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Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. Hi,

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Speaker 1: this is Barry Ridholts and you're listening to Masters in

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Speaker 1: Business on Bloomberg Radio. The podcast portion a little background.

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Speaker 1: I know Scaramucci, or as he's widely known, the Mooch,

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Speaker 1: for a good couple of years. Um, we've done a

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Speaker 1: number of shows together, We've been at various conferences together.

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Speaker 1: But the way I kind of first got to know

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Speaker 1: who he was, I've called him the man who rescued

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Speaker 1: Dell and as well here in the conversation. He's very

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Speaker 1: self effacing and he's all about we the team. When

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Speaker 1: he was at Goman Sacks, it was the team. And

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Speaker 1: when he was at UM other places like new Berger

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Speaker 1: and Berman or Lehman Brothers, it was all about the team.

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Speaker 1: But I'm gonna share a little bit of info that

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Speaker 1: he was too monest to talk about. You know, when

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Speaker 1: when Dell ran into some trull in the early nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: he was a young kid. He was a hotshot CEO,

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Speaker 1: one of the youngest CEOs of an SMP company ever,

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Speaker 1: and they ran into a bunch of trouble. You know,

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Speaker 1: HP kind of retooled and went after them. Ibm UM

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Speaker 1: became a better competitor, and at the same time their

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Speaker 1: CFO began dabbling in the currency markets something as it

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Speaker 1: turned out that he was wholly unqualified to two and

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Speaker 1: del The company lost hundreds of millions, if not billions

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Speaker 1: of dollars that they simply didn't have to lose, and

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Speaker 1: they really needed a cash infusion. And my understanding, and

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Speaker 1: this is second and third hand and based on some

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Speaker 1: old research and some old conversations, was nobody was especially

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Speaker 1: enthusiastic about getting this deal done. Um Anthony said. If

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Speaker 1: he wasn't there, it would have happened. Somebody else would

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Speaker 1: have picked up the ball. I'm less convinced of it.

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Speaker 1: I think that he was a guy who was sort

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Speaker 1: of an odd fit at Harvard Law to Goldman Sachs

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Speaker 1: investment banking, not exactly the usual candidate. And I think

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Speaker 1: that he was looking around for something that he understood

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Speaker 1: and he could pick up and run with that nobody

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Speaker 1: else really did. And he had was impressed with Michael

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Speaker 1: Dell as a person, and he understood the situation as

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Speaker 1: to the trouble the CFO had created by engaging in

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Speaker 1: these currency hedges that all went bad, and so he

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Speaker 1: decided to pick up the ball, and with a great

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Speaker 1: Rolodex and a great network and a very personable way

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Speaker 1: about him, essentially rescued Dell as a company, managed to

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Speaker 1: get a lead, managed to raise money, managed to get

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Speaker 1: the deal done. But what's fascinating about the discussion with

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Speaker 1: Scaramucci is that he for a guy who is as

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Speaker 1: wildly successful as he is on pretty much every level.

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Speaker 1: The company, he's running, the conference, he's running, the resurrection

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Speaker 1: of Lewis ruck Kaiser's Wall Street Week. By just about

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Speaker 1: any measure, he's a tremendously successful guy. The conversation we

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Speaker 1: have is all about failure. He discusses how he was

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Speaker 1: fired by it from Goldman Sachs. He discusses how when

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Speaker 1: he first launched Skybridge, it was pretty much a disaster.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't happening the way they had hoped, and then

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Speaker 1: the financial crisis had come along. But the the thing

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Speaker 1: that we hear over and over again in all the

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Speaker 1: stories that he tells is that each subsequent failure is greeted,

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Speaker 1: if that's the right word, as an opportunity, as a

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Speaker 1: learning expense, as a learning situation, as as as a

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Speaker 1: chance to pivot and try and do something new and different,

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Speaker 1: to rise from the ashes, so to speak, and Skybridge

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Speaker 1: is a perfect example. He tells the story of how

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Speaker 1: originally they started out as a hedge fund seating company

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Speaker 1: and that really wasn't going especially well when the financial

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Speaker 1: crisis hit, and in the attempt to raise some seed

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Speaker 1: capital from City Group, ended up essentially recognizing that they

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Speaker 1: had to get rid of their hedge fund practice. It

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Speaker 1: was a liability and they were really retooling dramatically, and

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Speaker 1: so Mooch as he's known, ended up picking up a

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Speaker 1: couple of billion dollars in assets, really very inexpensively, and

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Speaker 1: parlayed that into their nearly uh ten billion dollar fund

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Speaker 1: of funds now and runs a very straightforward approach. Hey,

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Speaker 1: if you're looking for us to beat the market, if

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Speaker 1: you want to generate alpha, if you're looking for all

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Speaker 1: those sort of things, that's not what we're gonna do.

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Speaker 1: That's not what we're capable of doing. He's pretty straightforward

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Speaker 1: in not over promising, and therefore he doesn't under deliver.

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Speaker 1: So I babbled on long enough. I think you'll find

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Speaker 1: this to be a really really interesting conversation. My interview

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Speaker 1: with guy Bridge Capitals Anthony Scaramucci. This is Masters in

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Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My guest today

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Speaker 1: is Anthony Scaramucci. You may know him as the Mooch.

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Speaker 1: He is the founder of Skybridge Capital and the Impress

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Speaker 1: Sario behind the Big Salt Conference, which takes place every

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Speaker 1: year in Las Vegas. Anthony, Welcome to Bloomberg Barry. It's

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Speaker 1: a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1: So you're at Goldman Sachs in the nineties, coming out

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Speaker 1: of Harvard Law. You are summarily dismissed from Goldman What

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Speaker 1: do you do with your career then? So, now it's

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Speaker 1: a Friday afternoon. I go home very rejected, and I

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Speaker 1: wake up on Monday dust myself off. I have a

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Speaker 1: roll of quarters because we didn't have cell phones back then.

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Speaker 1: I took a train back into the city. I started

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Speaker 1: pumping quarters into stay phones and I was calling my

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Speaker 1: buddies asking for help, and finally I reached the fellow

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Speaker 1: was a great friend of mine. He said, hey, listen,

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Speaker 1: there's a job offer and an opening at Goldman Sacks.

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Speaker 1: I said, are you kidding me? He said, in the

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Speaker 1: sales area. I said, okay, that's probably better suited for

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Speaker 1: my skill set. So I called my old boss who

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Speaker 1: had just fired me. His name is Michael Facetel. He

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Speaker 1: built the building that we're in. He was the CEO

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Speaker 1: of Vernado Realty, went on to become CEO Vernado Realty Trust.

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Speaker 1: I said, Michael, you gotta help me get this job

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Speaker 1: in sales at Goldman. Uh and so he put a

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Speaker 1: call in for me. I got interviewed. There were many

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Speaker 1: interviews later, they offered me a job on March. So

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Speaker 1: I was out of Goldman from February one to March.

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Speaker 1: But I got rehired two months about two months. So

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Speaker 1: so there's an ironic thing. I got to keep the

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Speaker 1: eleven thousand dollars seven check, thank god, grand months and

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Speaker 1: I got and I got myself a new job at Goldman,

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Speaker 1: which is better suited for me. So so the lesson

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Speaker 1: for younger viewers out there is, try to go for

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Speaker 1: the jobs that you think you're well suited for, not

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Speaker 1: the ones that you think are the sexy job. Don't

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Speaker 1: breed in security in your own personality. Go for the

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Speaker 1: stuff you think so you stay at Goldman for a

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Speaker 1: couple more years. But eventually, and I think it's ninety six,

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Speaker 1: you end up leaving to launch Oscar Capital. That's correct.

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Speaker 1: What was Oscar Capital like? So it was Andrew Bozart,

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Speaker 1: So his name was bo s. My first name, I

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Speaker 1: make last name is S. C. A. R. We dropped

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Speaker 1: the be called it Oscar Capital, worst name in financial

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Speaker 1: services history. Every time we had a meeting people for

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Speaker 1: our year affiliated with Oscar Meyer the hot dog company.

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Speaker 1: You know, Oscar the grouch. But we built a one

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Speaker 1: billion dollar registered investment advisor that had a small hedge fund.

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Speaker 1: We had a very good relationship with Fidelity. We were

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Speaker 1: part of the advisor referral program. I think New Burger

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Speaker 1: wanted to be in that business with Fidelity, so that's

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Speaker 1: why they They contacted Greg Fleming, who was the M

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Speaker 1: and a banker at Mary Lynch. He's now the president

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Speaker 1: of Morgan Stanley. Greg was our merger banker and we

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Speaker 1: did the d all six weeks after the nine eleven

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Speaker 1: terrorist attack, really in two thousand one. So you have

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Speaker 1: gone for five years. Now you get bought by New

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Speaker 1: Burger and I think it's too and I'm assuming for

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Speaker 1: a billion dollars in a U M there's a number

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Speaker 1: of ways of calculating that um multiple of sales or

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Speaker 1: how how did they figure out I'm perfectly understand if

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Speaker 1: you want to blurt out the number, but what was

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Speaker 1: the formula that we're playing with? It was at times sales. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm a I'm an open guy, but I

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Speaker 1: did sign a confidentiality. It was a reasonable multiple. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think of earnings of of revenue, how do they

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Speaker 1: they do? Yeah, it was multiple of revenues. But I

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Speaker 1: think I think the interesting thing about it is, I mean,

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Speaker 1: none of us were crying when we when we did

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Speaker 1: the deal, But I think the interesting thing about it

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Speaker 1: is you have to make sure if you're ever going

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Speaker 1: to do a deal like that on your own company

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Speaker 1: and you're gonna sell it, you gotta make sure you

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Speaker 1: sell it to people that are similarly situated personality wise.

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Speaker 1: Thank god that was the case for us. I sold

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Speaker 1: the business to a guy named Bob nats Up and

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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Lane. They were the two senior guys at New Burger,

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Speaker 1: and they lived up to their promises. They were great people.

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Speaker 1: New Burger then went on to sell New Burger Berman

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Speaker 1: to Lehman Brothers and so That was an interesting point

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Speaker 1: in my career because I had worked at Goldman Sachs

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Speaker 1: and now we were all migrating over to Lehman Brothers.

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Speaker 1: And I became a managing director of Lehman Brothers in

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Speaker 1: October of two thousand and three. You know, we we

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Speaker 1: had Jack Rivkin on the show some months ago. He

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Speaker 1: was at Lehman, left more or less, got fired, joined

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Speaker 1: New Burger, joined New Burger, and ends up coming back

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Speaker 1: to UH Actually his time at Lehman the first time

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Speaker 1: became a Harvard Business School. He took them from last

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Speaker 1: to first place the research similar situation ends up at

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Speaker 1: New Burger along with your friends. Gary Kaminsky was a

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Speaker 1: New Burger for and his dad, Gary and his dad

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Speaker 1: and his brother Michael and Gary Kamitsky, and I go

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Speaker 1: back to two where one of his best friends from

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Speaker 1: the town Ulit that he grew up in was one

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Speaker 1: of my roommates in college at Tufts. So I've known

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Speaker 1: Gary forever um and it was really a lot of

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Speaker 1: fun to work with Gary at Newburger. So in the

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Speaker 1: last thirty seconds we have how can you compare the

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Speaker 1: culture at Lehman with the culture of Goldman Sachs very

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Speaker 1: very different places. Uh these things he evolved differently over time.

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Speaker 1: So I'll just talk about the culture. I remember at

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Speaker 1: Goldman inclusive, team oriented. The pronoun use was we, the

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Speaker 1: pronoun use was our, uh, and you had to pass

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Speaker 1: the ball. You did way better Lehman. They had one

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Speaker 1: eye on the outside world and they had one They

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Speaker 1: had one gun trained to the outside world, and they

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Speaker 1: had one gun trained on each other. You see that.

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Speaker 1: That's a little bit more divisive. You kill to play

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Speaker 1: sort of. And the other problem they had, and I

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Speaker 1: do respect them, and I'm sorry that they're gone, but

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Speaker 1: the other problem that they had they had Goldman Sachs envy.

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Speaker 1: Well so did everybody else. They'd sit at the conference

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Speaker 1: table and say, well, we're just as good as Goldman

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Speaker 1: as this, We're just as good as Goldman at dad,

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Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, hey, who cares what you're just

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Speaker 1: as good at. Focus on yourselves and let's not have

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Speaker 1: this relative comparison. I think it's a good message for

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Speaker 1: younger people about their own lives. Right If if you're

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Speaker 1: at a conference table when someone is saying that over

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Speaker 1: and over again, the potential client is thinking themselves, maybe

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Speaker 1: I should check out Goldman. My days were numbered. When

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Speaker 1: I raised my hand at an m D meeting, I said, guys,

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Speaker 1: why are we so focused on Goldman? I can guarantee

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Speaker 1: that they're not that focused on you. And that was

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Speaker 1: that was not a politically astute thing to say at

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Speaker 1: that moment, but it was honest that it was true. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but you know, that was another reason why I had

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Speaker 1: to look on and see if I could start another company.

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Speaker 1: I'm Barry Ridhult. You're listening to Masters in Business on

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. My guest today is Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about your early days at Goldman,

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Speaker 1: and I recall way back. You're telling a story that

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Speaker 1: I found absolutely fascinating about when you were rotating through

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Speaker 1: of the different departments and you found a sort of,

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Speaker 1: if I memory serves correctly, a kind of orphaned deal

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Speaker 1: company called Dell Computer. Well, Dell at that time wasn't

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Speaker 1: a startup, you know. Michael started the business and eight

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Speaker 1: four uh he in college, he went public and eighty

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Speaker 1: eight through Goldman Sachs. In the summer of three, Michael

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Speaker 1: had gotten into a little bit of trouble with his

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Speaker 1: laptops the introduction of his laptops. The batteries weren't working well. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they were actually catching fire, and he had to stop

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Speaker 1: the production and he had a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: cash bleed and a little bit of a spin out. There.

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Speaker 1: One thing Michael Dell said to me, in order to

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Speaker 1: become Michael Dell and Dell Computer Corporation, there were about

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Speaker 1: eight thousand decisions that he had to make and he

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Speaker 1: had to get about seven thousand, nine hundred of them right.

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Speaker 1: And it's an interesting thing. And so he was in

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Speaker 1: a tailspin. And one of his best skills, he's incredibly

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Speaker 1: commercial guy, was that he needed a little bit of help.

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Speaker 1: He need a little bit of financing and so and

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Speaker 1: this isn't so long after they had the currency issue

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Speaker 1: that the currency hedge, and basically that was a commodation

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Speaker 1: to dead bet and it wasn't what Michael did. But

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Speaker 1: what can we call it? I can't call him Michael,

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Speaker 1: but you you know, listen, I I call him Michael,

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Speaker 1: but you know he is Mr Dell. I mean, the

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Speaker 1: guy is a masterful guy. He should be on your

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Speaker 1: show way more than me. But but to tell you

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Speaker 1: this story, it's twenty two years ago, but I remember

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Speaker 1: it very well. It was mid August, most of Wall

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Speaker 1: Street was on vacation. Michael came into the conference room.

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Speaker 1: I got called into a meeting by one of the

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Speaker 1: capital markets people. I was on the institutional sales desk

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Speaker 1: at the time, looking over the deal UH. And then

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Speaker 1: they asked me, look, we're gonna put a convertible bond together.

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Speaker 1: Do you think some of your clients would have an

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Speaker 1: interest in this convertible bond? And I went out and

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Speaker 1: call several white guys who were on vacation. I said, listen,

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Speaker 1: this thing has a very low premium meanings will convert

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Speaker 1: into a lot of equity. It has a high coupon UH,

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Speaker 1: and I really think this is a good deal. And

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Speaker 1: people looked at the financials and said, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: the financials a little shaky. I said, they are a

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Speaker 1: little shaky, but this guy is not shaky. This is

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Speaker 1: a betting. Michael is a steward of this business. All

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Speaker 1: businesses go through some hiccups. This is an opportune time.

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Speaker 1: When he gets this cash onto his balance sheet, He's

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Speaker 1: gonna retool the product cycle. He's gonna freshen up and

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Speaker 1: strengthen his balance sheet, and I think you guys gotta

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Speaker 1: make this investment. And so long story short, and listen,

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Speaker 1: this is a team approach. I'm out here running the

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Speaker 1: flag up for myself, but Goldman Sachs went out and

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Speaker 1: raised him. Uh. I don't know. It had to be

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Speaker 1: about two and fifty million dollars a lot of money

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Speaker 1: at that time. UH, and Dell went off to the races.

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Speaker 1: If you look at that short, one of the great

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Speaker 1: stocks of the ninete andies from the apple of its death, no,

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Speaker 1: no question. And one of my institutional investors who I'm

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Speaker 1: still very very close to, just retired from the Alfred P.

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Speaker 1: Sloan Foundation. His name is Bill Peterson. UH remembers that

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Speaker 1: deal fondly because he said it was the top performing

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Speaker 1: name for him over a five year period of time

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Speaker 1: that he held the stock. And so a combination, like

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Speaker 1: I said earlier in our conversation, a little bit of

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Speaker 1: providential luck, good timing, But that helped me build a

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Speaker 1: relationship with Michael, and I just have an enormous respect

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Speaker 1: for him. Was speaking with Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital,

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Speaker 1: talking about the time Goldman Sachs essentially rescued Dell Computers.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about Michael Dell. He's

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Speaker 1: been fairly active. Um, not so much him, but MSK

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Speaker 1: Ventures is MST ms D m s K is the

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Speaker 1: whole something else. MSD Michael S. Dell UM is a

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Speaker 1: fairly substantial venture cap role operation. Are you still in

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Speaker 1: touch with him much? Do you? How often do you

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Speaker 1: bump into it? I'm actually in touch with him less. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I see him once in a while at the World

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Speaker 1: Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He's obviously super busy raising

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Speaker 1: his family as m I, and he's got deaf and

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Speaker 1: he's also taken del He's got a private company that

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Speaker 1: he's dealing with now, which I predicted some point we'll

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Speaker 1: probably go public again. But MSD Capital is I think

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Speaker 1: a very diversified UH portfolio. In addition to venture private equity,

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Speaker 1: they've got long portfolio, fixed income portfolio, and him and

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Speaker 1: his team there have done a masterful job of managing

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Speaker 1: his money. And I'm pretty sure they've taken into outside

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Speaker 1: money at this point. Are we gonna see Michael Dell

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Speaker 1: at a SAULT conference anytime? So you know, we haven't

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Speaker 1: gone in the CEO direction, but you know he's a

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Speaker 1: terrific guy to have it an event like that. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about Skybridge Capital because we

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Speaker 1: really haven't touched on that. UM. That was post Lehman

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Speaker 1: when you decided, all right, I've had enough of this,

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Speaker 1: I've offended all the right people. It's time to make

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Speaker 1: head for the exit. You launched Skybridge Capital in what

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Speaker 1: year was that? It was March March of two thousand

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Speaker 1: and five five, and so I had worked at Lehman

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Speaker 1: from October of two thousand three to March of two

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Speaker 1: thousand five. UM, a lot of guys were departing from

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Speaker 1: the Lehman senior management team. I went to the guy

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Speaker 1: that I was working for. I said, listen, I didn't

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Speaker 1: grow up here in this organization. Guys that are in

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Speaker 1: I was forty one at the time, and I said,

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Speaker 1: you guys that have grown up here twenty years that

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Speaker 1: are now in your forties are super tight with each other.

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Speaker 1: I'm not in yourr an outsider within. I'm an outsider.

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Speaker 1: These guys had a strong culture and it was a

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Speaker 1: good culture, different from Goldman and but you have a

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Speaker 1: little bit of an immune system because I'm transplanted in

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Speaker 1: from new Berger Berman so and I'm doing renunal rejection.

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Speaker 1: Rejected tissue. Is that I was rejected tissue and no problem.

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Speaker 1: It could have been personality issues too. But but but

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Speaker 1: but in fairness of them, well, but you know, I

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Speaker 1: know you long enough that I know you're kinda you

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Speaker 1: get along with pretty much everybody. You know, you're really

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Speaker 1: rubbed that many people when you're when you're opinionated in

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Speaker 1: a politically correct or politically neutral organization. Uh that's uh, well,

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Speaker 1: you know what your your elbows for somebody like you

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Speaker 1: or me or elbows may not be that sharp given

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Speaker 1: the neighborhoods that we both grew up here. But when

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Speaker 1: you're in that sort of corporate environment where everybody's wearing

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Speaker 1: a white shirt, Uh, you know, and you have an opinion,

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Speaker 1: it may not be something that people super like about you.

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Speaker 1: And so I think the more successful guys, and God

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Speaker 1: blessed them, they have a way of talking and a

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Speaker 1: way of navigating those situations that you know, I wasn't

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Speaker 1: super successful at. Having said that, Uh, Richard s Fold

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Speaker 1: Dick Fold do have an enormous amount of respect for Uh.

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Speaker 1: He gave me ten million dollars a balance sheet capital

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Speaker 1: put it into our fund. A gentleman by the name

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Speaker 1: of Jared Way he helped me get that done. He

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Speaker 1: was on the senior relationship management team there at Lehman,

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Speaker 1: so they see you very much. Day Goldman's seeds outgoing

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Speaker 1: traders as well. They did. They put ten million dollars

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Speaker 1: of their balance sheet into our fund, which helped me

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Speaker 1: get the catalyzation. If you will have that fund started.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business

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Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Anthony Scaramucci

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Speaker 1: of Skybridge Capital. Anthony is the gentleman behind the resurrection

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Speaker 1: of an iconic television show, Lewis Rukaiser. Wall Street Week

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Speaker 1: with Louis Rukaiser was on for twentysomething years, thirty years.

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Speaker 1: It's how a lot of people today of our generation,

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Speaker 1: or maybe a few years younger, first discovered investing Wall

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Speaker 1: Street stocks back in the day. What made you think

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Speaker 1: of bringing the show back. It's an amazing show and

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Speaker 1: I've seen almost all of the film library a half

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Speaker 1: hour show over thirty five years. Lewis Rukaiser, classic guy.

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Speaker 1: I think He was a master at explaining complex things

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Speaker 1: in a way that regular people outside of our industry

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Speaker 1: battery can understand. And I don't want to say simplify them,

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Speaker 1: because these are very complex things, and sometimes when you

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Speaker 1: try to simplify something complex, you really don't get it

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Speaker 1: at all. He never dumbed it down. He just gave

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Speaker 1: He gave it rust in the viewer to but Button

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Speaker 1: made it understandable. Liz Ane Sanders was on our show

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Speaker 1: this past week. Had a great story where she was

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Speaker 1: very nervous the first time she met lu She was

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Speaker 1: sitting in the chair. He said, are your parents in

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Speaker 1: our business? And she said no. He says, I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you what we're gonna go on the air in a

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Speaker 1: few minutes, but I want you to talk to your parents.

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Speaker 1: I want you to explain the concepts that we're discussing

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Speaker 1: to your mom and dad. If you do that, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna have a terrific show. And that's the spirit of

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Speaker 1: what we're trying to capture with the return of Wall Street.

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Speaker 1: So Wall Street Week, that's so, that's funny you mentioned

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Speaker 1: that because my wife's an our teacher. My mother was

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Speaker 1: a real estate agent, and that was always the goal. Hey,

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Speaker 1: if you can make a real estate agent and an

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Speaker 1: art teacher, if you can remove the jargon and speak

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Speaker 1: in ways that they can understand it well, then anybody

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Speaker 1: can understand it. And and and this is a good

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Speaker 1: segue because I do think that some of the punditry

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Speaker 1: on business television is intimidating, and some of the punditry

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Speaker 1: on business telligence is for the impression of other pundits.

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Speaker 1: They want to impress each other while they're talking to

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Speaker 1: each other. And so what Louis Rukeyser did was he

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Speaker 1: waxed away all of that stuff barr and he really

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Speaker 1: just tried to deliver high, thoughtful content. And so that

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Speaker 1: show laid dormant for about ten years. UH. Gentleman by

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Speaker 1: name of Jeff Salkin had actually bought the rights to

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Speaker 1: the show. He had a website up called Wall Street

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Speaker 1: Week um, and but he had not really figured out

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Speaker 1: how to bring the show back on the year and

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Speaker 1: to transform the brand. UH. And so he came to

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Speaker 1: see eight. I had a conversation with him, UH and

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Speaker 1: Maryland Public Television, and I acquired the brand from him

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Speaker 1: and Matt Brand and the library. That's correct. So it's

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Speaker 1: the access to the archives and the library. It's the

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Speaker 1: likeness of Mr Ruth Kaiser, it's the great computer fond

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Speaker 1: digital digitization of the logo. UH. And it's also the website,

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Speaker 1: the Twitter page, the Facebook page. UM. This stuff I

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Speaker 1: think will be usually valuable if we handle it right.

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Speaker 1: From an auditorial perspective, I want to try to explain

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Speaker 1: to people what's going on. I think since your Bailout

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Speaker 1: Nation best seller, I think the average American is super

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Speaker 1: intimidated by the markets, super intimidated by the volatility. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they're uncertain. Uh, they're uh stashed in cash if you will.

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Speaker 1: And I think that it just came out more than

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Speaker 1: half of Americans have zero dollars exposed. So you're you're

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Speaker 1: supporting my thesis, and yet we both know that the

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Speaker 1: nation is undersaved. We're probably underslept, and we're probably overfed.

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Speaker 1: We've got all the dials on our dashboard wrong. And

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Speaker 1: so what we want to try to do is deliver

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Speaker 1: a message to the average American that there's a simple

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Speaker 1: and easy way to boost your savings, take more financial

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Speaker 1: control of your life. UH, put yourself on the arc

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Speaker 1: of the aspirational society that we all want to live

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Speaker 1: in and that requires you to take a little bit

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Speaker 1: of risk in the stock market in a balanced way.

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Speaker 1: It requires you to have the right fixed income exposure

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Speaker 1: and portfolio um and to be patient. And you know

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Speaker 1: you could you could spare yourself a latte a week.

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Speaker 1: That's five dollars a week. That's two underd and sixty

428
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: dollars a year and lo and beholds you're building a

429
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: little nestag so you can work at Bloomberg in this

430
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 1: free Well, that's another great show about Bloomberg. Let me

431
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: ask you a question about that archive. Are you gonna

432
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 1: any plans to put that online? What are you gonna

433
00:23:57,880 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: do with all these So so if you go to

434
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:03,399
Speaker 1: Wall Street week dot com, you will see archival uh

435
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,520
Speaker 1: stuff on the on the on on there. We also

436
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:11,400
Speaker 1: have it up on YouTube. We're we're finding new nuggets,

437
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:14,600
Speaker 1: new treasure every single day as we mind that archive.

438
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:17,560
Speaker 1: So you just had Jeff Gunlock and Liz and Saunders

439
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 1: were two names I recognized last week. John, Well you

440
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:23,520
Speaker 1: have coming up in the coming weeks. Well, uh where

441
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:26,680
Speaker 1: if you look at the SALT conference list, it will

442
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: give you a really good cross section of what we're

443
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 1: trying to do. We want uh, policymakers, hedge fund managers,

444
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:39,320
Speaker 1: we want possibly actors, music composers. You say, jeez, why

445
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:41,679
Speaker 1: do you want that? Well, you know what, everybody in

446
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:45,399
Speaker 1: that group has a financial plan. And what the am

447
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 1: mortal lou Ro Kaiser would say to you is that

448
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 1: the show has to be about the way the world works,

449
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: because your money world and the way the world works

450
00:24:56,480 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: are completely intersected. And we know that from federal reserve policy,

451
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,800
Speaker 1: we know that from governmental policy. And so I'm gonna

452
00:25:02,880 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: try to bring a very broad cross section of guests

453
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: to the program. I'm Barry Ridholtz. You're listening to Masters

454
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloombug Radio. My guest today is Anthony

455
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 1: Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital and Wall Street Week. Let's let's

456
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Skybridge Capital. It's become quite successful.

457
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: It originally began as a hedge fund seating shop. Is

458
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: that right? You were looking to identify emerging managers. Yeah,

459
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: my my original concept and for the entrepreneurs out there,

460
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: what happens is you start with a plan and then

461
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 1: you have contact with the enemy and you have to

462
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: switch your plan. And so I had and that's the

463
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: great Mohammad was it um. Mike Tyson said, everybody has

464
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 1: planned to the punch in the face, and so most

465
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: generals know once they have contact with the enemy, the

466
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,959
Speaker 1: plan goes out the wayside. But but for me, I

467
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: had a seating idea. I was gonna back early stage managers,

468
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:00,679
Speaker 1: take GP steaks in them, and then uh literally have

469
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: our LPs participate in the growth of the earning streams

470
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 1: of these managers. Great looking on paper, but it's a

471
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: little bit like a venture capital situation, and seed hundreds

472
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:14,200
Speaker 1: of them. To find that we didn't have enough money

473
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,120
Speaker 1: to seed hundreds of them, we seeded ten. We seeded

474
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:19,679
Speaker 1: them in the years two thousand and six and seven,

475
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: the early part of two thousand eight, so we were

476
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,360
Speaker 1: in a barrel going over Niagara Falls and so uh.

477
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:28,440
Speaker 1: Which interesting is that one of those funds is doing

478
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: quite well today, which you still we stole own a

479
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:35,200
Speaker 1: small interest in. But that seating business itself, we had

480
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:37,879
Speaker 1: to make a decision to dismantle it. And so I

481
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 1: was By the way, the tech folks h call that

482
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: a pivot. So you pivoted from seed in. Yeah, that's

483
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 1: an elegant way to say that you're failing and got

484
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: to come up with some other idea. And so so

485
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: that's what we had to do. And I'll tell you

486
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: that our seating business, I would describe it as the

487
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:56,679
Speaker 1: old movie Apole thirteen. It was a successful failure in

488
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: the sense that the seating business was the lunar module

489
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: that we lived in as we tried to figure out

490
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:04,119
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do to crawl back into the command

491
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: module and get back to Earth. And so, uh, we

492
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: had a bleeding asset, tons of redemptions, and there was

493
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: a period barrier looking straight in the face and tell

494
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:16,640
Speaker 1: you that I thought we were going out of business.

495
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 1: And I remember in March of two thousand nine, with

496
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: the dow at about six d the SMP had approximately

497
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 1: six sixty. I thought, this is it, and uh it was.

498
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 1: That was a good time we made. We made two

499
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 1: decisions there. At number one, we started the Salt Conference.

500
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 1: President Obama said now is not the time to go

501
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas, and all the TARP recipients canceled their

502
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: conferences on Las Vegas. Uh. That upset the mayor of

503
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: the city. I called him Oscar Goodman, and I said, listen,

504
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: I want to bring a hedge fund conference to your

505
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:53,440
Speaker 1: great city. And so he put me in touch with

506
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: Michael Milken. He put me in touch with the former governor.

507
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:58,440
Speaker 1: I got to meet Steve Winn and we put the

508
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:01,400
Speaker 1: first Salt conference is it may have two thousand nine

509
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: in the Encore Hotel, which is part of the Wind Complex.

510
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,200
Speaker 1: I tell the story that way because we were really

511
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: on our knees and I thought, okay, maybe we all

512
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 1: go into the conference business. There's a huge void in

513
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,199
Speaker 1: these things. Uh. And people said to me, well, how

514
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: is the conference business tie into your seating business. I

515
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 1: didn't have a great answer, but I knew that there

516
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 1: was an opportunity. I said, well, maybe we'll have a

517
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:27,439
Speaker 1: lot of hedge funds there and we could populate our

518
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 1: seating business. But what it really turned out to be, Uh,

519
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 1: it turned out to be a great networking opportunity. And

520
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 1: in the network I discovered that City Bank needed to

521
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 1: sell many of its non core assets. So let's let's

522
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: put this into the right context, because I really love

523
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: this story. So it's in the midst of the financial crisis.

524
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: We're bottoming. But you know, three or four people, me

525
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: and two other guys know, but nobody else. Nobody else

526
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: got They've got a plastic mouth brace that I've just

527
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: had molded from my teeth. Because I'm in the middle,

528
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: and I've been told by many of my former colleagues

529
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 1: at Goldman and Lehman that you know you're you're going

530
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 1: out of business life demon you're done. But they were

531
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: probably right, But courage stand there. But that's a fantastic

532
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: opportunity that you capitalize. In hindsight, it was a fantastic opportunity.

533
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: At the time, many people had passed on the deal. Yeah,

534
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:27,520
Speaker 1: because they they had put the fund of Funds unit

535
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: into what's called City Holdings, which was their place for

536
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 1: dissolution or disposition, and so it was very hard for

537
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: that terrific asset management team to more eight billion dollar

538
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: how much money was in that well, No, at that

539
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: time there was one billion dollars of discretionary money in

540
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: that portfolio. I went to Michael Corbett, who has become

541
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: a personal friend. He's a terrific guy. He was running

542
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:54,720
Speaker 1: City Holdings at the time. I wanted to buy his

543
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: seating business. Another big lesson to our listeners, think way

544
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: bigger than that. He looked at me and said, Hey,

545
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 1: I can't sell you that seating business. I can sell

546
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: you the entire fund of funds business. And I blinked

547
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: and gulped and probably blanched white, and said, oh my god,

548
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 1: how am I gonna pay for that? But I looked

549
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: at him with a poker face and said, you're on.

550
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: I'd like to buy that business. And so it was

551
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: at a desperation. It was a hail Mary pass late

552
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter. But all of that money that

553
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: I earned from the sale of our first business to

554
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: new Burger Berman, I liquidated those assets and I brought

555
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 1: them to Bear to buy the thing from City Bank.

556
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: I told my oldest son, whatever in errorge, you thought

557
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: you were getting from your dad, Well you're now long

558
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: skybirds through your eyeballs. You better hope I don't blow

559
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: up the bridge. And so we got that deal done

560
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 1: on the thirty of June two thousand and ten. Brought

561
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: twenty four people over. Uh. It's five years later, twenty

562
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: three of those twenty four people are still with us.

563
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: We've add more personnel. Our discretionary assets went from a

564
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: billion dollars under management to nine point three billion in

565
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: the five year period of time. And because there was

566
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: a void in the conference space. Our conference also has

567
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 1: done reasonably well over that period. Okay, so now I

568
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: have to throw a yellow card on you because your

569
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: conference hasn't done reasonably well quote unquote. So you mentioned

570
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: my book. It came out in two thousand and nine,

571
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: and you had me out to Vegas to be on

572
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: a panel with Austin Goulsby, who was the former former

573
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: Council of Economic Advisor chairman. I forget the Congressman's and

574
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: a few other people on that panel, and I have

575
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:43,720
Speaker 1: to tell you that was one of the hottest conferences

576
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: I had ever gone to. You had Bill Clinton as

577
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 1: I'm getting the yellow car because I'm understanding, totally understanding,

578
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: and I wasn't. By the way, Bill Clinton listeners the

579
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: halfway like me. Remember I'm a hedge fund guy, so

580
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: I'm obviously a social pariah out the viewers the listeners

581
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,360
Speaker 1: are sort of like me. Well, but you're you're as

582
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: an individual, you're fairly charming a character. As a character,

583
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: I think people who you call yourself the mooch, not

584
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: a lot of people. That was a that was a

585
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: high school football name. My last name, Scaramuci, not you

586
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: people call me the mooch, But some of the guests

587
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: you've had at Sault. So this year is Ben bernanke. Yes.

588
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: The year I was on a panel, it was Bill Clinton.

589
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 1: The year after it was George Bush. I remember Bill Clinton,

590
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: not that far removed from quadruple bypass, walking into a

591
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:39,200
Speaker 1: very hostile room of about hedge fund managers. And basically

592
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: by the time he was done, if he would have

593
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:44,240
Speaker 1: said and that's why I'm running for president and I

594
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,560
Speaker 1: wanted you to write a fifty check, he would have

595
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:48,959
Speaker 1: would have walked out of that room with twenty millions up.

596
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 1: Super popular guy, not only here in the United States

597
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: but globally. But I will tell you this, President Clinton

598
00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: made our conference unbelieved because because in in two thousand

599
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: nine we had a smaller conference, uh, four people. We

600
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: then said, okay, let's go big. And that's the magic

601
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: of life. You gotta think really big home go big.

602
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: And so I told the guys, we're gonna we're gonna

603
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: go after President Clinton. See if we can get him. Uh.

604
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 1: He had a guy working firm by the name of

605
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:18,720
Speaker 1: Doug Band and very nice guy. Uh, And we signed

606
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: him up pursuing to dates that work for the president.

607
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: And I will tell you very upfront. He made our

608
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 1: conference because he credentialized the type of speakers that we

609
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:30,479
Speaker 1: wanted to get, and so it was easier to get

610
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: President Bush, it was easier to get Governor Romney, it

611
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: was easier to get Chairman Ben BERNANKI, Uh, Secretary Rice,

612
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: We've got most of the secretaries of Defense. We've had

613
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: General Petrays, We're bringing General Keith Alexander this year, Yankees.

614
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: So we're really trying to bring people who we think

615
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: other people in our industry want to hear from and

616
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: to learn from. And so we've also cross section this thing.

617
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: So we've had people like al Pacino, We've had all

618
00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: of our stone. We did the movie with you had

619
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 1: the guy that Catch Me If You Can was based

620
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: on That was one of the most fascinating conversations, great

621
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:12,840
Speaker 1: great guys. How fascinating was that? Uh Frank Abig Nelly,

622
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that's announced his name, but that was a

623
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 1: fascinating speech. That was a great story about redemption. It

624
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 1: was a great story about the mistakes that he made

625
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:24,239
Speaker 1: in his life and how he tried to set his

626
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: life right um and failure in redemption. I think it's

627
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: a classic American thing. I think one of the things,

628
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:35,839
Speaker 1: one of the big advantages our country has over these

629
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 1: other countries, that we accept people who are willing to

630
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: take enormous amounts of risk. Uh, they can fail, dust

631
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,799
Speaker 1: themselves off and restored. This is the reason we Ford

632
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:49,879
Speaker 1: in his fifties, it was like a sixth or eighth coup.

633
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: Look at look at Sam Walton forty six years old.

634
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 1: Two failed stores started Walt what became Walmart when he

635
00:34:56,680 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: was forty six, and so the greatest many of the

636
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 1: to stupendous things about our country, but one of the

637
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: greatest things is the culture to accept risk takers, to

638
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,919
Speaker 1: accept failure. It's the reason why Facebook is invented here,

639
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: Google is invented here. Apple started here talking about failure

640
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:17,720
Speaker 1: and redemption. Jobs gets fired, comes back well. We showed

641
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 1: a great scene from him in being interviewed by the

642
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: late Louis ru Keiser talking to Steve should he dismantle

643
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: the company or should he try to grow it? And

644
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 1: Steve was gung ho. He said, I'm coming back to

645
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: create a new spirit of innovation. We were ten years

646
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: ahead of our competitors back in the day. My goal

647
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:41,400
Speaker 1: is to get us ten years ahead of our competitors Again,

648
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: it's a brilliant commentary about what you need to do

649
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 1: in life. Thank big or go home. We've been speaking

650
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 1: with Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital about the Salt Conference.

651
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: If you enjoy these conversations, be sure and check out

652
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 1: the rest of our chat. You can find that on

653
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com or on Apple iTunes. Be shouldn't check

654
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 1: out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com or

655
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Ridholts Anthony. Where can people

656
00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: find you? If they want to, they can find me

657
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 1: at a Scaramucci at Skybridge Capital dot com. Uh. They

658
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,400
Speaker 1: can also go to Wall Street week dot com and

659
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: they can toggle the prosper at Wall Street week dot com.

660
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: That's all the viewer emails or commentary about the website.

661
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: I read every one of those and so and I

662
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 1: try to respond to them as well. And your Twitter

663
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:36,399
Speaker 1: handle is my Twitter handles at Scaramucci. Easy enough. I'm

664
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: Barry Ridhults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on

665
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Welcome back to the podcast on Barry Ridholts,

666
00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: and my guest today is Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony and I

667
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: know each other over the years from the street. It's

668
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:52,479
Speaker 1: not exactly a big place. Let me fantastic book, Bailout Nation,

669
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: thank you. Let me give you a little little background

670
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: on on who Anthony is and how he got to

671
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: be where he is today. Undergraduate of Toughs, graduate degree

672
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: in economics onto Harvard Law, which is uh interesting that

673
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: you took the Harvard Law degree straight to Goldman Sachs

674
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:13,920
Speaker 1: and from Goldman Sacks you eventually left to set up

675
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: your own funds, which long story short brought by new

676
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: Berg and Berman, which eventually was brought by Lehman. So

677
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: you've really been pretty well versed all over the street.

678
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,320
Speaker 1: Well less has been a blessed career, and you know,

679
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 1: as a fellow entrepreneur that a lot of your success

680
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 1: is providential. You certainly have to work hard, you have

681
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 1: to relate to people well, but at the end of

682
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,359
Speaker 1: the day you get a couple of lucky breaks too

683
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: that helps your career slow. I'm still I'm still working

684
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:43,839
Speaker 1: on that relating to people well part. But the lucky

685
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 1: you have the radio show, I'm just the gags. You

686
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:48,879
Speaker 1: must be doing a good job relating to people. Well,

687
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. So that and you're a perfect person

688
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,880
Speaker 1: to ask a question a bunch of questions to to

689
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 1: save that curiosity. So let me start right off the bat.

690
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: Harvard Law is a very storied institution, a very specific culture.

691
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: As his Goldman Sacks, a very different institution and a

692
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,719
Speaker 1: very different culture. What was that transition like going to

693
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:13,759
Speaker 1: law school say I'm gonna be a lawyer and ending

694
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:18,080
Speaker 1: up Well, I had a you know, an interesting background.

695
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:20,359
Speaker 1: My parents ever went to college. You're real come from

696
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:23,319
Speaker 1: a middle class come from a middle class family. Yeah.

697
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 1: I would never disrespect my parents by telling you I

698
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:27,919
Speaker 1: grew up poor, because I did not grow up poor.

699
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:30,799
Speaker 1: We were resoundingly in the middle class. We had plenty

700
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: of food, clothing, air conditioning, heat. My dad was a

701
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: very Yeah we did. Actually that's why my hair is

702
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: so straight. But we we we had a narrow casted

703
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:43,320
Speaker 1: view of the world. I didn't take the s a

704
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: t prep at Stanley Kaplan. I didn't really have a

705
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: good idea of what was going on for college placement. Uh.

706
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:53,319
Speaker 1: My dad was working at a place called Gotham Sand

707
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: and Stone on Long Island. Uh. He built a relationship

708
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:59,800
Speaker 1: with a gentleman that had gone to Toughs University and

709
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 1: the gentleman's name is Billy Tamasah. He's he's passed on now.

710
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: He's a terrific guy. My father came home one night

711
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:11,400
Speaker 1: and said, you and your brother you're going to Toughs University. Uh,

712
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 1: we thought it was spelled t O U g H.

713
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 1: We had no idea what it was. My brother my

714
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 1: brothers a couple of years older than me. He looked

715
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 1: in the baron's book and he said, Dad, this thing

716
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:25,920
Speaker 1: is most selective. I don't know how we're gonna get

717
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 1: in there. He said, well, you both have good grades.

718
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 1: My friend Billy said he went there and he loved it.

719
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 1: That's where you're going to school. I said, well, I

720
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 1: don't know is it that easy? We both applied. My

721
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:37,840
Speaker 1: brother is a couple of years older than me. He applied,

722
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: got into U University, liked it, and I said, okay,

723
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: So I applied to a couple of schools, got into

724
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: US University, And now what do you want to do

725
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 1: with your career? Well, you know, I had no idea.

726
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 1: I read in a magazine article that lawyers A Crevass,

727
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: Swain and more in we're making sixty five thousand U

728
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:01,279
Speaker 1: S dollars a year. I said, oh my god. Uh,

729
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 1: you know, it's about what my dad is now making.

730
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 1: And I said, I can get out of law school

731
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,279
Speaker 1: and make almost as much money as my dad and

732
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: have this incredible life. I guess I thought sixty five

733
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:13,879
Speaker 1: dollars a year it was more money than I could

734
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: ever want or need. So, very simplicitally, Barry, I applied

735
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:21,400
Speaker 1: to seven law schools, uh, and I got into Harvard.

736
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: Harvard's down the block from Toss. I went down there

737
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:26,240
Speaker 1: and made it a deposit. Right once you get into Harvard,

738
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: that's pretty much. Uh. The other options really fade unless

739
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: you're looking to specialize in something unusual. That's the story is.

740
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 1: So now I'm at Harvard and it's dawning on me

741
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: that I'm not well suited to be a lawyer, and

742
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:42,800
Speaker 1: so always always an interesting time to discover that in

743
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: your second was it How soon did you realize that?

744
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: Because it took me. It's about my second year law school.

745
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, I said, yeah, I don't want to be

746
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: a lawyer. Well, this is another classic mid eighties story.

747
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,359
Speaker 1: You can't do this now because of the post nine

748
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: eleven security. But I decided that I was going to

749
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:01,640
Speaker 1: be a Wall Street lawyer, and so once I put

750
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: the deposit down at Harvard, I went to their placement area.

751
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,480
Speaker 1: I asked for their placement book. Uh. Not knowing a

752
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:10,000
Speaker 1: lot about how the world works, I thought Wall Street

753
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:12,799
Speaker 1: lawyers lived on Wall Street, and so I opened up

754
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:15,879
Speaker 1: the book. I looked at number one Wall Street, which

755
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: is the old Irving Trust building is now National Landmark.

756
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 1: It's a law firm there by the name of use

757
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: Hubbard and read and I said, okay, I'm gonna put

758
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 1: my resume. I typed it up on a Panasonic typewriter.

759
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 1: I took the number four trained down to uh Wall Street.

760
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:35,040
Speaker 1: I rode the elevator up to the floor. No security

761
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 1: walked in there. And I had a list of Harvard

762
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:40,839
Speaker 1: a lumps that were there, and so I was like, hey,

763
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: is you know Worthington, Babscomb, the thirty second here and then?

764
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: And the woman said yes. I said, well, I'm Antony Scaramuch,

765
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 1: I'm here to see you. Is he expecting you? I said, well, yes,

766
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,839
Speaker 1: sort of, And she was like, okay, he comes out

767
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: lovely man. I said, sir, I desperately need a job.

768
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 1: I've got, you know, financially to help me with school,

769
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 1: not financially more like loans. I said, can you can

770
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:05,839
Speaker 1: you can you give me a job this summer as

771
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: apparently I'll do anything. So coming to my office, son,

772
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: we sat down, we had a conversation. He says, okay,

773
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: I'll pay you eight dollars an hour. I said, sir,

774
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:15,960
Speaker 1: could you make it ten? He looked to me, are

775
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: you kidding me? I said, I really need the money.

776
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:19,799
Speaker 1: Could you make it ten? So I gotta paid ten

777
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: dollars an hour. I worked seventy hours a week. Uh.

778
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: This was back in the day where Continental Airlines was

779
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: buying People's Express, which was a new work based discount airliner.

780
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: And I worked on that merger all summer and I

781
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:36,759
Speaker 1: remember thinking to myself, oh my god, this I'm not

782
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 1: well suited for this um And so I went to

783
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:41,759
Speaker 1: Harvard Law School thinking I was not going to be

784
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: a lawyer. Thanksgiving Day, I told my parents that I

785
00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: wanted to leave law school. Now. When I was going

786
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:53,720
Speaker 1: to Harvard, my mother thought it was Hartford Law School.

787
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 1: So when we were packing the car, she said, uh,

788
00:42:57,160 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: we're going to Hartford. I said, no, mo bus, she said,

789
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: We're gonna We're gonna Cambridge. She says, no, no, No,

790
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: he's in't Harvard Law School and Hartford. I said, no, no,

791
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 1: it's Harvard and Harvard are very different. And so anyways,

792
00:43:08,719 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 1: my parents didn't care whether it was Harvard Law School

793
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: or Harvard Law School. They wanted their son to be

794
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: a lawyer. And so when I told my mom I

795
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: wanted to quit law school like a Jewish mother, by yeah,

796
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: the Italian, I forget about it. It was a very

797
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:26,320
Speaker 1: historionic event. I said, no problem, I'll finish law school.

798
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: And then I was something else, desperately seeking a job,

799
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: and so I read it several articles about Goldman. Uh.

800
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,760
Speaker 1: But I made a classic career mistake that young people

801
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 1: make is that I went for what I thought was

802
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 1: the coolest and the hottest job. Maybe that's a job

803
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,279
Speaker 1: at Google today, maybe that's a job at Facebook. But

804
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: back in our day, the hottest, coolest job was investment

805
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 1: banking or McKenzie consulting. And uh, even better than that,

806
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: because the real estate market was super hot to be

807
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: a real estate investment banker. And so you know, I

808
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 1: wanted to be the kid at the Harvard graduation, at

809
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: the cocktail party to tell people I got the hottest

810
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: and the coolest job, and so I went and sought

811
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: that job, got that job. I went to that party

812
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: and bragged about it with my amazing insecurity at that time.

813
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: I went to work at Goldman Sacks, and eighteen months

814
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: later I was summarily fired. I got fired from Goldman Sacks.

815
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: I'm February one. I started there in August fourte uh.

816
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 1: And the purpose of the reason I got fired was

817
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:36,279
Speaker 1: three reasons. Super uh terrible at the job. Number one.

818
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 1: Number two, we were going into a real estate recession

819
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:42,880
Speaker 1: and the firm was making extreme cutback and the combination

820
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 1: of me not being even though he was working very hard,

821
00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 1: I didn't have the skill set and the recession. Uh.

822
00:44:49,120 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 1: They gave me a pink slip to give me an

823
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: eleven thousand dollar severance check, and they told me I

824
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:56,360
Speaker 1: had to leave, and I was devastated. I can imagine

825
00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:00,359
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm gonna say this now, there's all

826
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff you said. First, I'm gonna flip he's

827
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 1: got like nine phones and they're all lighting up with emails. First,

828
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: I think you're very very self effacing and understating some

829
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:15,120
Speaker 1: of the things that you've done. So the story I

830
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,719
Speaker 1: heard with you and Dell was that it was the

831
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,759
Speaker 1: middle of the summer, and nobody at Goldman was really

832
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,800
Speaker 1: paying attention that in the scheme of things, that hundred

833
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,799
Speaker 1: fifty or two was a relatively small deal and there

834
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:31,880
Speaker 1: were bigger fish to fry. There were multibillion dollar mergers.

835
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: There was all sorts of stuff going on, and that

836
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:36,439
Speaker 1: was I don't want to say orphan, because Goldman Sex

837
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:41,320
Speaker 1: doesn't orphan a deal, but there was a lot of other, hotter,

838
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: bigger things going on. But it's not really me being

839
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: self effacing, because you have to understand the machinery and

840
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 1: the capability of Goldman Sacks today in if if I

841
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 1: was not at the firm, that deal would have happened

842
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 1: with with or without me. And I'm not saying that

843
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:02,360
Speaker 1: in itself effacing way. I'm just talking about the wonderful

844
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: organization and the uh, the people, the depth of the

845
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: bench at Goldman's ax. But I will say this, I

846
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:13,440
Speaker 1: took a big liking to Michael Dell, and I admired

847
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:16,720
Speaker 1: Michael Dell, and I remember teasing him. I said, jeez,

848
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: you know, you did everything wrong. I did everything right.

849
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 1: And I remember him looking at me, what do you

850
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 1: mean by that? Anthony. I said, well, I listened to

851
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 1: my mom and went to college. I listened to my mom.

852
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 1: I went to law school. You dropped out, You got

853
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,000
Speaker 1: into a fight with your parents over dropping out. You

854
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:35,240
Speaker 1: were building computers in your dorm room. I was selling

855
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 1: T shirts. Okay, you went on to be worth a

856
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 1: go jillion dollars wealthiest. God bless him, and I hope

857
00:46:41,719 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: he gets the number one. But the point is, you know,

858
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 1: he was a guy that I really looked up to,

859
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 1: and I said, you know what, He's gonna turn this

860
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 1: thing around. And I believed it, and so I definitely

861
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: went out there to try to convince my clients of that.

862
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:58,360
Speaker 1: So I heard this story third hands from other people,

863
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:00,800
Speaker 1: and I've asked you about this over the years. So

864
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 1: the way this story came to me was sort of,

865
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 1: I don't want to use the word orphan, but not

866
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:09,240
Speaker 1: the most you know, not the one that was flashing

867
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 1: red on Goldman's investment banking desk. You kind of found

868
00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: it and said, oh, this is a really interesting deal.

869
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: You're the guy that lots of people gave sort of

870
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 1: a lukewarm Yeah. Well, if you get a lead, which

871
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:24,759
Speaker 1: is sort of a cowardly thing we all hear when

872
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:27,400
Speaker 1: you're raising money for something, well, who's the lead, who's

873
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 1: the who's good, the who's the which means who's the

874
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:32,760
Speaker 1: guy that's going to do the heavy lifting, the due diligence.

875
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:36,360
Speaker 1: So I don't look like if it goes south, at

876
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:38,800
Speaker 1: least I could say, well, look who the lead was.

877
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: They got it wrong also, and that you're the one

878
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: who reached out to people that I believe it was

879
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: t I A Kraft. Well, you know, it's so funny

880
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: you say that because the guy is working at t

881
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:52,360
Speaker 1: I A Kreft. Now his name is Bill Regal and

882
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: but he's he was they were. The leader was JP Morgan,

883
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:59,439
Speaker 1: investment manager. Bill's working at Kreft. Now he's a tremendous guy.

884
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:02,879
Speaker 1: And uh, but that was the lead. That was enough

885
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,200
Speaker 1: to get convinced everybody else. You really, you really did

886
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 1: do your research, because that's twenty that's twenty two years ago.

887
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 1: But Bill, Bill looked at the deal, he said, well,

888
00:48:12,160 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: the financials are pretty crummy, but the story is good.

889
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: I said, well, forget about the story. This guy can

890
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: execute okay. And this business, like most technology businesses, are

891
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:24,840
Speaker 1: gonna have fits and starts. But he's got a great

892
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: forward game plan, and so you know, and the credit

893
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 1: goes about at the end of the day. It's one

894
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 1: thing to serve something up, but this guy had to

895
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:36,239
Speaker 1: pull the trigger and make the investment. And so but

896
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:39,440
Speaker 1: you now you're in the sales department. The other guy

897
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:43,719
Speaker 1: who basically said, hey, there's nothing on Wall Street that's guaranteed.

898
00:48:44,239 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: This is a home run. This is you have to

899
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:48,560
Speaker 1: participate in this. What they put in fifty or a

900
00:48:48,640 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 1: hundred something like that, and it was ten They did

901
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 1: ten percent of the deal. And now you're really getting

902
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: me to remember the whole thing. And so once they

903
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:00,879
Speaker 1: got ten percent of the deal, like you're saying about

904
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 1: Wall Street, they were a big name anchoring the deal.

905
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 1: And then people started saying, wait a minute, there might

906
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: be something here, and then orders started flowing. And then

907
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: you've worked in these places and so have I. And

908
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: so what happened was they were anchoring the deal and

909
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: the capital markets people wanted to cut them back on

910
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,920
Speaker 1: the allocation. And so that was a little bit of

911
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 1: a pushing and shoving match. And somewhat when we've got

912
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: all this somewhat politically incorrect because I got I got

913
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 1: in there and and roughed it up a little bit.

914
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 1: Can't you can't do that? Can I do that? And

915
00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: so you know, and that was probably not the most

916
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 1: politically astute thing for me to do, but I really

917
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:41,759
Speaker 1: felt I needed to be a strong advocate for those

918
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: guys that got in early, and it was the right thing.

919
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:45,879
Speaker 1: And but but they and they got the full load

920
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: of the allocation, which ended up being a great thing

921
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 1: for them in their investment portfolio. So so it's an

922
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 1: interesting story, um, but it goes back to something you

923
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:58,280
Speaker 1: and I know, and it's a universal truth about business.

924
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: Business is about relationships, and business is about as Buffett says,

925
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:06,800
Speaker 1: it takes twenty years to build your reputation. But start

926
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:10,320
Speaker 1: with the principles of fairness, start with the principles of

927
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:13,480
Speaker 1: doing the right thing for the other guy in the room, uh,

928
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:16,719
Speaker 1: and not trying to take the last nickel out of something. Uh.

929
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: And you'll see that your career will grow and people

930
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 1: will make bets on you. So speaking relationship, what was

931
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:25,560
Speaker 1: your at that point? Like, By the way, the reason

932
00:50:25,680 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: I know as much as I do about that deal

933
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 1: is I've described you to people. When people say to me,

934
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:35,400
Speaker 1: who's this guy Scaramucci. Mooch is the guy who saved

935
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 1: Dell back in the early nineties. Yeah, I know there's

936
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: a there's a bit of hyperbolea but but that's how

937
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 1: I describe it. But since you mentioned relationships, what's your

938
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: relationship like subsequent with Michael Dell. Is he involved in

939
00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 1: any of your other deals? He was? He was an

940
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:58,600
Speaker 1: original investor in Skybridge. Uh. But great anchor. Yeah, great

941
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:03,840
Speaker 1: Michael rate anchor investment. Uh and uh, very very grateful

942
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:06,799
Speaker 1: for him for being an original anchor alongside of Merrill

943
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:11,720
Speaker 1: Lynch and alongside of Lehman brothers. But the the Meryl

944
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 1: was an investor the first the first couple of investors

945
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:20,040
Speaker 1: were Michael Dell, uh, Merrill Lynch, uh Lehman. There are

946
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: a few others like that, the the Quate Investment organization. Uh.

947
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:27,839
Speaker 1: So we had a really good stable list of investors. Um.

948
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:30,920
Speaker 1: And but Michael is no longer investor because we're out

949
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 1: of that seating business. And he did a masterful job

950
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:38,240
Speaker 1: with a group of partners building his own family office,

951
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:40,360
Speaker 1: which is arguably one of the best family offices in

952
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,640
Speaker 1: the world. And so so he doesn't really need sky

953
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: Bridge to run his money. But we've remained friends. He's

954
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:50,360
Speaker 1: a very very good guy, incredibly charitable him and his wife.

955
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. I have a prediction which I think

956
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: when del Re emerges from its private equity position private

957
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: company position, I think it will flourish again as a

958
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:04,719
Speaker 1: public company. So and I think Michael Stolen in the

959
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 1: halftime here at at Michael's probably fifty, I think he's

960
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:10,120
Speaker 1: got a good thirty four year run to go here.

961
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:14,840
Speaker 1: MSD Ventures is capital Capital is someone in the neighble

962
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,759
Speaker 1: to twenty or thirty billion dollars the size of the

963
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: Yale endowment. That's pretty substantial. I'm not sure they've done

964
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:25,640
Speaker 1: a masterful job that that place got started in and

965
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 1: uh where I could be wrong. And so it's almost

966
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 1: twenty years old, and they've done a masterful job of

967
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: helping Michael with and his family with their investments, to

968
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 1: say the least. So, so we talked a little bit

969
00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: about how you got into the financial services industry. Really

970
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:46,719
Speaker 1: you're just knocking on doors. I don't know if you

971
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:50,320
Speaker 1: could do that today. But you also talked about some

972
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: early mentors. Who are the people that were early and

973
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 1: influential in your career that that you remember fondly. Well.

974
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: I mean, there's many of them are still very close

975
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:03,240
Speaker 1: friends of mine. Bob cash Rignano, who ran the Goldman

976
00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 1: Zax training program. UH. Bill Groover, who ran the training

977
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 1: program before Bob, who's now a professor at Bucknell University. UH.

978
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:14,760
Speaker 1: I would tell you that Bob, Matsa and Jeff Lane

979
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: are very close to me. Those are the guys that

980
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 1: were from new Berger Berman that bought my company. Andrew

981
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 1: KA Bosar Jr. Who was the co founder of Oscar Capital,

982
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:29,160
Speaker 1: but really the senior partner there. I was his junior partner.

983
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:32,239
Speaker 1: I would say without Andrew K. Bosar Jr. I don't

984
00:53:32,280 --> 00:53:34,839
Speaker 1: think I would have had the courage Barry to leave

985
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:38,439
Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs when I did. I always dreamt about having

986
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,400
Speaker 1: my own business, but I think Andy provided me with

987
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 1: the security and the financial stability. And I sort of

988
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: knew that going into partnership with him, because he's such

989
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:51,239
Speaker 1: a naturally good person UH would lead to good things

990
00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:53,360
Speaker 1: for me. UM and so I have to pay a

991
00:53:53,440 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: huge tribute to him. UH. John Weinberg, the legendary John Weinberg,

992
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:01,920
Speaker 1: who I had the opportunity to be his private banker

993
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:04,440
Speaker 1: for a few years. He was the CEO of Goldman.

994
00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:08,800
Speaker 1: He retired in I had some great aphorisms I'll remember

995
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:11,680
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. One was some people grow

996
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 1: berry and other people swell, and you better figure out

997
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:17,719
Speaker 1: who you are, okay. And I think that was a

998
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:20,839
Speaker 1: very interesting thing about life and not getting too full

999
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 1: of yourself. Uh. The other thing you to say is

1000
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: that trees do not grow to the sky. I've never

1001
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 1: seen a tree hit the moon. So be careful because

1002
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 1: markets are cyclical. Uh, markets get exuberant. He was a very,

1003
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:39,120
Speaker 1: very wise, earthy guy. Uh. That really shaped the culture.

1004
00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:42,880
Speaker 1: Him and John Whitehead really shaped the culture of Goldman

1005
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: Sacks and really explained to people that you're gonna do

1006
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:48,160
Speaker 1: a lot better if you can work on the team,

1007
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are. Don't be insecure,

1008
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: don't try to go after the credit if you will,

1009
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: but pass the ball. And so I look at those

1010
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 1: people as great mentors of mine. I've probably left out ten.

1011
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:03,800
Speaker 1: I don't want to make this like an Academy Awards speech.

1012
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:06,480
Speaker 1: I probably left out ten other people. But what we

1013
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:08,600
Speaker 1: know about life, you can't do it on your own.

1014
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 1: You gotta ask people for help. Ben Franklin once said

1015
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 1: several hundred years ago, if you want a friend, you

1016
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:18,800
Speaker 1: gotta ask the person for a favor. And what typically

1017
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 1: happens is once you ignite that person's willingness to help you.

1018
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:24,799
Speaker 1: And I'm in the camp that most people are good

1019
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:26,320
Speaker 1: natured and they can go out of the way to

1020
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:30,239
Speaker 1: help you, they will. Michael Milken, who I don't talk

1021
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 1: to every day, but I sort of feel like I

1022
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:34,200
Speaker 1: can pick up the phone, God forbid, if there was

1023
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:36,959
Speaker 1: a health issue in my family, Michael would be there.

1024
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:41,120
Speaker 1: One of my partners at a prostate cancer scare, I

1025
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: picked up the phone and called Michael. He spent an

1026
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 1: hour on the phone with my my colleague. Uh. He's

1027
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: a great man. I've tried to be a charitable donator

1028
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:53,080
Speaker 1: to his healthcare charities. He's a guy that if I

1029
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: had to make a big decision, I would call him

1030
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:57,719
Speaker 1: and I would ask him for his advice. And so

1031
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,320
Speaker 1: my message to our listeners is, if you want to

1032
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: make a friend, ask for the favor. Push the envelope

1033
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:08,760
Speaker 1: a little bit. Let's talk about um, not just mentors.

1034
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:14,359
Speaker 1: What investors influenced how you your career went on? Who

1035
00:56:14,440 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: who did you look at everybody says, well, Warren Buffett

1036
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 1: was really influential, But anybody that perhaps people may not

1037
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: know quite as well. Um, what investors did you find

1038
00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 1: really influential and seminars, you know, the classic investors like Buffett,

1039
00:56:30,120 --> 00:56:33,160
Speaker 1: or Monger or Phil Fisher. I think everyone's gonna talk

1040
00:56:33,200 --> 00:56:38,480
Speaker 1: about those guys, Phil Fisher. Um. Phil, Phil Fisher is

1041
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: ken Fisher's dad, Ken Fisher's Fisher investments. But Phil was

1042
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:46,480
Speaker 1: the real champion. And this is Charlie Munger's persuasion of

1043
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:50,360
Speaker 1: Mr Buffett, who was buying cigar butts that were half smoked,

1044
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:52,719
Speaker 1: and he was buying them at a discount, picking them

1045
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:56,120
Speaker 1: up off the streets, so to speak. He convinced Mr

1046
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:59,760
Speaker 1: Buffett to start buying growth orientated companies at fairer prices.

1047
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: And don't be super concerned about that huge value orientation.

1048
00:57:04,239 --> 00:57:05,840
Speaker 1: Make sure you're in a great business that as a

1049
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:08,800
Speaker 1: moat around it that can excel. Uh and and and

1050
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:11,759
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett and Phil Fischer and these guys were more

1051
00:57:11,880 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 1: focused on how companies perform and not necessarily how stocks trade.

1052
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 1: They're more focused on investing as opposed to day trading.

1053
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 1: And so those guys are a huge influenced to me. Um,

1054
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:27,600
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you something that may or may not

1055
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:31,320
Speaker 1: surprise you. Uh. For my career, I'm more interested in

1056
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: the Steve jobs is. I'm more interested in the guys

1057
00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 1: that the Richard Branson's or that the people I call

1058
00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:41,200
Speaker 1: the holy Trinity of disruption, which would be Ted Turner,

1059
00:57:41,360 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 1: Howard Schultz, and Richard Branson. Why am I so interested

1060
00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 1: in those guys? This year? I do have Richard this year. Uh,

1061
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:53,439
Speaker 1: they are breaking new ground. Uh. I'll tell you something.

1062
00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:57,720
Speaker 1: I'm in a commodity business fund of funds management years. Uh,

1063
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 1: several hundred of those sorts of things. Who else is

1064
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: in a commodity business. Well, there's a company that makes

1065
00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:06,800
Speaker 1: five products. They make a smartphone, a tablet. They used

1066
00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:09,520
Speaker 1: to make an MP three player, They have a hardtop

1067
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 1: and a laptop. Now they're gonna have a watch, Okay,

1068
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 1: And they still make the MP three players, just just

1069
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:18,200
Speaker 1: no longer a hard drive. It well well, well yeah,

1070
00:58:18,200 --> 00:58:20,120
Speaker 1: well they've and they've also built it into the iPhone.

1071
00:58:20,160 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: But but Apple Computer, with those five commodity products, Barry

1072
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:26,920
Speaker 1: and everybody in the world is making those products, particularly

1073
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,160
Speaker 1: everybody in Asia. Apple Computer has turned itself into the

1074
00:58:30,320 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 1: largest market capitalized company because they understood how to take

1075
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:39,880
Speaker 1: a commodity and turn it into an experience. You walk

1076
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:43,680
Speaker 1: into their stores, you're on their their app store, you're

1077
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:46,920
Speaker 1: in their eyebook store, you're on their iTunes store. All

1078
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:50,480
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're in their ecosystem. You feel hipper,

1079
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:53,919
Speaker 1: you feel cooler. You're fifteen to eighteen year old daughter

1080
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:57,120
Speaker 1: wants that phone versus the others. And they turned a

1081
00:58:57,240 --> 00:59:01,960
Speaker 1: commodity into an experience. Howard Schultz, he turned a commodity

1082
00:59:02,160 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 1: coffee that you and I went to the Landmark Diner

1083
00:59:04,480 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 1: room Manhasset and bought for twenty five cents in a

1084
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:11,160
Speaker 1: Greek diner coffee cup. He turned that into an experience.

1085
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:13,680
Speaker 1: I walk in there. Now it's got earth tones on

1086
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:16,240
Speaker 1: the floor, there's a green apron. I'm speaking in their

1087
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:20,000
Speaker 1: language about ordering something that I used to pay five

1088
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 1: cents for that I'm spending four dollars for. Uh. There's

1089
00:59:23,440 --> 00:59:25,640
Speaker 1: some good folk music in there, and I'm super happy

1090
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:28,480
Speaker 1: about the whole thing. And so so what I look

1091
00:59:28,560 --> 00:59:30,960
Speaker 1: for these guys too. I'm gonna, by the way, I'm

1092
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:34,120
Speaker 1: gonna combine the two. I take the Starbucks app. Yeah,

1093
00:59:34,160 --> 00:59:36,280
Speaker 1: and go exactly, and you got and I don't even

1094
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 1: reach into my pocket. You go to pay for this yourn.

1095
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 1: That's the funny thing is your phone is always out

1096
00:59:41,840 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 1: your while it's buried somewhere. Well, that's the other and

1097
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: that's Apple pay and and and so so from me,

1098
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: he was, no, exactly, that's Starbucks is card on there.

1099
00:59:51,440 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 1: But my my, my point is Richard Branson big commodity.

1100
00:59:56,960 --> 01:00:00,760
Speaker 1: Last fifty years air travel. Look at what he did

1101
01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: to air travel, the colors to change. He turned those

1102
01:00:04,640 --> 01:00:09,000
Speaker 1: planes into an experience for the customer. We turned a

1103
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:13,240
Speaker 1: coffee shop. Howard Schults turn a coffee shop into experience

1104
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:17,240
Speaker 1: with the customer. Sky Bridge, we are trying to turn

1105
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 1: our investment thesis and our performance into an experience for

1106
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:24,040
Speaker 1: the customer. We wanted to come to the Salt Conference

1107
01:00:24,200 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 1: and learn from some of the smartest people in the

1108
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:28,520
Speaker 1: world what's going on in the world. We wanted to

1109
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 1: tune into our television show Wall Street week and get

1110
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:34,440
Speaker 1: a thirty minute Salt conference every week. We want them

1111
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 1: to be investors of ours, and we want to help

1112
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:42,440
Speaker 1: make them long term investors. You know you've heard this before,

1113
01:00:42,520 --> 01:00:46,400
Speaker 1: but maybe your your listeners haven't if you take the

1114
01:00:46,520 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: following two choices. Would you like ten thousand dollars a

1115
01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 1: day or would you like a penny that I hand

1116
01:00:52,800 --> 01:00:55,280
Speaker 1: to you that doubles every day. So I'll give you

1117
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:58,040
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a day for thirty days, or I'll

1118
01:00:58,080 --> 01:01:00,280
Speaker 1: hand you a penny and it will double every day

1119
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:02,280
Speaker 1: for thirty days. What do you want that? I got

1120
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:05,280
Speaker 1: the math background, so I know I want that doubling penny. Yep.

1121
01:01:05,400 --> 01:01:08,080
Speaker 1: And so that doubling penny yields about five point four

1122
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: million dollars. If you're in your car, don't google it.

1123
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:13,400
Speaker 1: But if you're at home, go to Google and look

1124
01:01:13,480 --> 01:01:16,400
Speaker 1: up a penny doubling every day for thirty days, and

1125
01:01:16,480 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 1: you'll see the spreadsheet come up. And what you'll find

1126
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 1: about life. If you can get people to think about

1127
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: their money going to work for them and compounding gradually

1128
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:30,320
Speaker 1: in the marketplace, uh, it'll mean a more financially stable society,

1129
01:01:30,840 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 1: a more financially a stable and secure future for the individual.

1130
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:37,960
Speaker 1: And this is something that I'm very passionate about. A skybridge.

1131
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 1: We're gonna try to make that broader and more open

1132
01:01:41,280 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 1: for the average person. So let's talk a little bit

1133
01:01:43,640 --> 01:01:47,520
Speaker 1: about your buddy Gary Kaminski, yea who I'm I know.

1134
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,600
Speaker 1: He lives the next town over from me. You actually

1135
01:01:50,720 --> 01:01:53,560
Speaker 1: don't live that far from me either. I just moved

1136
01:01:53,600 --> 01:01:55,560
Speaker 1: a little east. So there must be there must be

1137
01:01:55,680 --> 01:01:57,880
Speaker 1: something in the water from Long Island and all its

1138
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:00,840
Speaker 1: big males living in the same area Togain. It's it's

1139
01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 1: not that far. We have a mutual friend, Jim McCann

1140
01:02:03,040 --> 01:02:05,800
Speaker 1: who was on the show that's great far from where

1141
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 1: you live as well. I'm a partner of his in

1142
01:02:07,960 --> 01:02:09,600
Speaker 1: the New York Mets, by the way. So he's a

1143
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:13,360
Speaker 1: great human being. And Jim's son, Matthew, has worked at

1144
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:16,280
Speaker 1: Skybridge for the last decade, one of the first employees

1145
01:02:16,320 --> 01:02:18,160
Speaker 1: that so we had him on the show. By the way,

1146
01:02:18,200 --> 01:02:21,640
Speaker 1: I talk about his new charity that he's he's wonderful,

1147
01:02:21,720 --> 01:02:23,480
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know, we're really not ready to

1148
01:02:23,520 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: talk about that yet. Jim, I wanted you to. Let's

1149
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:30,720
Speaker 1: raise you a little money. It's like later, okay, it's

1150
01:02:30,800 --> 01:02:34,400
Speaker 1: it's uh And it's actually a wonderful local charity. Wonderful guy.

1151
01:02:34,680 --> 01:02:36,600
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing what that goes. But let's

1152
01:02:36,600 --> 01:02:39,160
Speaker 1: talk about Kaminsky. He would go in that mentor role

1153
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:42,560
Speaker 1: model camp too. By the way that no, I mean

1154
01:02:42,800 --> 01:02:47,000
Speaker 1: Jim Gary. Gary's a contemporary. He's a very close personal friend.

1155
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 1: Before I left to launch my firm. Yeah, I had

1156
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:53,720
Speaker 1: dinner with Jim and and said, here's what I'm thinking about.

1157
01:02:53,720 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: There's a few people like that in my life. Another

1158
01:02:56,360 --> 01:03:01,280
Speaker 1: guy is Ed Mandel David Sure and basically said here's

1159
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking about. And each of them, from a

1160
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:08,360
Speaker 1: very different philosophical approach, gave me very good advice, very

1161
01:03:08,480 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: complimentary advice, but from a different angle. And and McCann

1162
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:16,600
Speaker 1: is one of the how do you describe him? He's

1163
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:20,240
Speaker 1: just very easy going and very insightful, and he's got,

1164
01:03:20,440 --> 01:03:22,800
Speaker 1: like you and I do, a pretty thick New York

1165
01:03:22,920 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: Long Island accent, and he sort of surprises you because

1166
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:30,360
Speaker 1: what comes out of out from that accent is a

1167
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:32,880
Speaker 1: little different than I think a lot of people expect.

1168
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 1: He's a he's a wonderful human being. And he took something, uh,

1169
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:40,720
Speaker 1: and this is what I love about life, and great

1170
01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:45,240
Speaker 1: American entrepreneurs can take nothing and turned it into something. Literally,

1171
01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:48,440
Speaker 1: he took a queen's flower shop and turned it into

1172
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:52,720
Speaker 1: an internationally recognized iconic brand. And so when I sat

1173
01:03:52,800 --> 01:03:55,680
Speaker 1: down with him uh m and acid had dinner with

1174
01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 1: him when I was starting Skybridge. Uh he gave me

1175
01:03:58,600 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 1: a lot of good advice and he said, hey, my

1176
01:04:00,440 --> 01:04:02,680
Speaker 1: son will come in an intern for you. And this

1177
01:04:02,840 --> 01:04:04,680
Speaker 1: is a great story. The kid worked for me for

1178
01:04:04,840 --> 01:04:07,479
Speaker 1: three months, fell in love with him, and I offered

1179
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:10,200
Speaker 1: him a permanent job. The thing is, I couldn't offer

1180
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:12,120
Speaker 1: him the permanent job until I was confident that we

1181
01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:14,080
Speaker 1: were raising the capital. But once we got the capital

1182
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:16,240
Speaker 1: in place, I turned him out and said, hey, we

1183
01:04:16,320 --> 01:04:18,720
Speaker 1: got to offer your permanent job. He's there for ten years.

1184
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:22,880
Speaker 1: And so I not only oh Jim some of the

1185
01:04:22,920 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 1: benefit of his great advice, but he also put his

1186
01:04:25,720 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 1: first second born son in my office. So I'm very

1187
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:32,200
Speaker 1: grateful for that too. So let's talk about Kaminski. So, so,

1188
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:36,680
Speaker 1: Gary is a dear friend. We've known each other forever.

1189
01:04:37,560 --> 01:04:40,720
Speaker 1: Gary has a wonderful way on television. He's very quick

1190
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:45,320
Speaker 1: on his feet about particulate, very fast. Uh He's got

1191
01:04:45,400 --> 01:04:49,200
Speaker 1: a real expertise behind. Like I don't know if you

1192
01:04:49,360 --> 01:04:51,439
Speaker 1: look at the same way when I watch other people

1193
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:53,680
Speaker 1: on TV and look, you and I have been doing

1194
01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:58,840
Speaker 1: CNBC and Fox and Bloomberg for for decades, I watched

1195
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:01,760
Speaker 1: somebody on TV and ten seconds it's like this guy

1196
01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:03,760
Speaker 1: doesn't know what he's talking about, or this guy is

1197
01:05:03,800 --> 01:05:06,320
Speaker 1: trying to be outrageous to make a call, or like

1198
01:05:06,800 --> 01:05:09,640
Speaker 1: you and I, I assume are kind of critical. And

1199
01:05:09,760 --> 01:05:13,360
Speaker 1: when you see somebody like Kaminsky on TV right away

1200
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:15,160
Speaker 1: you say, oh, this is a real depth and knowledge.

1201
01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: Back here to remember. So he's a money man. I

1202
01:05:17,560 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 1: mean he was running billions and billions of dollars at

1203
01:05:21,440 --> 01:05:24,479
Speaker 1: New Berger Berman. Uh, he's one of the best money

1204
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:29,600
Speaker 1: managers of our generations. That it was a Darmoul brad

1205
01:05:29,880 --> 01:05:34,160
Speaker 1: m d brilliant guy. Still working at New Burger with

1206
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:37,439
Speaker 1: his other brother Michael. They have a great team there.

1207
01:05:38,040 --> 01:05:40,920
Speaker 1: Full disclosure. They manage some of my retirement money and

1208
01:05:41,000 --> 01:05:43,440
Speaker 1: my family trust. I have an enormous respect for the

1209
01:05:43,480 --> 01:05:48,040
Speaker 1: Kaminski family as investors. But here's something that Gary has

1210
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:51,360
Speaker 1: been absolutely brilliant about. And you and I a decade,

1211
01:05:51,680 --> 01:05:55,520
Speaker 1: but Gary has been on Tellers for twenty five years. Amazing.

1212
01:05:55,840 --> 01:05:58,800
Speaker 1: His first time on TV, I think he was well, yeah,

1213
01:05:58,840 --> 01:06:01,160
Speaker 1: well yeah, let's let's let's put him back. I call

1214
01:06:01,200 --> 01:06:03,600
Speaker 1: him Grandpa Gary. Now, just to tease him. But but

1215
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:07,520
Speaker 1: but he's Uh, he's been a great friend. But he's

1216
01:06:07,520 --> 01:06:10,360
Speaker 1: an insightful guy. Here's the thing I find that we

1217
01:06:10,440 --> 01:06:12,920
Speaker 1: have to be careful of as pundits. We don't want

1218
01:06:12,960 --> 01:06:15,400
Speaker 1: to just provide information to people. We want to provide

1219
01:06:15,440 --> 01:06:19,720
Speaker 1: them insight and what context with them exactly context, what

1220
01:06:19,920 --> 01:06:23,000
Speaker 1: to do with the information. There's nobody better on television

1221
01:06:23,000 --> 01:06:25,360
Speaker 1: than Gary Kaimisky and doing that. And I'll tell you

1222
01:06:25,400 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 1: another thing about Gary Kaminski. Uh, the guests want to

1223
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:34,040
Speaker 1: be on the show, Uh, in large part because of him. Well,

1224
01:06:34,120 --> 01:06:35,440
Speaker 1: let me put it to you this way. I think

1225
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: he knows these guys a lot better than me. A

1226
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:39,400
Speaker 1: lot of these people you know. And I have some

1227
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 1: close friends in the hedge fund community and some close

1228
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:44,720
Speaker 1: friends as a result of Salt but being on television

1229
01:06:44,800 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 1: twenty five years and interviewing different money managers over that

1230
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:51,400
Speaker 1: span of time. He had his own television show about

1231
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:54,800
Speaker 1: five years ago. Uh. He has a whole code array,

1232
01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:58,520
Speaker 1: a whole broad deep rolodex of people that I think

1233
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:01,640
Speaker 1: are fascinating that I'm looking forward to having the opportunity

1234
01:07:01,680 --> 01:07:04,880
Speaker 1: to interview on our show. At the time of Gary Show,

1235
01:07:05,800 --> 01:07:08,360
Speaker 1: which was the name of it was Strategy Session, right.

1236
01:07:08,480 --> 01:07:11,480
Speaker 1: I thought it was the best show on the CNBC lineup,

1237
01:07:11,880 --> 01:07:13,560
Speaker 1: but they had put it at the wrong time. It

1238
01:07:13,680 --> 01:07:16,120
Speaker 1: wasn't a lunch hour show. It was either a seven

1239
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:19,000
Speaker 1: am show or a four pm After the Bell show.

1240
01:07:19,360 --> 01:07:21,560
Speaker 1: But in the middle of the day it didn't find

1241
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:24,560
Speaker 1: its audience. And it was very smart and very well done.

1242
01:07:24,680 --> 01:07:27,360
Speaker 1: Well listen. I mean, there's a lot of different things

1243
01:07:27,440 --> 01:07:29,880
Speaker 1: that go on in these places in terms of how

1244
01:07:29,960 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: you make decisions about leaving a show on the air

1245
01:07:32,160 --> 01:07:35,080
Speaker 1: or not. And so one of the things that Gary

1246
01:07:35,120 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 1: and I Skybridge what we thought we would do is

1247
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:40,280
Speaker 1: we would make the show ourselves. This way, we could

1248
01:07:40,360 --> 01:07:42,880
Speaker 1: show the show whenever we wanted. You can go to

1249
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 1: Wall Street week dot com and watch it. We are

1250
01:07:46,240 --> 01:07:49,920
Speaker 1: televising it on Fox affiliates because I am a contributor

1251
01:07:49,960 --> 01:07:52,720
Speaker 1: to Fox Business and Fox News. But now that's something new,

1252
01:07:53,040 --> 01:07:56,440
Speaker 1: because you weren't always a contributor. No, no, I had.

1253
01:07:56,600 --> 01:07:59,160
Speaker 1: I had a prior relationship with CNBC, and that was

1254
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:01,320
Speaker 1: for a couple of a good couple of years, a

1255
01:08:01,400 --> 01:08:04,440
Speaker 1: couple of years, but they were a spot. Now I know.

1256
01:08:04,560 --> 01:08:08,120
Speaker 1: Bloomberg is a sponsor of the conference wasn't CNBC at

1257
01:08:08,160 --> 01:08:12,320
Speaker 1: one time CNBC. Well, you know, I think there's a

1258
01:08:12,400 --> 01:08:14,760
Speaker 1: couple of guys coming from the internet side, but I

1259
01:08:14,840 --> 01:08:17,559
Speaker 1: think the the television side this year will be Fox

1260
01:08:17,680 --> 01:08:20,560
Speaker 1: Business in Bloomberg and listen. You know, the truth of

1261
01:08:20,640 --> 01:08:23,640
Speaker 1: the matter is, um, I have fallen in love with

1262
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:28,720
Speaker 1: Roger Ales and Bill Shine. Roger has done and we

1263
01:08:28,760 --> 01:08:31,000
Speaker 1: wanna talk about an entrepreneur, I gotta put him up

1264
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:33,560
Speaker 1: there with the other ones we were referencing. Fox is

1265
01:08:33,640 --> 01:08:37,040
Speaker 1: a giant. But you just think about what Roger Ayles did.

1266
01:08:37,240 --> 01:08:41,200
Speaker 1: He started something from absolutely nothing, um. And he'll tell

1267
01:08:41,240 --> 01:08:44,000
Speaker 1: you himself that people were throwing eggs and tomatoes at

1268
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:46,840
Speaker 1: him and Rupert Murdoch scoffing at the idea that they

1269
01:08:46,880 --> 01:08:49,200
Speaker 1: were going to take on CNN. Can I tell you

1270
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:51,600
Speaker 1: look at look at what he's done. He's one of

1271
01:08:51,680 --> 01:08:55,120
Speaker 1: my intellectual heroes. I don't agree with the politics of

1272
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:58,200
Speaker 1: of some of the crazy that we run into on

1273
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:01,040
Speaker 1: some of the more radical shows on Box, but when

1274
01:09:01,080 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 1: you look at it strictly from a business perspective, they

1275
01:09:04,320 --> 01:09:08,639
Speaker 1: may be the most successful cable television channel ever. Well, listen,

1276
01:09:08,680 --> 01:09:11,360
Speaker 1: I I think that there are crazies on the left.

1277
01:09:11,400 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 1: There are crazies on the right, and I know, but

1278
01:09:14,120 --> 01:09:19,560
Speaker 1: MSNBC has no influence. Foxes enormously. People scoff at the

1279
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:22,840
Speaker 1: tagline fair and balance, but I always tell people who

1280
01:09:22,920 --> 01:09:25,720
Speaker 1: aren't watching it, go watch it because it is fair

1281
01:09:25,800 --> 01:09:28,400
Speaker 1: and balance. They are bringing a ton of Democrats on

1282
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:31,639
Speaker 1: the show. They are bringing a ton of left leaning people.

1283
01:09:32,200 --> 01:09:34,720
Speaker 1: I would argue with the fair and balance but from

1284
01:09:35,200 --> 01:09:39,400
Speaker 1: but there's no But there's no argument from a business perspective.

1285
01:09:40,160 --> 01:09:42,160
Speaker 1: They are the most one of the if not the

1286
01:09:42,400 --> 01:09:45,680
Speaker 1: most successful. Watch Bill O'Reilly's show for one week and

1287
01:09:45,760 --> 01:09:47,479
Speaker 1: you tell me where he's not fair and balance? So

1288
01:09:47,600 --> 01:09:50,080
Speaker 1: what's pretty fair? Independent guys? So let me tell you

1289
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:54,880
Speaker 1: this is an interesting digression. But Bill O'Reilly when he

1290
01:09:55,000 --> 01:09:58,320
Speaker 1: first started, was kind of described as the wild man

1291
01:09:58,439 --> 01:10:02,800
Speaker 1: of Fox. And now how Bill O'Reilly is essentially the

1292
01:10:02,920 --> 01:10:06,760
Speaker 1: adult supervision. He is the closest thing to fair and

1293
01:10:06,840 --> 01:10:12,000
Speaker 1: balanced on Fox. When you compare him, he's practically statesmanlike

1294
01:10:12,680 --> 01:10:16,040
Speaker 1: against some of the other I'm not going to mention

1295
01:10:16,080 --> 01:10:18,240
Speaker 1: people by name, but some of the more extreme shows,

1296
01:10:18,320 --> 01:10:21,519
Speaker 1: and you know, every now and then there's some really listen,

1297
01:10:21,560 --> 01:10:24,400
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a I'm a declared Republican and so I

1298
01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:27,600
Speaker 1: but that's a transition for you as well. Well. No,

1299
01:10:27,800 --> 01:10:31,200
Speaker 1: I've always been a Republican, but my law school classmate

1300
01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:33,400
Speaker 1: was a couple of years behind me. Barack Obama when

1301
01:10:33,439 --> 01:10:35,960
Speaker 1: he ran for the presidency two years behind you, was

1302
01:10:36,000 --> 01:10:38,120
Speaker 1: that right, two years behind me? I did support him

1303
01:10:38,120 --> 01:10:40,080
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, and so, as a good

1304
01:10:40,240 --> 01:10:42,960
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic, I'm paying penance now to the to the

1305
01:10:43,040 --> 01:10:45,880
Speaker 1: Republican Party for doing that. But but so you know, listen,

1306
01:10:45,920 --> 01:10:47,800
Speaker 1: I don't want to spend the whole time talking about Fox.

1307
01:10:48,120 --> 01:10:50,800
Speaker 1: I'm in love with the network. Uh. I think they

1308
01:10:50,920 --> 01:10:54,479
Speaker 1: do a massiful job. I think that Brett Bear Special

1309
01:10:54,600 --> 01:10:57,360
Speaker 1: Report is among the best news uh that can be

1310
01:10:57,479 --> 01:11:00,560
Speaker 1: delivered out there. Show me a better news program. I

1311
01:11:00,680 --> 01:11:02,560
Speaker 1: do think that they are fair and balanced. Not to

1312
01:11:02,600 --> 01:11:05,040
Speaker 1: say that they don't have right leaning shows, but they

1313
01:11:05,080 --> 01:11:07,960
Speaker 1: have a lot of left leaning individuals on there. And

1314
01:11:08,360 --> 01:11:10,960
Speaker 1: I think that the reason why people are watching them

1315
01:11:11,040 --> 01:11:14,439
Speaker 1: and Quinnipiac backs is up they were entertaining. Well. No,

1316
01:11:14,560 --> 01:11:17,160
Speaker 1: they voted in the most trusted news organization in the

1317
01:11:17,280 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: United States when they had a pole So we don't

1318
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:22,439
Speaker 1: we we don't have to you and I disagree possibly

1319
01:11:22,479 --> 01:11:25,200
Speaker 1: about some of this stuff, so that I like them.

1320
01:11:25,320 --> 01:11:27,400
Speaker 1: So let's tall. I have an enormous amount of respect

1321
01:11:27,400 --> 01:11:29,720
Speaker 1: for Roger rails Well and Bill Shine for that man.

1322
01:11:29,800 --> 01:11:32,840
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about your involvement with

1323
01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:36,360
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, because there's a wonderful arc when people talk

1324
01:11:36,400 --> 01:11:40,240
Speaker 1: about who is Anthony Scaramucci? So you support your former

1325
01:11:40,360 --> 01:11:45,080
Speaker 1: Harvard Look classmate he gets elected. In two thousand and eight,

1326
01:11:46,439 --> 01:11:49,960
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of a financial crisis. Lo and behold,

1327
01:11:50,040 --> 01:11:53,000
Speaker 1: there's a lot of chess beating about Wall Street. Um.

1328
01:11:53,200 --> 01:11:56,080
Speaker 1: I try to be as objective as possible in bail

1329
01:11:56,120 --> 01:11:59,000
Speaker 1: Out Nation because I didn't want to write the book

1330
01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:03,000
Speaker 1: that there's a story to that. Bill Fleckenstein's Greenspan's Bubble

1331
01:12:03,200 --> 01:12:06,360
Speaker 1: had come out and it was wildly successful for a

1332
01:12:06,400 --> 01:12:09,760
Speaker 1: business book, and uh mcgroy hill had gone to him

1333
01:12:09,760 --> 01:12:12,000
Speaker 1: and said, okay, now let's do something on bear Sterns.

1334
01:12:12,560 --> 01:12:14,439
Speaker 1: And he goes, hey, man, I just finished one book

1335
01:12:14,439 --> 01:12:15,920
Speaker 1: and I need a few years to you know what

1336
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:18,240
Speaker 1: it's You've written super hard. You know, it takes a

1337
01:12:18,320 --> 01:12:20,559
Speaker 1: year or two to recover. So they asked him, who

1338
01:12:20,720 --> 01:12:22,799
Speaker 1: who else is writing on this? Oh? That's easy. Ridholtz

1339
01:12:22,800 --> 01:12:25,479
Speaker 1: has been running about Baron Lehman for a year or two.

1340
01:12:25,520 --> 01:12:26,920
Speaker 1: You should go talk to him, And I said, no,

1341
01:12:27,240 --> 01:12:30,320
Speaker 1: no exaggeration, half half a dozen times. I don't want this.

1342
01:12:30,600 --> 01:12:34,439
Speaker 1: So anyway, I tried to be objective, which is a

1343
01:12:34,560 --> 01:12:38,080
Speaker 1: real challenge. But the reason I bring that up within

1344
01:12:38,160 --> 01:12:40,920
Speaker 1: the context is there was a lot of beating on

1345
01:12:41,040 --> 01:12:43,400
Speaker 1: Wall Street. And look, you and I have both been

1346
01:12:43,439 --> 01:12:47,080
Speaker 1: in this industry for twenty plus year. You know that

1347
01:12:47,840 --> 01:12:50,639
Speaker 1: there's a handful of people in every firm that blows

1348
01:12:50,760 --> 01:12:53,200
Speaker 1: up that a response. My favorite example is a I

1349
01:12:53,320 --> 01:12:58,919
Speaker 1: G was seventy employees, two people in the financial products division,

1350
01:12:59,320 --> 01:13:02,519
Speaker 1: and of those two people, a dozen were responsible for

1351
01:13:03,280 --> 01:13:05,840
Speaker 1: all of the damage. So when people are beating on

1352
01:13:05,960 --> 01:13:09,800
Speaker 1: Wall Street, they're beating on the headlines, or they're beating

1353
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:13,040
Speaker 1: on a guy like Dick Fold, but the people at

1354
01:13:13,080 --> 01:13:15,120
Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers didn't cause it to blow up. One of

1355
01:13:15,320 --> 01:13:19,240
Speaker 1: which leads me to the line, Hey, Barack, you're beating

1356
01:13:19,360 --> 01:13:22,200
Speaker 1: us like a pinata. That's that's where I wanted to

1357
01:13:22,240 --> 01:13:23,920
Speaker 1: go with That was a that was a tough line

1358
01:13:23,960 --> 01:13:26,080
Speaker 1: for me. So I was at the museum at a

1359
01:13:26,160 --> 01:13:29,200
Speaker 1: town hall meeting, Susan Krakaur, who is now my producer

1360
01:13:29,320 --> 01:13:33,439
Speaker 1: for formerly producer at CNBC and a big demand money

1361
01:13:33,479 --> 01:13:37,639
Speaker 1: and Fast money, long television background. Uh, she's our producer

1362
01:13:37,760 --> 01:13:40,880
Speaker 1: for Wall Street Week and a partner of mine. She

1363
01:13:41,040 --> 01:13:43,519
Speaker 1: basically called on me to ask a question of the president.

1364
01:13:43,600 --> 01:13:46,080
Speaker 1: He recognized me immediately from law school. We got a

1365
01:13:46,120 --> 01:13:48,200
Speaker 1: little of a bantam while I also supported him, and

1366
01:13:48,240 --> 01:13:50,680
Speaker 1: I said, well, Mr President, when are we going to

1367
01:13:50,760 --> 01:13:54,360
Speaker 1: stop whacking Wall Street with a pinata stick? Well, one

1368
01:13:54,400 --> 01:13:57,599
Speaker 1: thing you learned is as an Italian American, you shouldn't

1369
01:13:57,680 --> 01:14:00,160
Speaker 1: use the word whack on live television. That's one thing

1370
01:14:00,200 --> 01:14:03,200
Speaker 1: you learned. And you know the president as a bully pulpit,

1371
01:14:03,280 --> 01:14:05,360
Speaker 1: and so he bullied me with the pulpit, and so

1372
01:14:05,760 --> 01:14:08,360
Speaker 1: that was fine, But that wasn't the reason why I

1373
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:12,120
Speaker 1: switched back to the Republican. But let's talk about one

1374
01:14:12,200 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: second and then we'll come back to the Republicans and

1375
01:14:15,200 --> 01:14:17,520
Speaker 1: I will have a discussion because I'm an ex Republican.

1376
01:14:18,040 --> 01:14:22,080
Speaker 1: But you um that when viral that line blew up,

1377
01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:24,800
Speaker 1: It was on The Daily Show, was on Fox, it

1378
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:29,880
Speaker 1: was on CNN, that basically was everywhere. What was that like? Well,

1379
01:14:30,320 --> 01:14:32,880
Speaker 1: you know, let me tell you something. I was lit

1380
01:14:32,960 --> 01:14:35,920
Speaker 1: up by the left wing blogs and YouTube. That clip

1381
01:14:36,040 --> 01:14:38,960
Speaker 1: was on YouTube YouTube a few million views. You know.

1382
01:14:39,160 --> 01:14:41,479
Speaker 1: Jon Stewart had some funny lines about me that my

1383
01:14:41,960 --> 01:14:45,200
Speaker 1: teenage children still give back to me over the last

1384
01:14:45,400 --> 01:14:47,800
Speaker 1: four or five years. But what I would say to

1385
01:14:47,880 --> 01:14:51,759
Speaker 1: you about that experience is uh, something that you should

1386
01:14:51,800 --> 01:14:53,840
Speaker 1: never read with people write about you. That's probably a

1387
01:14:53,880 --> 01:14:56,880
Speaker 1: good idea, but don't. But I did read a comment

1388
01:14:57,040 --> 01:14:59,320
Speaker 1: where somebody said to me that I was an elitist

1389
01:14:59,479 --> 01:15:02,519
Speaker 1: because I was. I didn't realize that Wall Street was

1390
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:06,759
Speaker 1: this great sinning society and Barack Obama was the popular savior,

1391
01:15:06,840 --> 01:15:09,200
Speaker 1: and I was an elitist because I was a member

1392
01:15:09,240 --> 01:15:12,719
Speaker 1: of the Wall Street community, like it's a monolithic exactly.

1393
01:15:12,720 --> 01:15:15,200
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking to myself, my god, this person

1394
01:15:15,280 --> 01:15:17,639
Speaker 1: thinks I'm gonna leaders. I grew up in a middle

1395
01:15:17,680 --> 01:15:21,320
Speaker 1: class family on Long Island in Port Washington. My parents

1396
01:15:21,400 --> 01:15:23,840
Speaker 1: didn't go to college. How am I an elitist? And

1397
01:15:23,920 --> 01:15:27,680
Speaker 1: then it dawned on me, Barry, that the person that

1398
01:15:27,800 --> 01:15:31,320
Speaker 1: wrote that was right, that I had actually become an

1399
01:15:31,400 --> 01:15:35,599
Speaker 1: elitist because I was insulating myself with super wealthy people

1400
01:15:36,160 --> 01:15:39,320
Speaker 1: managing the money of super wealthy people going to fancy

1401
01:15:39,360 --> 01:15:43,120
Speaker 1: pants country clubs and fancy pants restaurants, and I was

1402
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:48,280
Speaker 1: losing touch with some of the things that the middle

1403
01:15:48,400 --> 01:15:50,840
Speaker 1: class of the United States and the lower middle class

1404
01:15:50,880 --> 01:15:54,400
Speaker 1: are suffering with. And so that whole experience for me

1405
01:15:54,800 --> 01:15:58,880
Speaker 1: was hugely valuable because when I worked for Governor Romney

1406
01:15:58,960 --> 01:16:02,240
Speaker 1: on the two thousand twelve election, I asked for the

1407
01:16:02,280 --> 01:16:05,800
Speaker 1: opportunity to travel and got an opportunity to see some

1408
01:16:05,920 --> 01:16:08,559
Speaker 1: of the small towns in the United States that are

1409
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:14,320
Speaker 1: frankly suffering. We've got a wage depression or stagnation. We

1410
01:16:14,439 --> 01:16:17,280
Speaker 1: have a disposable income decline over the least six or

1411
01:16:17,400 --> 01:16:22,640
Speaker 1: seven years. And you know it goes back decades, but

1412
01:16:22,680 --> 01:16:24,160
Speaker 1: the last six or seven years I had an eight

1413
01:16:24,200 --> 01:16:27,439
Speaker 1: percent drop. That's fairly steep. And so the point of

1414
01:16:27,520 --> 01:16:31,000
Speaker 1: me bringing all this up is that we have to

1415
01:16:31,080 --> 01:16:33,880
Speaker 1: come up. But this is not a left or right discussion.

1416
01:16:34,040 --> 01:16:37,080
Speaker 1: This is a right or wrong discussion. Or as Scott

1417
01:16:37,120 --> 01:16:39,880
Speaker 1: Walker said in a dinner on Sunday night, it's not

1418
01:16:40,240 --> 01:16:43,840
Speaker 1: a red or blue thing. It's a red, white and

1419
01:16:44,040 --> 01:16:46,920
Speaker 1: blue thing. And the point being is that we have

1420
01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:51,800
Speaker 1: to come up with the right policy directives. The right initiatives, corporations,

1421
01:16:51,880 --> 01:16:56,000
Speaker 1: small businesses. We have to figure out a way to

1422
01:16:56,640 --> 01:16:59,040
Speaker 1: close that income gap. We have to figure out a

1423
01:16:59,080 --> 01:17:01,400
Speaker 1: way to grow the po. I I'm not a big

1424
01:17:01,479 --> 01:17:04,360
Speaker 1: believer in the redistribution theory. I don't think that's ever

1425
01:17:04,479 --> 01:17:07,960
Speaker 1: worked in history. We have a lot of laboratory documentation

1426
01:17:08,040 --> 01:17:10,640
Speaker 1: about that not working. Uh, And so we have to

1427
01:17:10,680 --> 01:17:13,160
Speaker 1: figure out a way to empower people. And this is

1428
01:17:13,200 --> 01:17:15,120
Speaker 1: another reason not to threat it back to our show

1429
01:17:15,200 --> 01:17:17,240
Speaker 1: Wall Street Week, but one of the themes and the

1430
01:17:17,280 --> 01:17:19,920
Speaker 1: mission statements of the Wall Street Week is, hey, rely

1431
01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:23,040
Speaker 1: on yourself. You can't rely on Social Security, you can't

1432
01:17:23,080 --> 01:17:25,639
Speaker 1: be a dependent of the government. We gotta figure out

1433
01:17:25,680 --> 01:17:28,400
Speaker 1: ways to help you save and build an est eg

1434
01:17:28,479 --> 01:17:34,400
Speaker 1: for yourselves. So that's really a fascinating tell. I love

1435
01:17:34,560 --> 01:17:39,000
Speaker 1: that arc. And you, basically, I don't know if you're

1436
01:17:39,040 --> 01:17:42,040
Speaker 1: aware of what you just said, but one of your

1437
01:17:42,080 --> 01:17:45,280
Speaker 1: early mentors who had said to you, are you gonna

1438
01:17:45,360 --> 01:17:49,520
Speaker 1: grow or you're gonna swell? You're basically saying that pre Pinata,

1439
01:17:50,240 --> 01:17:52,360
Speaker 1: you were engaging in a little swelling. Is that what

1440
01:17:52,439 --> 01:17:55,400
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from? Well, I, you know, I certainly didn't

1441
01:17:55,479 --> 01:17:58,160
Speaker 1: think I was engaging in swelling. But I possibly was

1442
01:17:58,360 --> 01:18:00,839
Speaker 1: not only just engaging in swelling, is I was overly

1443
01:18:01,040 --> 01:18:06,360
Speaker 1: insulating myself in a way where you're losing touch with

1444
01:18:06,800 --> 01:18:08,559
Speaker 1: the some of the things that you need to really

1445
01:18:08,600 --> 01:18:11,080
Speaker 1: focus on in your life. And so and in politics

1446
01:18:11,200 --> 01:18:14,559
Speaker 1: that's huge, and in politics, but also in business. UM,

1447
01:18:14,680 --> 01:18:17,000
Speaker 1: I've really tried to set up Skybridge in a way

1448
01:18:17,600 --> 01:18:20,240
Speaker 1: where who's ever working at Skybridge they feel like they're

1449
01:18:20,280 --> 01:18:22,479
Speaker 1: getting a good experience. We pay a percent of the

1450
01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:27,360
Speaker 1: health care at Skybridge. We give the most allowable or

1451
01:18:27,439 --> 01:18:33,599
Speaker 1: the maximum profit contribution to the i RA S or matching. Uh,

1452
01:18:34,120 --> 01:18:36,080
Speaker 1: you know, I'm Italian. We serve a free meal every

1453
01:18:36,160 --> 01:18:38,120
Speaker 1: day at lunch. If you're there for dinner, we're gonna

1454
01:18:38,160 --> 01:18:41,320
Speaker 1: serve your dinner. My My whole feeling is is that

1455
01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:44,719
Speaker 1: I feel that we can create a profitable enough firm

1456
01:18:44,960 --> 01:18:47,519
Speaker 1: to help people with their retirement and help people with

1457
01:18:47,600 --> 01:18:50,960
Speaker 1: their current healthcare and so so I really have tried

1458
01:18:51,040 --> 01:18:54,440
Speaker 1: to think about these things in the most human way possible,

1459
01:18:55,439 --> 01:18:57,840
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, UM, I think

1460
01:18:57,880 --> 01:19:00,160
Speaker 1: that's all we really have is the relationships that we

1461
01:19:00,240 --> 01:19:02,479
Speaker 1: have with the other people around us. And so so

1462
01:19:02,720 --> 01:19:06,200
Speaker 1: sometimes if you are in a tunnel, or sometimes you're

1463
01:19:06,280 --> 01:19:09,560
Speaker 1: overly focused on certain things, you can lose focus on

1464
01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:12,479
Speaker 1: important things. I if I gave you all my flaws,

1465
01:19:12,560 --> 01:19:14,400
Speaker 1: we'd be here for six days. And there's a ton

1466
01:19:14,520 --> 01:19:16,640
Speaker 1: and there's a big phone book of them. But but

1467
01:19:16,840 --> 01:19:19,439
Speaker 1: one thing that the pinata experience did for me, it

1468
01:19:19,520 --> 01:19:23,560
Speaker 1: was very eye opening about not overly insulating yourself. So

1469
01:19:23,920 --> 01:19:27,040
Speaker 1: so let me ask you a couple of related questions.

1470
01:19:27,560 --> 01:19:29,920
Speaker 1: And I only have you for another fifteen minutes or

1471
01:19:29,960 --> 01:19:33,360
Speaker 1: so before your um colleague is gonna start bouncing off

1472
01:19:33,400 --> 01:19:38,000
Speaker 1: the glass walls in the UH in the engineers booth um.

1473
01:19:38,680 --> 01:19:41,240
Speaker 1: Is Wall Street still being treated like a pinata? Or

1474
01:19:41,320 --> 01:19:44,479
Speaker 1: have we begun to move past that? Well, I think

1475
01:19:44,520 --> 01:19:46,880
Speaker 1: there's a number of things that have happened, and and

1476
01:19:47,160 --> 01:19:49,759
Speaker 1: not to music cliche, at one or two bad Apple

1477
01:19:49,800 --> 01:19:52,600
Speaker 1: spoils a whole bunch. But what has basically happened is

1478
01:19:53,280 --> 01:19:55,920
Speaker 1: the media focuses on Wall Street. It's a lot like

1479
01:19:55,960 --> 01:19:58,280
Speaker 1: what Willie Sutton said about banks, because that's amount of

1480
01:19:58,320 --> 01:20:01,600
Speaker 1: money is and so when the media is focusing, the

1481
01:20:01,720 --> 01:20:04,840
Speaker 1: focus has been on sort of three things. The person

1482
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:08,240
Speaker 1: that's made a billion, the person that lost a billion,

1483
01:20:08,640 --> 01:20:10,680
Speaker 1: and the person that stole a billion, and so it's

1484
01:20:10,720 --> 01:20:13,160
Speaker 1: made a billion, lost a billion, stole a billion, and

1485
01:20:13,320 --> 01:20:15,960
Speaker 1: the and the stole a billion one is the most

1486
01:20:16,080 --> 01:20:18,479
Speaker 1: riveting because that's the car crash where all the rubber

1487
01:20:18,560 --> 01:20:21,519
Speaker 1: necking takes place. And so what that does is it

1488
01:20:21,640 --> 01:20:26,560
Speaker 1: infuses the spirit of distrust, malfeasance, malpractice. Uh. And to

1489
01:20:26,680 --> 01:20:33,160
Speaker 1: your earlier point, there were probably pick the number. Most

1490
01:20:33,200 --> 01:20:35,280
Speaker 1: of the people in our community are really trying to

1491
01:20:35,360 --> 01:20:36,960
Speaker 1: do a good job, and most of the people really

1492
01:20:37,000 --> 01:20:39,400
Speaker 1: care about their customers and are not in the rip

1493
01:20:39,479 --> 01:20:43,479
Speaker 1: off business. And so uh that and are offended by

1494
01:20:43,600 --> 01:20:46,000
Speaker 1: the concept of, Hey, if you have a product to

1495
01:20:46,040 --> 01:20:48,799
Speaker 1: go sell, go sell it. But if you're gonna steal

1496
01:20:48,960 --> 01:20:51,759
Speaker 1: from people, what is that job? You know? That seems

1497
01:20:51,800 --> 01:20:54,240
Speaker 1: to be the two. If you worked inside the sky bridge,

1498
01:20:54,240 --> 01:20:55,920
Speaker 1: you'd have to hear this lecture all time. You know,

1499
01:20:56,040 --> 01:20:59,519
Speaker 1: my my parents and my grandparents, Uh, they love me

1500
01:20:59,640 --> 01:21:02,400
Speaker 1: very much much. Uh. Many of them work with their hands.

1501
01:21:02,520 --> 01:21:05,479
Speaker 1: Many many of these people were never educated. And I

1502
01:21:05,520 --> 01:21:08,160
Speaker 1: always tell the people that work inside a skybridge, but

1503
01:21:08,280 --> 01:21:10,519
Speaker 1: one thing they did for me is give me my

1504
01:21:10,640 --> 01:21:13,720
Speaker 1: last name clean. There's not enough art, there's not enough,

1505
01:21:13,960 --> 01:21:16,200
Speaker 1: not a big enough house there isn't a large enough

1506
01:21:16,240 --> 01:21:20,040
Speaker 1: private plane that I need to do anything to hurt

1507
01:21:20,200 --> 01:21:22,880
Speaker 1: my family or my mom and dad. And so I

1508
01:21:23,000 --> 01:21:25,840
Speaker 1: really try to drive that home because I think, uh,

1509
01:21:25,960 --> 01:21:28,439
Speaker 1: in leadership, the fish things from the head down. I

1510
01:21:28,520 --> 01:21:30,640
Speaker 1: try to let my staff know we don't ever need

1511
01:21:30,680 --> 01:21:33,720
Speaker 1: to go anywhere near any line. Our job is to

1512
01:21:33,800 --> 01:21:36,519
Speaker 1: serve our customers. And I also tell the staff. Let

1513
01:21:36,520 --> 01:21:38,240
Speaker 1: me tell you some there are six d people relying

1514
01:21:38,320 --> 01:21:41,799
Speaker 1: on the firm. Immediately, those are the sixty people inside

1515
01:21:41,840 --> 01:21:44,200
Speaker 1: the firm. And then there's all the dependence that would

1516
01:21:44,240 --> 01:21:48,360
Speaker 1: be my four children, my mom and dad who I subsidize. Uh,

1517
01:21:48,560 --> 01:21:51,640
Speaker 1: you know, my my employees and staff are partners. All

1518
01:21:51,720 --> 01:21:54,280
Speaker 1: have children. They need to make mortgage payments, they need

1519
01:21:54,320 --> 01:21:57,000
Speaker 1: to make tuition payments. We got a ton of people

1520
01:21:57,120 --> 01:21:59,960
Speaker 1: relying on us, and so don't just think about your

1521
01:22:00,040 --> 01:22:03,160
Speaker 1: self when you're making decisions. Think about that broad community

1522
01:22:03,240 --> 01:22:06,559
Speaker 1: of people. Uh that or want you to look out

1523
01:22:06,640 --> 01:22:08,680
Speaker 1: for them? All right, So in the last couple of

1524
01:22:08,760 --> 01:22:11,360
Speaker 1: minutes we have, let me get to my last few

1525
01:22:11,479 --> 01:22:14,600
Speaker 1: questions or a couple of questions I always ask, and

1526
01:22:14,760 --> 01:22:18,880
Speaker 1: I don't want to skip um. But first a quick

1527
01:22:18,920 --> 01:22:22,639
Speaker 1: hedge fund question so the rules have recently been changed

1528
01:22:22,920 --> 01:22:27,760
Speaker 1: on on advertising, on marketing. How is that changing the

1529
01:22:28,200 --> 01:22:31,719
Speaker 1: hedge fund world. Well, I think for right now it's

1530
01:22:31,800 --> 01:22:35,000
Speaker 1: not changing the hedge fund world because most people have

1531
01:22:35,160 --> 01:22:37,920
Speaker 1: elected to stay away from it because they're getting advice

1532
01:22:37,960 --> 01:22:41,760
Speaker 1: from their outside councils and their internal council that the

1533
01:22:41,840 --> 01:22:43,960
Speaker 1: rules are very uncertain and you don't want to hit

1534
01:22:44,000 --> 01:22:46,639
Speaker 1: a trip wire somewhere where you get the the SEC

1535
01:22:47,280 --> 01:22:50,360
Speaker 1: or some other regulatory agency upset with you. Um and

1536
01:22:50,479 --> 01:22:53,519
Speaker 1: so I think it's hard. One thing that Skybridge did

1537
01:22:53,640 --> 01:22:56,800
Speaker 1: which I don't view as necessarily advertising, is we went

1538
01:22:56,880 --> 01:23:00,280
Speaker 1: into a public private partnership with the City of West

1539
01:23:00,320 --> 01:23:03,720
Speaker 1: Palm Beach uh and we are the sponsors for their

1540
01:23:03,840 --> 01:23:07,320
Speaker 1: bicycles share a Ride program, so like like city Bikes

1541
01:23:07,760 --> 01:23:10,519
Speaker 1: Nike here and so we've got a hundred and fifty

1542
01:23:10,600 --> 01:23:15,000
Speaker 1: bikes bicycles at fourteen kiosks throughout the city of West

1543
01:23:15,040 --> 01:23:17,599
Speaker 1: Palm Beach. We just opened an office in Palm Beach.

1544
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:21,600
Speaker 1: Guard pretty clean. That's this, this environmentally safe. All it

1545
01:23:21,760 --> 01:23:24,719
Speaker 1: is is our logo. I can't believe any compliance lawyer

1546
01:23:24,760 --> 01:23:27,639
Speaker 1: would give anybody no no, no. The outside compliance people,

1547
01:23:27,680 --> 01:23:30,040
Speaker 1: the inside compliance people, all thought that that was okay.

1548
01:23:30,560 --> 01:23:34,439
Speaker 1: Some people call that advertising. I'm calling it branding, calling

1549
01:23:34,479 --> 01:23:37,120
Speaker 1: a brand awareness. I want people to say, hey, this

1550
01:23:37,160 --> 01:23:38,840
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty cool group of people. Let me

1551
01:23:38,880 --> 01:23:40,519
Speaker 1: look at their website or let me check out where

1552
01:23:40,520 --> 01:23:43,880
Speaker 1: they're doing uh, and then they can make draw their

1553
01:23:43,920 --> 01:23:47,160
Speaker 1: own conclusions about our performance UH and the quality of

1554
01:23:47,160 --> 01:23:49,240
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're doing inside the So let's let's

1555
01:23:49,280 --> 01:23:52,720
Speaker 1: talk about hedge funds briefly. There's been a lot of

1556
01:23:52,760 --> 01:23:56,600
Speaker 1: criticism by some people in this room um that the

1557
01:23:56,680 --> 01:24:00,960
Speaker 1: performance for the whole community of edge funds has been

1558
01:24:01,000 --> 01:24:04,200
Speaker 1: soft and the fees have been hard high. Obviously that

1559
01:24:04,320 --> 01:24:08,080
Speaker 1: doesn't apply to everybody, but by and large, the hedge

1560
01:24:08,120 --> 01:24:10,559
Speaker 1: fund and by the way, hedge funds continue to attract

1561
01:24:11,000 --> 01:24:14,160
Speaker 1: lots and lots of capital. What what is the story

1562
01:24:14,280 --> 01:24:18,479
Speaker 1: of of hedge fund investing today? It really depends on

1563
01:24:18,600 --> 01:24:21,360
Speaker 1: what you're looking for. If you're looking for a panacea

1564
01:24:21,560 --> 01:24:24,479
Speaker 1: or the perfect investment story, it's not out there, and

1565
01:24:24,560 --> 01:24:26,639
Speaker 1: someone that's trying to tell you that it is, well,

1566
01:24:26,760 --> 01:24:29,519
Speaker 1: chances so they'll be in jail before long. And So

1567
01:24:30,160 --> 01:24:32,120
Speaker 1: I look at the hedge fund community as a group

1568
01:24:32,160 --> 01:24:35,720
Speaker 1: of people are super sophisticated that have a great diversity

1569
01:24:35,800 --> 01:24:39,000
Speaker 1: of skills. They can go along something in short, something

1570
01:24:39,080 --> 01:24:41,960
Speaker 1: which means by and bet for something, or sell and

1571
01:24:42,040 --> 01:24:46,760
Speaker 1: bet against something. They have an ambidexteriative talent. UH. And

1572
01:24:47,000 --> 01:24:50,080
Speaker 1: the goal, at least the Skybridge goal is to try

1573
01:24:50,160 --> 01:24:53,240
Speaker 1: to get a high single digit return with one third

1574
01:24:53,280 --> 01:24:55,760
Speaker 1: of the volatility of the SMP. I'm not allowed to

1575
01:24:55,800 --> 01:24:58,160
Speaker 1: talk about my performance on a radio show, but people

1576
01:24:58,200 --> 01:25:01,839
Speaker 1: can go to our website and figure it out. Uhclosure

1577
01:25:01,880 --> 01:25:04,560
Speaker 1: and that sort of stuff. But we but we I

1578
01:25:04,640 --> 01:25:07,599
Speaker 1: will simply tell you that I believe in the industry.

1579
01:25:07,800 --> 01:25:10,519
Speaker 1: I'll say tell you that we went from one billion

1580
01:25:10,960 --> 01:25:13,800
Speaker 1: to nine point three billion dollars in discretionary assets in

1581
01:25:13,920 --> 01:25:17,920
Speaker 1: five years because we are doing a service to people

1582
01:25:18,240 --> 01:25:22,800
Speaker 1: who want a stable return with less volatility. If they're

1583
01:25:22,840 --> 01:25:25,160
Speaker 1: looking for us to outperform the market, it is not

1584
01:25:25,360 --> 01:25:27,880
Speaker 1: our product. I would not recommend it. If they're looking

1585
01:25:27,920 --> 01:25:30,160
Speaker 1: for us to do something that we cannot do, I

1586
01:25:30,280 --> 01:25:32,439
Speaker 1: certainly try to tell them that I would not recommend it.

1587
01:25:32,479 --> 01:25:36,640
Speaker 1: But there's been softness in the broader industry because of

1588
01:25:36,720 --> 01:25:40,479
Speaker 1: the macroeconomic policy driven by the Federal Reserve. The low

1589
01:25:40,600 --> 01:25:44,360
Speaker 1: interest rates have crushed the long short manager, and so

1590
01:25:44,520 --> 01:25:47,720
Speaker 1: for your listeners, that's the manager that's taking bets on

1591
01:25:47,800 --> 01:25:52,320
Speaker 1: the long side and taking bets against companies. What's happened

1592
01:25:52,400 --> 01:25:55,479
Speaker 1: is because of the liquidity, those markets are rising, and

1593
01:25:55,560 --> 01:25:57,840
Speaker 1: so the shorts are going up on those managers, and

1594
01:25:57,960 --> 01:26:01,920
Speaker 1: they have mediocre performance. They make up of the industry barry,

1595
01:26:02,000 --> 01:26:06,160
Speaker 1: and so so when the monetary policy starts to normalize,

1596
01:26:06,960 --> 01:26:10,240
Speaker 1: I predicted that group of people will do better. But

1597
01:26:10,320 --> 01:26:12,280
Speaker 1: those are really the people that the stories are being

1598
01:26:12,320 --> 01:26:15,040
Speaker 1: written about. We we we are a different group, You're

1599
01:26:15,040 --> 01:26:18,120
Speaker 1: a different target. We have very low exposure along short

1600
01:26:18,160 --> 01:26:22,040
Speaker 1: managers right now because of the Federal Reserve monetary policy.

1601
01:26:22,360 --> 01:26:25,800
Speaker 1: We're more exposed to structure credit, more exposed to event

1602
01:26:25,920 --> 01:26:29,120
Speaker 1: driven activism and things like that, both of which I

1603
01:26:29,160 --> 01:26:31,920
Speaker 1: think are well situated for the current economic climate that

1604
01:26:32,000 --> 01:26:34,960
Speaker 1: we're in. But I'll tell you right now, macro managers

1605
01:26:35,000 --> 01:26:38,280
Speaker 1: and long short managers. If you add the fort which

1606
01:26:38,320 --> 01:26:42,000
Speaker 1: is long short plus the fifteen which is macro, roughly

1607
01:26:42,120 --> 01:26:46,760
Speaker 1: two thirds or six of our industry is woefully underperforming

1608
01:26:47,160 --> 01:26:50,280
Speaker 1: due to current Federal Reserve monetary policy. So I expect

1609
01:26:50,320 --> 01:26:52,840
Speaker 1: more negative articles to be written about the industry, but

1610
01:26:52,960 --> 01:26:55,439
Speaker 1: it's not telling the whole story. So before I get

1611
01:26:55,479 --> 01:26:57,720
Speaker 1: to my last two questions, I'm gonna give you this

1612
01:26:57,800 --> 01:27:01,360
Speaker 1: will be the speed round. A few quick questions. Who's um,

1613
01:27:01,680 --> 01:27:04,559
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear the Democrats in the nominate Hillary. Who's

1614
01:27:04,560 --> 01:27:07,880
Speaker 1: gonna come out of the Republican primary process? Well, I'm

1615
01:27:07,920 --> 01:27:10,800
Speaker 1: I'm working super hard for Scott Walker and full disclosure.

1616
01:27:10,880 --> 01:27:15,160
Speaker 1: And so I'm so you're raising money. We've had several

1617
01:27:15,200 --> 01:27:17,920
Speaker 1: events from this week in New York. We did an

1618
01:27:17,960 --> 01:27:20,519
Speaker 1: event from in Naples, Florida. We've done many events in

1619
01:27:20,600 --> 01:27:25,200
Speaker 1: my office already. Uh. Scott has become a dear friend. Uh.

1620
01:27:25,600 --> 01:27:27,320
Speaker 1: And I tell you that I think he would be

1621
01:27:27,320 --> 01:27:30,600
Speaker 1: an incredible president and he would be the guy that

1622
01:27:30,680 --> 01:27:33,160
Speaker 1: I would hire to do the job of fixing many

1623
01:27:33,200 --> 01:27:35,720
Speaker 1: of our problems. What what about the heat coming off

1624
01:27:35,760 --> 01:27:39,479
Speaker 1: of Rubio right after the big GOP. Don't dislike him.

1625
01:27:39,560 --> 01:27:42,840
Speaker 1: I think he's very talented. He's a very articulate, very charismatic,

1626
01:27:43,000 --> 01:27:45,760
Speaker 1: great public speaker. I think he's woll versed on a

1627
01:27:45,800 --> 01:27:51,200
Speaker 1: lot of the farm I don't have I I've adapted. Uh.

1628
01:27:51,520 --> 01:27:54,560
Speaker 1: The eleventh commandment of Ronald Reagan is that shall not

1629
01:27:54,680 --> 01:27:57,000
Speaker 1: say a negative thing about a fellow Republican and so

1630
01:27:57,439 --> 01:28:00,720
Speaker 1: so for me, I like Senator Rubio. Uh. And I'll

1631
01:28:00,760 --> 01:28:03,200
Speaker 1: make a prediction here on your show. Hopefully you'll invite

1632
01:28:03,240 --> 01:28:08,240
Speaker 1: me back. If Governor Walker gets the nomination, I expect

1633
01:28:08,320 --> 01:28:12,360
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio to be as vice president. Really, that's that's fascinating.

1634
01:28:12,800 --> 01:28:16,200
Speaker 1: So last two questions I asked these of all my guests,

1635
01:28:16,760 --> 01:28:21,120
Speaker 1: and they always engender a really interesting uh set of answers.

1636
01:28:21,800 --> 01:28:24,559
Speaker 1: You know you've been in this business quarter century, coming

1637
01:28:24,600 --> 01:28:27,120
Speaker 1: on starting your second quarter century. You know, what do

1638
01:28:27,160 --> 01:28:30,720
Speaker 1: you see as the next major shift in the financial

1639
01:28:30,800 --> 01:28:34,680
Speaker 1: services industry. I think that the there will be a

1640
01:28:35,000 --> 01:28:39,240
Speaker 1: there'll be a further electronic shift. I think advice is

1641
01:28:39,240 --> 01:28:41,640
Speaker 1: going to be coming over the smartphone. Advice is going

1642
01:28:41,680 --> 01:28:46,320
Speaker 1: to be coming over the LinkedIn like in Facebook, like apps. Um.

1643
01:28:46,479 --> 01:28:48,920
Speaker 1: I think the generation that you and I made, which

1644
01:28:49,000 --> 01:28:52,800
Speaker 1: is our sons and daughters, are more comfortable with the

1645
01:28:52,960 --> 01:28:57,160
Speaker 1: computer interface, less comfortable with the written word in the

1646
01:28:57,240 --> 01:29:00,680
Speaker 1: magazine or a newspaper. And so I think that there

1647
01:29:00,680 --> 01:29:05,040
Speaker 1: will be more efficiencies created in the advice giving side

1648
01:29:05,360 --> 01:29:08,400
Speaker 1: of financial services, no question about that. And and here's

1649
01:29:08,439 --> 01:29:10,479
Speaker 1: my favorite question. I get to ask, and you're really

1650
01:29:10,520 --> 01:29:13,000
Speaker 1: a perfect got to ask this. What do you know

1651
01:29:13,240 --> 01:29:17,880
Speaker 1: today about investing, about the market, about this industry that

1652
01:29:18,080 --> 01:29:22,000
Speaker 1: you wish you knew when you started? Well, you know,

1653
01:29:22,200 --> 01:29:27,080
Speaker 1: I was investing in biotechnology call options when I started,

1654
01:29:27,120 --> 01:29:30,680
Speaker 1: because you see, Barry, I was a guru in biotechnology,

1655
01:29:31,000 --> 01:29:33,560
Speaker 1: even though I didn't have any scientific background, and so

1656
01:29:34,120 --> 01:29:36,479
Speaker 1: I was absolutely certain that certain drugs we're gonna get

1657
01:29:36,520 --> 01:29:39,360
Speaker 1: through their Phase three trials and so forth. And I

1658
01:29:39,520 --> 01:29:42,400
Speaker 1: lost about fifty or sixty thousand dollars of money that

1659
01:29:42,479 --> 01:29:45,479
Speaker 1: I didn't need to lose at that time or want to.

1660
01:29:45,800 --> 01:29:48,040
Speaker 1: And so I really wish I could have told my

1661
01:29:48,280 --> 01:29:53,120
Speaker 1: younger self, uh to stick with that simple computational table

1662
01:29:53,240 --> 01:29:56,519
Speaker 1: known as compound interest. Shoot for a seven eight nine

1663
01:29:56,600 --> 01:30:01,400
Speaker 1: percent return. The turtle wins the race to five years. Unfortunately,

1664
01:30:01,479 --> 01:30:04,080
Speaker 1: when you're our age, you know, they go by very quickly.

1665
01:30:04,560 --> 01:30:07,720
Speaker 1: When you're young, they think you're they're forever away. But

1666
01:30:07,800 --> 01:30:11,679
Speaker 1: if you just stick to a very steady, healthy, low

1667
01:30:11,880 --> 01:30:15,719
Speaker 1: leveraged investment discipline, you will get yourself and your family

1668
01:30:15,800 --> 01:30:18,200
Speaker 1: to the promised land. I wish I had known that

1669
01:30:18,320 --> 01:30:22,439
Speaker 1: back then. My first ten years on Wall Street, I

1670
01:30:22,560 --> 01:30:25,519
Speaker 1: spent trying to be the smartest person in the crowd,

1671
01:30:26,200 --> 01:30:29,640
Speaker 1: doing the stupendous thing, finding the long shot that was

1672
01:30:29,680 --> 01:30:31,920
Speaker 1: gonna make me a hero on a golf course where

1673
01:30:31,920 --> 01:30:33,720
Speaker 1: I get bragged to somebody that I always tend to

1674
01:30:33,840 --> 01:30:37,360
Speaker 1: want on something when I was Oh, for a hundred,

1675
01:30:37,439 --> 01:30:40,280
Speaker 1: if you will, And so I would tell people and

1676
01:30:40,439 --> 01:30:44,320
Speaker 1: my younger self be patient. The turtle wins the race.

1677
01:30:44,960 --> 01:30:48,400
Speaker 1: The truisms of a Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger, Uh,

1678
01:30:48,520 --> 01:30:51,880
Speaker 1: they exist today, they existed fifty years ago, they'll exist

1679
01:30:51,920 --> 01:30:54,800
Speaker 1: fifty years from now. Uh. And you're not smarter than

1680
01:30:54,840 --> 01:30:57,479
Speaker 1: your grandparents. You're not smarter than your parents. You may

1681
01:30:57,520 --> 01:31:01,799
Speaker 1: be more technologically adept, but follow those well steeped principles.

1682
01:31:02,439 --> 01:31:06,679
Speaker 1: We've been speaking with Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital, host

1683
01:31:06,800 --> 01:31:10,599
Speaker 1: of the Salt Conference and Wall Street Week. My name

1684
01:31:10,720 --> 01:31:13,639
Speaker 1: is Barry Rihults. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure

1685
01:31:13,640 --> 01:31:15,400
Speaker 1: and look up an Inch ro Down an Inch on

1686
01:31:15,520 --> 01:31:18,800
Speaker 1: Apple iTunes. You can see the other forty such conversations

1687
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Speaker 1: we've had over the past year. Check out my daily

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Speaker 1: column on Bloomberg View dot com or my Twitter feed

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Speaker 1: at Ridhults. You can find Anthony Scaramucci on Twitter at Scaramucci,

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Speaker 1: or at Wall Street week dot com or Skybridge Capital

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Speaker 1: a Scaramucci, Skybridge Capitol dot com or prosper at Wall

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Speaker 1: Street dot com. I'm Barry Rihults. You've been listening to

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Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio