for several decades.
Its younger population gives it an edge attracting multinational companies from Goldman Sachs to Rolls Royce to Rakuten make in India.
The world's back office.
Recent economic data highlighted a rapid service sector expansion that can be attributed to the soul called global capability centers. These gccs now count for more than one percent of India's GDP.
You have to think about the labor productivity issues in the country because it's already a services dominated economy in terms of the share of GDP.
Apple is doing its part in heating up competition between India and China. Apple's biggest supplier of Fox Con It's set to start manufacturing iPhones in India by next year as Apple diversifies away from China.
We've had considerable success and tailments in the smartphone segment, and we have been great interest from the likes of Apple and Samsung and expanding and growing here.
Investors appear to be all on board.
Rupee denominated bonds are on track for the longest streak a monthly buying by overseas funds in almost four years.
The local currency is offering the.
Second best carrier returns in Asia this year, and equities have loured almost ten billion dollars in net foreign inflows this quarter, helping India's three point four trillion dollars stock market reclaim its spot as the world's fifth largest.
See the great thing about India is that with one point four billion, you could go into the penny industry.
There's a market domestic.
As it positions itself as a leader on the global stage, India faces challenges at home with the withering scrutiny of a Donni Group after a report from Hindenberg Research alleged accounting fraud and stock manipulation.
These things don't happen every so often.
They're kind of rare, and our views that we need to bet a little bit bigger when you do get these outsize opportunities.
India's modern nations free must also confront some significant shortcomings, the country's deadliest rail accident in nearly three decades raising questions about outdated infrastructure.
It is a huge headpack find you.
They see federal elections with just a couple of months ago.
There they will be Nikiya.
For more.
We welcome Rashier Sharma, the chair of Rockefeller International. Rashier, great to have you here on the program. You know emerging markets better than anyone, and I'm sure you also know that for years, decades, really investors have really been interested in the promise of India. There is a focus right now, if you will, on that country, on its economy and on its cap markets that seems much different than what that focus had been in the past.
What's changed?
Well, I think that this focus you're seeing on the back of Prime Minister Moody's visit here has a lot to do with.
Geography and size.
The fact that there is such disenchantment with China and India's the only country of that kind of size, and now also its economic size has become and made it so relevant.
Are there lessons though, that Mody can take from Xijenping and his move to globalize the Chinese economy and avoid some of the maybe the missteps that Jijienping made.
Yeah, I think it's quite clear, which is that as far as China is concerned, that if you look at China's development path, it was a fantastic development path. It's only in the last few years that it's got derailed. And it's got derailed because they took on too much debt. It's got derailed because the state there has decided to become much more interventionist flex its muscle, and because China is in a way also been retreating from the world and turning more inward.
So what Mode needs to sort.
Of realize today is that India is where China should be, or where China was about twenty years ago or so.
It should still be a country that's opening up.
It should still be a country that is backing its private sector.
We were speaking a little bit earlier this week about the unemployment rate in China, specifically among the youth, something over.
Twenty one percent.
India isn't that far behind, I think, depending on what numbers are used, somewhere around seventeen eighteen percent here. So that's something that has to be addressed. But it's also those same demographics that I think attracts a lot of investors, the idea that they have a younger population relative to China, younger working age population, as you're saying, relative to China.
This is a country that has consistently disappointed the optimists in the pessimists. So the last few years it has clearly disappointed the pessimists because it's done much better than what the worst forecasts were. Now, I think that we just have to be careful that India doesn't follow its
past pattern and disappoint the optimists as well. So I think that this is about expectations, about controlling that, about letting the numbers come through, because if you look at India today, the amount of foreign investment that India attracts is still quite small as a share of its economy. Look at numbers you know, such as foreign direct investment, the amount that comes into India as is like around
one percent of GDP. Now, when China was booming and really sort of growing at a nineteen percent clip, it was attracting foreign investment or foreign direct investment in particular of close to four percent of GDP. Even today, other emerging markets are attracting foreign investment of around two two and a half percent of GDP. So we need those numbers now to come through after this incredible amount of expectations and also outperformance that we have seen.
In order to do that, do they need to sort of, I guess broad and what's available to invest in. One criticism that I've heard from foreign investors is that the Indian economy, at least in terms of what can be invested in, and they're primarily talking about public markets, is way narrower than what you're going to find in China
any other emerging markets. You even see that in a market capitalization three trillion dollars stock market compared to mainland China stock market which is like twelve or thirteen trillion.
Yeah, but that I think the stock market in India has done very well because you know, the Indian economy members also about three trillions.
So but if you.
Notice that where the growth is so the list being in the publicly listed company. Yes, the criticism is that a lot of the companies and industries they want to invest in aren't public yet, so they either feel like they have to find a direct way into those companies or they have to sit on the sidelines until there's a listening.
Well for foreign investors and their track record are big private investments in India is quite mixed. So I think that the public markets in India have done very well. If you look at the breadth of companies in India and the diversity of the stock market that's one of the best I know of any country in the world. There are so many sectors represented out there, from manufacturing to healthcare to commodities. It's all their technology, like obviously
is known. If you look at other emerging markets, they tend to be very concentrated. You know, Brazil has one or two sectors which are make up the market, or even China got so sort of taken up by tech.
As far as the good performing markets concerned.
So I don't think that's an issue as far as India's concern. What's an issue today is just the fact that the valuations are very high, which is reflective of the fact that expectations are very high out of India, and those is what those need to come through.
Now.
We need to see the numbers come through. And you can never have an attitude that where else will the money go, It's got to come to India. I think that that attitude can be problematic. So we're all sort of you know, I think that today you'll have to be a very big contrariant to take a bet against India because the fundamentals do look pretty good as far as India's concerned, but also the fact that expectations and the hype around India is something which is quite unprecedented.
All right, that's a great place to Endre Rashier really appreciate you taking time for us.
Thanks Rushir Sharmerck.
Where's a chair of Rockefeller International and long career Morgan Sanley and now of course the founder over at Breakout Capital. Coming up, AI gets another champion. Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Nerry on how HPE fits into the competition.
AI would be competitive too, but we always start from the customer point of view.
That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg. This is Wall Street Week. I'm Romaine Boss again for David Weston. This week, HPE pushed deeper into the AI fray an announcement of a cloud service designed to handle the large computing power needed to support generative artificial intelligence. I had a chance to sit down with Antonio Nry, the CEO, about HPE's long transition away from hardware to the cloud and now to AI.
The announcement we made yesterday and AI completes our vision and the execution of the strategy we have been through over the last four to five years, which green Lake is our cloud platform where we offer edge services, hybrid cloud services, and now we're going to offer AI services, so in many ways complete entire portfolio. Because in twenty eighteen I stated that the enterprise of the future will be edge centric, cloud enabled, and data driven, and obviously
AI is an accelerate of the data driven strategy. And we made available an amazing set of services yesterday, with the leading service being THEAI Cloud, meaning a public offer so customers can come and privately to train their AI models in the most sustainable infrastructure.
Well, let's talk about shareholder value.
What are we looking at in terms of the addition to growth, whether it's profitability or revenue.
AI will be a huge boost of and your growth, and we talked about this in the Q two earnings where we specifically call out in ninety days, just in Q two we booked an incremental eight hundred million dollars just for this type of AI world loads. Since then, our pipeline has grown out to over three billion dollars. And so this is what you see the momental macell rated and the reason why they're coming to us is because they know we have the capabilities, but also we
have the trust. Trust is everything when it comes down to AI, and to build trust, you need to have model completion, and to have model completion, need to have this capability. So we expect this business to continue to grow and write profitable growth for.
Our sholders well as you seek to get a little bit more traction on this, particularly when it comes to revenue growth. Is that going to be enough Antonio to make up for some of the lack that we've been seeing in the compute segment.
Now, listen, last year the compute business grew double digits and we drove an amazing profitability.
And we know compute things to be cyclical.
You know, there are period of times where your modernize and you add compute capacity depending on where you want to host the worloads, and there periods that will go through digestive. But remember Green Lake, and that's an accelerator of our compute demand because ultimately that compute demand stays there for a longer period of time with hybrid prosmologen and honestly higher attached rates. So that's why we are growing the edge, we are growing the hybrid cloud, and
now we're going to grow. The AI together with the data and computer will continue to be a very important aspect of portfolio, but over time the portfolio mix is going to go to those line of businesses just mentioned.
That was HPE CEO Antonio Neri.
AI is attracting the tension across sectors, bringing from education to healthcare. But while the use of the nascent technology might vary, the concerns are similar. Some even characterize AI as an existential threat. I sat down with Neurologic CEO Janna Eggers a little bit earlier to ask her about where AI is at.
In most people's opinion, you know, they think of AI as when is it going to be like the human I think we're very, very far from that.
But where we are, which is exciting.
Is we're at a point where AI can really augment.
Humans and help us out.
And you're seeing them with chat, GPT and some of the excitements that people have around the things that it's able to do for them as far as generating ideas maybe for a vacation or for a new marketing campaign, that it's coming up with different ways than they were thinking.
I well, speaking with the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. They just had a big splash you roll out this week of some new AI tools that they're integrating really into their larger cloud and enterprise software products. Here, you advise a lot of companies. You deal with a lot of companies that are looking to build out into this space. Is there sort of a scale up factor here that you think is viable, particularly when it comes to software and a lot of cloud services.
Well, I typically actually advise company is to scale back rather than scale out. You know, most companies aren't going to use something like chat GPT for their business unless it's uh and HPE has an offering there, unless it's really focused on their business. So they're training models not to be the whole web of information, but to be
their corporate information. And I do think that's really important, and so I wouldn't you know, obviously their use cases will scale out, but I think the data self scales back, even though again things like chat GPT give us those ideas of what could be done.
Well, we have to talk a little bit here about some of the risk, or at least the perceived risk of this uh uh. This week, Bloomberg Technology held a big AI summit. They had to sit down with the open ai co founder and there was a little bit of a pushback here to some of the I guess worst case scenarios that have been positive about what AI ends up being for us, for human being.
So I'm I'm again excited that consumers are able to use it because they start seeing more of what's wrong with it, and because of that, I think they'll learn a bit more about AI and.
Start questioning, which I think is terrific.
I think, you know some of those fears. I'm more worried about AI hype than I am actually worried about AI itself.
So people start believing that it's something that it's not. That's what worries me.
And so I'm I am more excited where people can use it, understand that there's some.
Hype around it, and then they can.
Start questioning it more and.
Demanding more, demanding things like transparency and explainability, so that we know what data's used, how it's used, and what data was actually led to this suggestion or this information, and whether it.
Was created or not.
I mean, you've see some examples of GPT making up and people call it hallucinating.
Citations.
So if I know that that actually didn't come from a real site. I should be able to see that, So chat GPT should tell me that as an example.
Well, that gets to this whole idea of just how reliable the use of this can be. Also, it raises a lot of questions about bias. You know, the idea that the chat GPT or whatever other generative AI products are using. The output is only be as good or as qualitative as the inputs, right, And I'd.
Even say if you have you may have some really good data, but the question is is it good for that use case?
So people understanding I always talk about AIS really three parts.
First part is the data, second part is the algorithm, and the third part is the objective.
So making sure that those are.
All aligned and that this is good data for that use case and of the right size.
Again, you may not need the whole internet of information.
You may just need your corporate information to actually give you better answers than what the whole Internet would give.
And then back to my point.
About transparency and explainability. Being able to understand which data from which data set or which aggregation of data sets really drove that answer is actually quite important now and becoming more important.
As we go down this path, and this does appear to be kind of the future in some form or another. There's been a lot of discussions about the data itself, the ownership of that data. We know, at least with some of these consumer products, if you're just scraping in the web, the question is do you have a right to use something that someone else produced without their permission
and more importantly, without compensation. How do you sort of reconcile that given the large data needs that are required for this.
Yeah, I am actually very much in the protect and protect people's copyrights and really respect their data. This is why when I talk about corporation and you know them going with their own data. When our customers come to us and say, hey, can you also help us find data, I always push back and say, let's start with your data first.
Maybe we'll need that eventually, but let's start with your data first.
Because most corporations have plenty of data, they don't need to go outside of their of their you know.
Corporate walls to do well with data. So that that to me, the amount of data is.
A red herring that was narrow logic.
CEO Janna Eggers more coverage coming up here on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg, including a look at turning around a company and winning the NBA Finals. Believe it or not, they actually have a lot in common. A conversation coming up with Seve Palayuker, the co owner of the Boston Celtics and of course, former co chair over at Bain Capital. He's going to tell us how he applies his private equity background to basketball.
That's coming up next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
I'm here right now with Stephen Palayuka, of course, the former co chairman of Bine Capital and co owner of the Boston Celtics. We've been talking a lot about the business of sports here, Steven. Probably no business has grown as much, at least not here in the US as a National Basketball Association. The current television broadcast rights set
to expire sometime in mid twenty twenty five. I know negotiations have already begun, at least with current partners, but there's a lot of speculation right now about how much the NBA will broaden its reach in terms of the TV rights and the TV partners it has.
Well, We're very optimistic. Viewership has never been higher.
It's been a fantastic season, great competitive balance and wonderful playoffs.
So singers looking up for the NBA.
It's a global game and we continue to build the business in Africa overseas, and so really exciting times ahead in.
Order to sort of reach a lot of the new folks as well as even the current crop of fans that you have in the league. Here is some concern here that over the last few years, if you wanted to watch an NBA game, there were really only a couple of places that you can do it. You know that how we watch TV, how we consume media has
changed a lot, even over the last five years. When you anticipate what a new contract, a new broadcast contract looks like, do you think it's going to be a much wider number of companies involved than what we currently have.
Yes, that's been the trend, trend in the NFL, the trend in all sports, so more people can see more games. Fundamentally, a lot of these valuations have been driven up by the fact that certainly basketball and soccer are global games, and with the streaming capability and ability to reach millions and millions of customers. We used to measure the fan base in millions, and now it's tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and even billions as far as football goes.
As we see evaluation for the popular sports, the soccers of the world, the nbas of the world, we've also seen investors now start to look at I guess what can be considered second tier sports, where you're talking about something like lac or even something as what was once obscure like pickleball, at least as a professional sport. Have you taken any interest in that sort of tier of sports leagues.
Yes, PAGs Group Sports our family office, we've looked at several opportunities, and again, I think sports is compelling programming and there's going to be a trickle down.
Effect into all these other leagues.
So people will start have the capability of watching lacrosse or watching pickleball because it's compelling programming.
So I think you're going to see growth in those ancillary sports.
I am curious about your career in private equity. I know you've stepped away from your main role at Bain Capital earlier this year. There are I think personally some parallels to the growth that we've seen in the private equity space over the last couple of decades and the growth that we've seen in the interest and valuations in
sports franchises over that same period of time. Is there a material difference in how you approach what you did at Bain and the companies that you involved with the Bane and what you're doing now in the world of sports.
It's actually very similar. There are similar dynamics in sports. You need to have a great operation, you want to build a championship team, you have to have fantastic management like we have at the Celtics.
So there are a lot of parallels.
The great news is there is a tailwind in the growth and private equity.
It's been a missing over in the past.
Maybe forty years ago, private equity was known for taking out costs. Today the industry is competitive and really focused on building businesses, and they want to build growth businesses.
So it's very similar in that aspect. People want to buy and invest in companies.
That can grow, and sports is a very growing property throughout the world.
All right.
See Well, one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you specifically on this week is because the National Basketball Association Draft was held Thursday here in New York City. There was a lot of discussion about who would be picked first. I don't think the discussion really veered too far away from I guess the man that everyone thinks is going to be the future of this when Bamania, I think, is what they're calling it right now?
What do you make of him?
And more importantly, I think what he can mean for the league and what it can mean for new viewership.
Well, the league has been fortunate in that, you know, I've been following it for forty years now, and we had the Larry Magic, you know, Michael Jordan Age, and now there are more stars than ever in the league. So if you look down the list, there are thirty forty what i'd call transcendent players. And when Bymania, you know is going to be amazing.
He's one of.
The most skilled big men we've ever seen. He can do it all, not unlike Lebron when he came in.
All right, Steve, really appreciate you taking time for us.
Steven Peluca there he is, of course, the former co chairman of Bane Capitol, co owner of the Boston Celtics.
That does it.
For this episode of Wall Street Week, I'm Romaine Bostik, This is Bloomberg,