Speaker 1: I was walking down the street in the States a
Speaker 1: couple of years and twenty years ago and my phone,
Speaker 1: my mobile phone. I didn't recognize that. I picked it up,
Speaker 1: and this guy said, hello, is that sign of Freeplus?
Speaker 1: I said, I said, no, this is Richard Branson here,
Speaker 1: because I'd never met him before in my life. So
Speaker 1: I said, is that Richard Branson Richard Branson, who said yes,
Speaker 1: I'm Richard Branson. Richard Branson. So he said, I have
Speaker 1: a my friend has a problem, and I'm told that
Speaker 1: you're the person that can solve it. And so I
Speaker 1: laughed and said, You've no idea how many times people
Speaker 1: say that to me, Richard, that my friend has a problem.
Speaker 1: It turned out that George Michael had bought what he
Speaker 1: thought was John Lennon's piano and paid a vast amount
Speaker 1: of money for it, millions of pounds for it, to
Speaker 1: only find that it was just any old piano and
Speaker 1: it wasn't John Lennon's at all, And so he's trying
Speaker 1: to get George Michael's five million pounds bag.
Speaker 2: Where did you buy it?
Speaker 1: Like brought to an auction house? And did you get
Speaker 1: it back? We did? Yeah? I did, No, No, we
Speaker 1: did No, it was a complete fraud.
Speaker 2: But how did you so what you call the auction
Speaker 2: house and say, well, we just.
Speaker 1: Did the profdance on the piano and good that it
Speaker 1: wasn't the right piano.
Speaker 2: What a story.
Speaker 1: It was a bizarre moment.
Speaker 3: I must say, that was a story there from our
Speaker 3: guests this week, Simon Freakley, who's the chief executive officer
Speaker 3: of restructuring group.
Speaker 2: Alex Partners now Dave. To be fair, we caught the
Speaker 2: anecdote just as he sat down in the podcast studio,
Speaker 2: but frankly was too good nut to keep and he
Speaker 2: kindly let us keep it in the podcast because it's
Speaker 2: a story about problem solving.
Speaker 3: That's right, you know, Elton John Pianos. I mean, we
Speaker 3: always get the best stuff beginning right before we actually
Speaker 3: start talking. But luckily he's happy for us to keep
Speaker 3: it in. But you know, as you say, this is
Speaker 3: a story about fixing problems. Chief executives across the globe
Speaker 3: turned to Simon and Alex Partners for help when they
Speaker 3: are facing some of the biggest hurdles that are happening
Speaker 3: in the world right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not all about Pianos. I think maybe at
Speaker 2: the moment. It's more about market volatility and inflation, how
Speaker 2: you deal with all of that, but really how you
Speaker 2: also communicate your vision more effectively.
Speaker 3: I'm David Merritt and I'm Francine Laqua and this is
Speaker 3: in the City, Bloombo's podcast, connecting you to the conversations
Speaker 3: at the heart of the City of London.
Speaker 2: Now this week, Dave, what advice are city leaders seeking
Speaker 2: from the boss of one of the biggest restructuring firms.
Speaker 3: That's right, we ask Simon Freakley, chief executive officer of
Speaker 3: Alex Partners, an international business advisory firm known for its
Speaker 3: work in corporate turnarounds.
Speaker 2: And we've seen the name Alex Partners quite a lot
Speaker 2: around the potential sale of the Telegraph newspapers and Spectator magazine.
Speaker 3: In our conversation we talk about how the challenges CEO's
Speaker 3: face have changed over the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: We're joined by Simon Freakley, chief executive officer of Alex Partners. Simon,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us. So when you
Speaker 2: introduce yourself to someone new, what do you say. I'm
Speaker 2: like the restructuring guy. I advise on all matters. There's
Speaker 2: nothing I can't fix.
Speaker 1: I don't do anything as grand as that. I just
Speaker 1: say I'm run a consulting firm that specialses in difficult problems,
Speaker 1: often problems that need to be solved at speed, and
Speaker 1: we're somewhat industry and geography agnostic. We just tackle difficult.
Speaker 3: Things, talk us through those difficult things on at the moment.
Speaker 3: How does how difficult is the economy at the moment,
Speaker 3: and the sort of problems that are crossing your desk.
Speaker 1: The UK, of course has had the triple calamity of Brexit,
Speaker 1: then the pandemic, and now of course this awful human
Speaker 1: tragedy which is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So I
Speaker 1: think those three things have had individually a massive impact
Speaker 1: on Europe generally and the UK specifically. And these disruptions
Speaker 1: layer on top of each other. And of course it
Speaker 1: isn't as if nothing else has been going on. You know,
Speaker 1: we've come to the end of a thirty year supercycle,
Speaker 1: so everybody's been forecasting a recession. It looks like a
Speaker 1: small R rather than a big R recession, and it's
Speaker 1: yet to really bite. But here we are with double
Speaker 1: digit core inflation. It's a very challenging time.
Speaker 2: Your industry has come under quite a lot of fire.
Speaker 2: Right there's this new book by Mariana Matsukada, how the
Speaker 2: consulting industry weakens our businesses and fantalizes our governments and
Speaker 2: warps our economies. Do you feel like you're included in that?
Speaker 2: Have you had to justify consultancy firm fees and just
Speaker 2: your work?
Speaker 1: In general, everybody's entitled to a point of view, and
Speaker 1: I think how you use consultants, of course is tailored
Speaker 1: to the circumstances. But consultants who don't deliver value for
Speaker 1: money are always wide open to those accusations. And of
Speaker 1: course there are many stories of people talking about being
Speaker 1: infested with consultants and ones then they can't get rid
Speaker 1: of them. But I think ultimately the way in which
Speaker 1: consultants make a difference is to make things happen with
Speaker 1: clients that they can't get done on their own. And
Speaker 1: ultimately we're only as good as our last job.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the triple whammy that's hit Britain, the problems
Speaker 3: harder to fix right now, And are you having the
Speaker 3: success with these restructurings with the consulting that you're doing
Speaker 3: with companies?
Speaker 1: Well? Interesting David, Probably restructuring is only twenty percent of
Speaker 1: what we do. Eighty percent of what we do is
Speaker 1: helping healthy companies reposition themselves or grow faster. And we
Speaker 1: talked about those three specific disruptions just now, but there
Speaker 1: are profound shifts going on around technology, around environmental pressures,
Speaker 1: and it's the multiplicity of these pressures that are so
Speaker 1: challenging for executive teams and chief executives because they layer
Speaker 1: on top of each other. These disruptions are getting quicker
Speaker 1: in terms of the cycles that companies need to go
Speaker 1: through to respond to them. And so what we're finding
Speaker 1: is that the companies that do best, the leaders that
Speaker 1: do best, are ones that don't wait for perfection. They
Speaker 1: do it nearly right, but do it now. They have
Speaker 1: a preponderance to move to action because the markets are
Speaker 1: changing so quickly. If they don't move to action quickly,
Speaker 1: they will simply be left behind.
Speaker 2: Do you think Simon that the consultancy industry is sometimes
Speaker 2: used as scapegoat, so even if you add value, it's
Speaker 2: easier for each executive rather than taking the hard decisions,
Speaker 2: say look, I'm going to have a third party tell
Speaker 2: me this, and so it keeps me popular within my company.
Speaker 1: The challenge Francine, I think with a description of the
Speaker 1: consulting industry is a very very broad description of what
Speaker 1: are really quite different offerings. So clearly there are the
Speaker 1: strategy consultants, there are operational consultants, there are crisis consultants.
Speaker 1: So I think, depending on the nature of the problem
Speaker 1: to be solved, you know, some of these challenges are fair.
Speaker 1: But ultimately a consultant pointed at a problem where they
Speaker 1: can really make a difference, will give speed to insight,
Speaker 1: to understand what the choices are and therefore inform the
Speaker 1: executive teams what their real choices are, and then, having
Speaker 1: focused on their best choice, speed to execution. And it's
Speaker 1: the speed to execution that really makes a difference, because
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, it's very difficult to do surgery on yourself,
Speaker 1: and so companies do find it hard to pivot in
Speaker 1: their operating models, or carve out non core activities, or
Speaker 1: do difficult things, and often it is helpful to have
Speaker 1: a catalyst to change agent to make that happen.
Speaker 2: So something this would be like what an Elon Musk
Speaker 2: calling you and saying, I've lost half of my advertisers.
Speaker 1: What do I do talking about self inflicted injuries. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that appointing an independent chief executive is probably
Speaker 1: the most sensible thing that he's done in the last
Speaker 1: few weeks. And of course, you know, bringing in an
Speaker 1: expert who has seemingly made in a relatively short time
Speaker 1: a difference. So I mean, obviously Elon Musk is an
Speaker 1: exceptional person, an exceptional business leader, but he's not a
Speaker 1: specialist in advertising, he's not a specialist in social media.
Speaker 1: So oftentimes the consultant's role is to work out what
Speaker 1: the real choices are and then to support teams move
Speaker 1: to action and make the critical things happen on a schedule.
Speaker 3: What are the biggest challenges that you think CEOs have
Speaker 3: at the moment or what's on their mind? Is it
Speaker 3: how do we harness AI?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: How do we cope with rising interest rates? What are
Speaker 3: the problems of twenty twenty three the most kind of
Speaker 3: front at center of people's minds?
Speaker 1: Well, David, it's all of the above. And this is
Speaker 1: the big challenge for business leaders now because everything is
Speaker 1: moving so quickly. We do this survey every year three
Speaker 1: thousand executives around the world. We ask them what's top
Speaker 1: of mind for them. One of the interesting stistics that
Speaker 1: came out this time round from those interviews, at ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of all three thousand respondents felt that they
Speaker 1: had to fundamentally change their business model in the next
Speaker 1: three years. Seventy five percent of them felt they weren't
Speaker 1: making swift enough progress and doing it. So to give
Speaker 1: you a sense of the velocity of change that's going on,
Speaker 1: which is the compounding effect of all of these different
Speaker 1: forces and pressures, it's overwhelming for CEOs.
Speaker 3: And sorry, is that stat much higher than it was
Speaker 3: a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Significantly higher than it was a few years ago. Another
Speaker 1: stet which you'll be interested in. I think we also ask,
Speaker 1: you know, CEOs, what's top of mind for them? What
Speaker 1: are they anxious about? Well, seventy percent of them this
Speaker 1: year were anxious about losing their jobs, up twenty points
Speaker 1: from last year. So I rather joke that we should
Speaker 1: call our disrupt index the anxiety Index, because that anxiety
Speaker 1: is becoming real.
Speaker 2: I'm going to play Devil's advocate that if ninety five
Speaker 2: percent are wondering about their business model and the fact
Speaker 2: that they need to radically rechange, are these companies that
Speaker 2: should even.
Speaker 1: Survive, well, some of them won't, but some of them
Speaker 1: will thrive. What our work in this area is also
Speaker 1: demonstrated is that there are winners and losers at times
Speaker 1: of profound disruption, and the winners use those disruptions to
Speaker 1: capitalize on the opportunities that those disruptions present. And so
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about technological disruption. When you look
Speaker 1: inside that and look at connectivity. For instance, the connectivity
Speaker 1: that's facilitated by the three billion or so smartphones and
Speaker 1: tablets around the world allow consumers to create their own
Speaker 1: ecosystem of news of products by reference to values of organizations.
Speaker 1: And so it's an example of how using new technologies
Speaker 1: companies can pivot and actually thrive on the back of
Speaker 1: these disruptions. But sure there'll be winners and they'll be losers.
Speaker 3: Disruption to be or can be a good word. Can't say,
Speaker 3: you know it must probably cause himself a disruptor. But
Speaker 3: then married with this anxiety that actually the disruption is
Speaker 3: going to possibly see the end of their firm that fills.
Speaker 3: What's different at the moment are the levels of anxiety
Speaker 3: higher in Britain than in the rest of your global clients.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, David, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: a general it's a general condition for CEOs. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's just sort of put a fine point in it.
Speaker 1: The job of CEO now is much more demanding that's
Speaker 1: ever been. Why is that. Well, the corresponsibilities of revenue
Speaker 1: growth and earnings growth dividends to shareholders remain, but there
Speaker 1: are additional pressures that simply weren't there twenty years ago
Speaker 1: or even ten years ago. The need, for instance, to
Speaker 1: have a voice about the values of the organization, the
Speaker 1: purpose of the organization, and to comment on important issues
Speaker 1: of the day. You know, whether it's social justice issues,
Speaker 1: or whether it's Row versus Wade if you're in the US,
Speaker 1: or whether it's voting changes. CEOs are expected to have
Speaker 1: a voice on the things that are relevant not just
Speaker 1: to their companies, but to their customers, to their employees,
Speaker 1: to their other stakeholders. And so it's overwhelming for executives.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, they have a lot more
Speaker 2: data than the twenty years ago, so that presumably also
Speaker 2: makes their job easier.
Speaker 1: Well, funnily enough, we found it makes it more difficult
Speaker 1: because often people are data rich but insight pau So
Speaker 1: back to David's question about you know, in the UK
Speaker 1: and maybe more globally, is the pressure on chief executives
Speaker 1: higher than it was? It absolutely is, and.
Speaker 2: This is not because the quality of leaders is inferior
Speaker 2: to twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: It's not because the quality of leaders is inferior. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think one could argue that it gets better all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: So do you help these anxious chief executives through this
Speaker 3: process to advise on things like how to communicate a
Speaker 3: political point of view?
Speaker 1: That example, David, would not be something that we would
Speaker 1: advise on. They're a specialists that do that and that's
Speaker 1: not in our field of expertise. But we would absolutely
Speaker 1: advise chief executives and executive teams about, you know, how
Speaker 1: their market is moving, where the opportunities in that market
Speaker 1: might be, how they capitalize on those opportunities, and how
Speaker 1: they move quickly to action, how they do it nearly right,
Speaker 1: but do it now. Because what are analysis and in
Speaker 1: fact all of our stories from the front line of
Speaker 1: working with our clients have demonstrated, is that the people
Speaker 1: that have a preponderance for action, even if they change
Speaker 1: their mind and pivot the strategies, on average, do much
Speaker 1: better than those that actually are more careful and deliberate
Speaker 1: and bake out strategies without moving to action quickly.
Speaker 2: What's the biggest most common mistake that chief executives make.
Speaker 1: There are a number of things one could point to.
Speaker 1: I mean, the days of the hero CEO are over.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes a team. You know, group heroics
Speaker 1: will always always try and triumph over individual heroics. So
Speaker 1: clearly it's important to have a team. It's important to
Speaker 1: have a diverse team for diverse perspectives. And that isn't
Speaker 1: just gender and ethnicity, it's also in terms of age group,
Speaker 1: having an environment, a culture in which challenge is encouraged
Speaker 1: so that there isn't group think, ensuring that people do
Speaker 1: have not just the data, but the insights, which of
Speaker 1: course requires digital tools to be able to read where
Speaker 1: their customers are going, read what their employees want in
Speaker 1: terms of quality of work experience. That helps them then
Speaker 1: inch ahead of their competition.
Speaker 3: So the hero CEO is a thing of the past.
Speaker 3: So which is the other most important role? Is the
Speaker 3: chief financial officer more important these days than they were
Speaker 3: in the past.
Speaker 1: I mean it's difficult to rank people, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's this CFO chief financial officer, whether it's a general
Speaker 1: counsel or there are different roles of course in different businesses.
Speaker 1: It takes a team. The CFO of course is very
Speaker 1: important in public markets, you know as a public company
Speaker 1: or has public debt. But the team composition, I think
Speaker 1: is the most important thing rather than just the individual position.
Speaker 2: So how does it work concretely? So I'm a CEO,
Speaker 2: I have, you know, a disaster on my hands. I
Speaker 2: have to respond to the price, I have to fix something.
Speaker 2: Do I call you and then you build a team
Speaker 2: for me? Do you have like lead partners in industries?
Speaker 2: And actually what kind of servers do I get?
Speaker 1: What we aspire to be is on people's speed doal
Speaker 1: So when people have a problem, we may not know
Speaker 1: exactly what they should do in that given moment, will
Speaker 1: have a good set, good idea as to what they
Speaker 1: should do to assemble a point of view. And of
Speaker 1: course we all have these speed down numbers we reach
Speaker 1: out to for different types of problems. Some problems, of course,
Speaker 1: don't elegantly fit into something one should phone a lawyer about,
Speaker 1: or someone something one should phone a consultant about. But
Speaker 1: I think that a trusted business advisor is critical in
Speaker 1: those moments, and we aspire to be that for our clients.
Speaker 2: Can you give us an example.
Speaker 1: The pandemic, of course gave us some very real challenges
Speaker 1: and urgent challenges. So the pandemic profoundly disrupted supply chains,
Speaker 1: and so when people find that these wonderful just in
Speaker 1: time supply chains of course no longer worked. It then
Speaker 1: became a matter of how do we have a strategy
Speaker 1: that's just in case, not just in time, and so
Speaker 1: how to very quickly second source materials critical for a
Speaker 1: production facility to continue. So an example would be an
Speaker 1: automotive client of ours found, as with so many people
Speaker 1: in the automotive sector and others, that they couldn't source
Speaker 1: enough of the right silicon chips for their production process,
Speaker 1: and so asked us to help with what became a
Speaker 1: very urgent and important matter because they were literally going
Speaker 1: to end up with stall production. And so we ended
Speaker 1: up using generative artificial intelligence to analyze all of the
Speaker 1: import data into the US to identify not just where
Speaker 1: the which the countries were to produce the necessary chips,
Speaker 1: but narrowed it down to the factories we're able to
Speaker 1: model by triangulating different public source information what we thought
Speaker 1: their surplus capacity might be, and then in a matter
Speaker 1: of days managed to book that surplus capacity and those
Speaker 1: factories in multiple countries to be able to second source
Speaker 1: for the automotive manufacturer, and indeed they didn't have a
Speaker 1: delay or an interruption to their production facility.
Speaker 3: How do you think Britain's doing in the to kind
Speaker 3: of assimilate AI into corporate life, do you know?
Speaker 1: I don't think there are any further ahead than anybody else.
Speaker 1: I mean, tragically, I think that the UK hasn't been
Speaker 1: relevant in the technology race. If you look at UK
Speaker 1: public companies compared, for instance, to US public companies, we're
Speaker 1: sort of nowhere in technology. We missed that boat. Now.
Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of reasons for that. I
Speaker 1: think that there's been a better availability of venture capital
Speaker 1: in the US, particularly on the West Coast, to sort
Speaker 1: of seed so many of these enterprises that have now
Speaker 1: become unicorns. Whether that mistake will be repeated with AI,
Speaker 1: I don't know the fact that Rishisuna went on to
Speaker 1: the front for to talk about regulation. I think it's
Speaker 1: a good thing, but I think it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: know how to regulate AI. I don't think people have
Speaker 1: a clue at the moment, and I'm always very suspicious
Speaker 1: when the industry itself starts to tell governments that they
Speaker 1: should take the lead on regulation.
Speaker 2: Samon, if you think we've missed the boat on technology
Speaker 2: in the UK, I mean a's UKPLC cooked. I mean
Speaker 2: all of our economies is based on technology and how
Speaker 2: we use it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's so interesting when when looks at UK public
Speaker 1: companies as a certainly in the major exchanges, we are
Speaker 1: overweight in things like mining, we're overweight in energy, We're
Speaker 1: really nowhere in technology. Now why is that? Well? I
Speaker 1: think that the UK markets, UK investors have largely prized
Speaker 1: dividends rather than growth. The US exchanges of prioritized growth.
Speaker 1: The US has a much much larger pool of liquidity.
Speaker 1: Valuations tend to be a little higher over there, so
Speaker 1: it's been an inevitable pool of companies from the UK
Speaker 1: to the US exchanges. Now is that reversible? Probably not.
Speaker 1: I don't think that UKPLC is dead, but I do
Speaker 1: think that, you know, Brexit hasn't helped us. I think
Speaker 1: that you know, we have lost significance in terms of
Speaker 1: being a world financial center. Notwithstanding, by the way that
Speaker 1: you know, financial and professional services set generated sixty four
Speaker 1: billion pounds worth of surplus last year, larger than any
Speaker 1: of the other developed Western nations. But notwithstanding that, I
Speaker 1: think that we have lost our footing.
Speaker 3: And you divide your time between New York and London,
Speaker 3: simon looking forward a few years, do you see London
Speaker 3: continuing decline in relative importance versus New York as a
Speaker 3: financial center?
Speaker 1: I think so. Unfortunately. I think that my own view
Speaker 1: is that Brexit was disastrous. I think that we lost
Speaker 1: some significance in the eyes of the US as it
Speaker 1: related to our position in Europe. Is no mistake. I
Speaker 1: think that President Biden's first international visit after he was
Speaker 1: elected president was to France, not to the UK. I
Speaker 1: think that we talk a lot in the UK about
Speaker 1: the special relationship with the US. Boris Johnson always used
Speaker 1: to say that that sounded rather needy, and I think
Speaker 1: he was right. We are in the Five Eyes from
Speaker 1: an intelligence and security point of view, along with Canada,
Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand. But I think when you look
Speaker 1: at the flow of commerce and the significance of London's
Speaker 1: financial center, I think we have lost our footing and
Speaker 1: I don't think that's reversible.
Speaker 2: So what happens next? As a consultant, like, what would
Speaker 2: you advise UKPLC to do well?
Speaker 1: I think UKPLC has got to make sure that its
Speaker 1: regulatory environment is attractive for business. Obviously, a robust regulatory environment,
Speaker 1: a regulatary environment that encourages business to keep on building
Speaker 1: their foundations here. I think that there have to be
Speaker 1: tax strategies that make that attractive for people. I think
Speaker 1: that we have to make sure that our talent is
Speaker 1: fit for purpose. We know we talk a lot about
Speaker 1: the being the shrinkage of talent, but the talent war
Speaker 1: is actually not nearly as significant as the skills or
Speaker 1: the skills that people need. Particularly in a digital environment
Speaker 1: that's accelerating fast. The skills war is critical. So how
Speaker 1: do we make sure we have enough people of the
Speaker 1: right skills to be able to keep the business in
Speaker 1: the U.
Speaker 3: Are there any particular sectors that you've got your eye
Speaker 3: on in terms of stress where you feel like there
Speaker 3: might be more restructurings or maybe you know household names
Speaker 3: going out of business in the next year.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean retail of course has been profoundly disrupted
Speaker 1: now for quite a number of years, and that's not
Speaker 1: going to slow down anytime soon. So I think we'll
Speaker 1: keep on seeing real challenges in the retail sector. Energy
Speaker 1: I think will continue to be a challenge, of course,
Speaker 1: and that's even before the profound disruption cause by this
Speaker 1: humanitarian disaster over in the Ukraine. And so I do
Speaker 1: think that those two sectors will be high up on
Speaker 1: the list. But I think that you know, in an
Speaker 1: environment where food inflation is still in the mid teens
Speaker 1: and we've got significant industrial action now all around the country,
Speaker 1: where you know, understandably people are resisting small single digit
Speaker 1: pay rises in what is a double digit and core
Speaker 1: inflation more than just double digit inflationary environment, I think
Speaker 1: is a very very challenging time.
Speaker 2: Do you ever think that I guess M and A
Speaker 2: between two distress companies is a good idea, or even
Speaker 2: one distress company and one healthy company.
Speaker 1: It can work, of course, I mean it's the old
Speaker 1: sort of adage of two drowning people trying to hang
Speaker 1: on to each other to float, but sometimes it can
Speaker 1: scale can make a difference in a market. So if
Speaker 1: the putting together are two companies, does course scale that
Speaker 1: fundamentally changes that market position, then of course that is
Speaker 1: a good thing.
Speaker 3: Like the rest of the world, here at Plinberg, we're
Speaker 3: obsessed with a lot of the distressed MNA happening in
Speaker 3: the finance sector. How do you see those deals now
Speaker 3: a couple of months down the line. I guess the
Speaker 3: mother of all the stressed MNA was the Credit Swiss
Speaker 3: UBS deal. I mean, how is that panning out? Do
Speaker 3: you think?
Speaker 1: I don't know specifically how is panning out? I clearly
Speaker 1: Ubs was the right partner. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: also look at you know, Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan,
Speaker 1: I mean, they are the solution of choice for the
Speaker 1: FED in the US, and of course they have to
Speaker 1: make sure or they buy at a price that is
Speaker 1: good for their own shareholders. But the profound disruption that's
Speaker 1: been going on with regional banks and community banks in
Speaker 1: the US, you know, not just Signature Bank or or
Speaker 1: others like that, it is ripe for consolidation. So in
Speaker 1: the US I think we'll see real consolidation in the
Speaker 1: banking industry. In the UK, of course we've seen that
Speaker 1: consolidation already, but you know HSBC, it is it a
Speaker 1: UK bank, Is it a Chinese bank? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a big discussion now as to really where the center
Speaker 1: of gravity of HSBC is, and so I think the
Speaker 1: banking industry is in a period of profound change. Actually,
Speaker 1: what's the.
Speaker 2: Most exciting piece of business you've ever worked on?
Speaker 1: I remember being dropped in as interim chief executive of
Speaker 1: a very major Eastern European bank some years ago, and
Speaker 1: we had sixty days to work out, you know, where
Speaker 1: the money had gone and was the bank saveable? And
Speaker 1: so that was an extreme, ordinarily intense period, a team
Speaker 1: of sixty people working night and day to get to
Speaker 1: the answer, which we did. But often that is an
Speaker 1: adrenaline fueled period and very satisfying if indeed one can
Speaker 1: get to an answer and execute it. Oftentimes, of course,
Speaker 1: things aren't quite that intense, but the speed to insight
Speaker 1: is important because the time really matters in these situations
Speaker 1: to working out what the best move isn't taking it.
Speaker 1: And it's very rewarding actually to partner with clients when
Speaker 1: they're in those moments.
Speaker 2: Simon, Frankly, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me, David.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting almost listening to Simon Freakly with a
Speaker 2: blueprint of, you know, the most common mistakes that chief
Speaker 2: executive make which they should look out for. I don't
Speaker 2: know whether it's like a thirty page document that he
Speaker 2: presents a lot of these chief executives with. Of course,
Speaker 2: it's long term planning. He talks about, you know, being
Speaker 2: able to build a team, and what really struck me
Speaker 2: is the fact that he thinks it's much harder being
Speaker 2: a chief executive now than it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: A lot of people may disagree with him, because we're
Speaker 2: also helped by being able to recruit talent across the world,
Speaker 2: which maybe twenty years ago was much more hard because
Speaker 2: people didn't work from home.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's always obviously supposed to be the toughest
Speaker 3: job as chief executive. And I'm not sure there'll be
Speaker 3: huge amounts of sympathy out there for the anxiety levels
Speaker 3: of these the fifteen hundred bosses. But I thought it
Speaker 3: was fascinating how it seems those levels of anxiousness are
Speaker 3: getting much worse in the current climate, and kind of
Speaker 3: how these bosses don't seem to be able to navigate
Speaker 3: all of these challenges being thrown at them. At the
Speaker 3: same time, I.
Speaker 2: Think the question is how do you measure success. Does
Speaker 2: a consultancy firm or a consultant only become really good
Speaker 2: at their job when the chief executive no longer employs them? Yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly once you can do it internally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is why I thought it was interesting about AI.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's part of the chief executive's job,
Speaker 3: of course right now, to understand how to harness artificial
Speaker 3: intelligence to make their job, but they don't seem to
Speaker 3: be capable of doing it. They have to phone a
Speaker 3: consultant to get that kind of insight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an interesting conversation also, just him not
Speaker 2: being very optimistic about the future of the UK, saying
Speaker 2: that actually New York is so much better at doing
Speaker 2: these things, and him asking for a better regulation, certainly
Speaker 2: in London, to help the City of London thrive.
Speaker 3: I know, when when you're going to get someone on
Speaker 3: this podcast, Francine he's optimistic about I'm just you know,
Speaker 3: I'm feeling a bit maybe we should just all move
Speaker 3: to New York.
Speaker 1: What do you think.
Speaker 2: I can't live without guinness and fish and chips, Dave
Speaker 2: or fair enough.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to this week's in the City.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next.
Speaker 2: Week, but in the meantime, if you like our show,
Speaker 2: please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 2: listen to podcasts, and rate review on Subscribe.
Speaker 3: This episode was hosted by Me David.
Speaker 2: Merritt and Me Francis Lackwell.
Speaker 3: It was produced by Sersadi and Moses Andam additional editing
Speaker 3: by blake Mate and special thanks to cyber Freakly