Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, great to be with you day two of
Speaker 2: the World Economic Forum here in Davos, Switzerland. Mine's firmly
Speaker 2: elsewhere in Washington, DC, isn't that right, Lea? So twenty
Speaker 2: four hours of conversations about how great America is and
Speaker 2: how the rest of the world will struggle with the
Speaker 2: incoming president Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every conversation here at Davos has been what's America
Speaker 3: going to do? How can I leverage myself to be
Speaker 3: in the best position possible? And oh yeah, what's the
Speaker 3: latest headline?
Speaker 2: Brom Onehan alongside us, the chairman of CEO at Bank
Speaker 2: for America. We're going to cover all of that through
Speaker 2: the next eight minutes or so. There's an important occasion
Speaker 2: to mark fifteen years at the top of Bank for America.
Speaker 4: Now, it's been an honor to lead to company, and
Speaker 4: we've had some fun and it was interesting to start.
Speaker 1: For the last ten years or so, we've.
Speaker 4: Been on a role just producing responsible growth and the
Speaker 4: team does a great job and we can take private.
Speaker 4: We've put the company to where it should be. Is
Speaker 4: one of the big great companies in the world.
Speaker 2: Beyond interesting fifteen years ago was the absorption of countrywide
Speaker 2: Financial It was Meril. It's a very very different bank
Speaker 2: and a very very different moment. That phrase you use
Speaker 2: is one you've used so many times, responsible growth. There
Speaker 2: is a feeling that maybe we move towards something house
Speaker 2: in the world of banking over the next few years.
Speaker 2: Some might say it's sort of reckless growth, which is
Speaker 2: going to go for it? How would you describe the future?
Speaker 4: So what you're hearing is an enthusiasm for in the
Speaker 4: investment banking side of particularly transactions right for a long time,
Speaker 4: for the last couple of years, it's been hard to
Speaker 4: get a transaction through. And what stops a seller from
Speaker 4: selling or a buyer from buying is this thing is delayed.
Speaker 1: I'm exposed and so what they'll do is they'll push
Speaker 1: it through.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of enthusiasm that they'll be better
Speaker 4: growth in United States. There a lot of enthusiasm by
Speaker 4: the bankers saying these deals can get done, so I
Speaker 4: can go have this future conversation. It's just not another
Speaker 4: idea that goes through the system. Everybody says that's a
Speaker 4: great idea, but it now can be a great idea.
Speaker 1: Let's go do it, or a great idea.
Speaker 4: I don't want to do it, but it's a more
Speaker 4: of a substance space than it is more of a
Speaker 4: worry about the environment around us.
Speaker 3: Are you basically saying that there's more enthusiasm, that there
Speaker 3: is conviction and will to actually get stuff done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you saw some deals getting announced and
Speaker 4: you'll see more deals geting announced in our sector. In banking,
Speaker 4: especially in the United States, the consolidation is still far
Speaker 4: away from being.
Speaker 1: Done.
Speaker 4: There will always be big banks or always be small banks,
Speaker 4: but you'll let people make a decision what they want
Speaker 4: to do. And there haven't been a lot of bank
Speaker 4: deals done. Bank to bank deals we can't do them,
Speaker 4: it's not legal, but as investment banking, we can help
Speaker 4: other people do them.
Speaker 1: And it haven't been a lot done because just uncertain.
Speaker 4: You're getting caught in a transaction and having issues. So
Speaker 4: the belief that they should promote the banks consoliding and
Speaker 4: getting more efficient, passing that through to customers, passing that
Speaker 4: through to small businesses, et cetera, is different.
Speaker 1: Will be a change.
Speaker 3: Well, there's the banking sector specifically, and some of the
Speaker 3: deregulation and whether some of these mergers in consolidation will
Speaker 3: be allowed, and.
Speaker 1: Then there's a broader corporate sector.
Speaker 3: As some of the enthusiasm we've seen and we've heard
Speaker 3: from the cities, a head of banking from JP Morgan,
Speaker 3: how much do you see that being maybe a little
Speaker 3: premature based on some of the policies coming down the
Speaker 3: pike and the uncertainty around debt, deficit and rates.
Speaker 4: Well, I think you have to divorce a little bit
Speaker 4: some of the fiscal work that has to be done,
Speaker 4: and in coming Treasury or Secretary and others have to
Speaker 4: take very seriously this question of how do we manage
Speaker 4: the revenue stream, the expense stream and the amount of
Speaker 4: debt and get.
Speaker 1: It all to work out.
Speaker 4: That one of the ways that that becomes easier if
Speaker 4: you have more activity and more things going on.
Speaker 1: So I think the enthusiasm.
Speaker 4: You're here when the bankers is more structurally that the
Speaker 4: belief is that even starting yesterday, you don't have you
Speaker 4: don't have the constraint that you have, so you can
Speaker 4: go if there's more that enables more, that's good stuff,
Speaker 4: but right now it'll stop it going in the wrong
Speaker 4: direction and look hard, medium small sized businesses their biggest.
Speaker 1: Complaint last summer.
Speaker 4: Last time I was here and we talked to the
Speaker 4: to the administration about it was the biggest complaint was
Speaker 4: you're in my pocket. You're slow me down. I can't
Speaker 4: get things done. I want to permit to do something
Speaker 4: it takes forever.
Speaker 1: I want your labor rules.
Speaker 4: All this stuff was going on just over and over,
Speaker 4: and small medium sized business don't have the thousands of
Speaker 4: people that big companies have to figure it all out,
Speaker 4: and they're figuring out their own. The same person's running
Speaker 4: the business at nice sittingers say, so, what does this
Speaker 4: new taxation strategy on so security mean to me?
Speaker 1: How does it apply? How I have to change all
Speaker 1: my systems?
Speaker 4: And so they're just saying, if you just stop, you
Speaker 4: know things will get better.
Speaker 2: So you're on the number one lender to small businesses
Speaker 2: in the United States, give us the read on things
Speaker 2: right now. Are they already making those decisions to make
Speaker 2: a move to make those investments that they were on
Speaker 2: hold over the last four years doing? Are they already
Speaker 2: making that move?
Speaker 4: So if you come over the last say, six eight
Speaker 4: months or so, that it went from regulation and inflation,
Speaker 4: the inflation.
Speaker 1: Has kind of come down as their worry.
Speaker 4: Right now, what's actually interesting is they're going back to
Speaker 4: labor shortages and rightly.
Speaker 1: Now the interesting thing.
Speaker 4: About that that has a question about immigration and all
Speaker 4: this stuff going on. But what they're feeling is demand.
Speaker 4: I need people to do things. And so they're starting
Speaker 4: to feel the demand steady. Remember when the Fed was
Speaker 4: raising rates, hid their cost of.
Speaker 1: Barring went up a lot.
Speaker 4: They went from three hundred basis points over an index
Speaker 4: that went up by five hundred basis points. That's a
Speaker 4: big number, and so that cause them to say, let
Speaker 4: me be careful and then if as the rates come
Speaker 4: download but they feel a little better.
Speaker 1: And now let's say, okay, I have the opportunity to grow,
Speaker 1: but can I get the people?
Speaker 4: And remember that was the twenty twenty one twenty two timeframe,
Speaker 4: so in there there's got to be a solution this immigration.
Speaker 1: It doesn't constrain those small medium.
Speaker 4: Sized business for growing or they're going to start letting.
Speaker 2: Would you say, just to jump in, would you say
Speaker 2: we are supply constrained. Do you think we are prone
Speaker 2: to have these bursts of inflation?
Speaker 1: Yes and no, And.
Speaker 4: We don't know honestly, because because of stimulus after the.
Speaker 1: Pandemic, there was so much more than there maybe had
Speaker 1: to be by technical economic.
Speaker 4: Discussion, you know, it's hard to say whether we're supply
Speaker 4: constrained and other things. And it were supply constraints because
Speaker 4: it cut off a supply and the stoppage of goods
Speaker 4: coming in the country and shipping and all that stuff
Speaker 4: that we went through. So you haven't gotten to a
Speaker 4: real normalized side of that yet. But that's the blame
Speaker 4: for the current thing. I think the supply shortages can
Speaker 4: mitigate if you know, we got to be a little
Speaker 4: careful about labor supply, We've got to be a little
Speaker 4: care for about tariff.
Speaker 1: Impacting supply and things.
Speaker 4: But I think people the second sourcing has gone on,
Speaker 4: people are finding places to get stuff. So I'm not
Speaker 4: quite sure that's going to be the issue, but a
Speaker 4: lot of what we think it was the issue is
Speaker 4: actually the pandemic, the stimulus and the impact the pandemic
Speaker 4: on supply.
Speaker 1: That's worked a suit of system.
Speaker 3: So John started with the fact that you've been a
Speaker 3: Bank of America for fifteen years. We keep hearing about
Speaker 3: succession plans in different places. What's your succession plan?
Speaker 1: But you're trying to throw me out.
Speaker 3: No, no, not at all. I'm just wondering because this
Speaker 3: is something that we.
Speaker 2: Lost.
Speaker 4: Questions are the way the fascination with all this is interesting,
Speaker 4: and one just means we're all getting older.
Speaker 1: So what they'reality is run.
Speaker 4: We run across in our company through the top three layers,
Speaker 4: including for the CEO succession. Every six months, we go
Speaker 4: through everything who the media successors, for every one of
Speaker 4: our teammates jobs, and we have a slate and we
Speaker 4: go from a slate because if we run a company,
Speaker 4: people leave for a whole, they retire, they get another job, whatever,
Speaker 4: and you're always filling jobs.
Speaker 1: And so with the way, the board will make.
Speaker 4: A choice at some point, I'm not going anywhere unless
Speaker 4: they throw me out. They know that. But my job,
Speaker 4: and one of the biggest jobs I have, is preparing
Speaker 4: people for the what it would be like to run
Speaker 4: this company out there, and that's important. So we do
Speaker 4: a lot with our team to get them used to
Speaker 4: experiences and get them to learn more about the.
Speaker 1: Trade offs you have to make at the top of
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 4: Because if you come through a business or come through
Speaker 4: a function, you haven't made those trails. That's part of
Speaker 4: our general strategy, and so we talked to our board.
Speaker 4: But you'll never hear us discuss A is in and
Speaker 4: B is. That to me is the worst thing you
Speaker 4: can do. I went through that process and the end
Speaker 4: of two thousand and nine. Whether it's DAI to day speculation,
Speaker 4: that's not.
Speaker 1: The way to do it. Well, thank you for that
Speaker 1: very much. You'll be the first person.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that we only have about thirty seconds. You
Speaker 3: said something to us when we were at Bank of
Speaker 3: America that AI would basically keep the staff the same
Speaker 3: size but increase the footprint of business. Do you stand
Speaker 3: by that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are two facts I'll give you. One is
Speaker 1: we run the company on the.
Speaker 4: Nominal amount of dollars of expenses we did ten years
Speaker 4: ago almost now nomena not not inflation, just and we
Speaker 4: run it on thirty thousand less people. That is all digitization,
Speaker 4: and AI is an extension of automation, digitization models, et cetera,
Speaker 4: automating work, taking out work and automated. Therefore you don't
Speaker 4: need and I think he keeps going. The idea is,
Speaker 4: if we're good, we'll keep adjusting where the teammates end
Speaker 4: up so it may not be the same two hundred
Speaker 4: twelve thousand people, two hundred and thirteen thousand people doing
Speaker 4: the same thing ten years from now. Yeah, but my
Speaker 4: guess is that our employment levels will stay relatively static
Speaker 4: if you work towards stuff that can't be replicated near
Speaker 4: turned by air.
Speaker 2: Ron gent And you've been super generous with your time
Speaker 2: and you show me up every year because you always
Speaker 2: come out here with a suit jacket on and I'm
Speaker 2: sitting here with like a winter jacket. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: have Yeah, I know, I know you've been influenced by Brian.
Speaker 1: No, it's actually just a lot warmer.
Speaker 2: Thanks for America, CEA, you and Chairman, thank you.