Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Wait inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: So you might recall a Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover store Is
Speaker 2: a while ago, and it talked about how everything is
Speaker 2: private equity now, from pet stores and doctors practices, to
Speaker 2: real estate loans, to businesses, to startups and more. Private
Speaker 2: equity has trillions of dollars in assets under management and
Speaker 2: has made billionaires out of many of its founders. And
Speaker 2: according to our next two guests, private equity is wrecking America.
Speaker 2: Pull Uzer Prize winning journalist and senior financial reporter for
Speaker 2: NBC News, Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner, financial service policy analyst,
Speaker 2: maaging director of Graham Fisher. They co wrote you might
Speaker 2: recall the New York Times bestseller Reckless Endangerment, which was
Speaker 2: about the Great Financial Crisis. Their new book is entitled
Speaker 2: These Are the Plunderers, How Private Equity runs and America. Guys,
Speaker 2: thank you so much, so great to have you here.
Speaker 3: Josh.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned the book, We're like, you got to
Speaker 2: come on, you got to come on. Private equity not
Speaker 2: a new thing. It's been around for a long time.
Speaker 2: Leveraging in deals not a new thing. So why are
Speaker 2: you guys writing about private equity? Why put the book
Speaker 2: out now?
Speaker 4: You know? I think that what we're learning now about
Speaker 4: private equity, we have enough longitudinal data, right, we have
Speaker 4: decades of data about what happens when companies are taken
Speaker 4: over by these actors who pile the debt on them,
Speaker 4: and we are now getting data, for example, on you know,
Speaker 4: how many more deaths there are in nursing homes that
Speaker 4: are owned by private equity. So it's really a lot
Speaker 4: about the data, but it's also a lot about what
Speaker 4: happened in COVID when we really started to see this
Speaker 4: really huge gulf between rich and poor, and we really
Speaker 4: wanted to look into why.
Speaker 2: And that's what I wonder, like, if COVID didn't happen,
Speaker 2: might you not be doing this or might the impact
Speaker 2: on private equity and healthcare specifically, might this not have
Speaker 2: come to be? Well?
Speaker 5: I mean I think that it would have in any case,
Speaker 5: because really, what you've seen as a trajectory in the
Speaker 5: changes in private equity. The targets, right, and they're running
Speaker 5: out of targets, and so they are more and more targeting.
Speaker 5: Industries that used to be viewed as socially important social
Speaker 5: goods not expected to run for profits because there's not
Speaker 5: a target rich environment anymore, and so healthcare education have
Speaker 5: become increasingly the focus and the target, and that would
Speaker 5: naturally have led to worse outcomes in industries COVID or
Speaker 5: not that are socially important.
Speaker 2: I have to say, though, plunderers it's a pretty strong word, right,
Speaker 2: and I just like kind of let me throw it
Speaker 2: up in Google definitions. Someone who steals or removes things,
Speaker 2: especially in a violent or severe way, to rob of
Speaker 2: goods by force. A loaded word, A strong word. Why
Speaker 2: why that word?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, when you're going into a company and
Speaker 5: the focus is to get yourself paid out as quickly
Speaker 5: as possible, regardless of the impact on the employees, the pensions,
Speaker 5: the communities in which you exist, the broader economy, I'm
Speaker 5: not sure that that's an unfair or particularly harsh word.
Speaker 3: And that seems to.
Speaker 5: Be where the industry has moved, or many parts of
Speaker 5: the industry have moved. When you start looking deal by deal.
Speaker 4: Greg, Well, you also have this, to Josh's point, this
Speaker 4: big circle of pain.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: You've got a very few people making an awful lot
Speaker 4: of money. This is a billionaire minting machine private equity, right,
Speaker 4: and yet you have all of these other people who
Speaker 4: are on the other side of the table. And what
Speaker 4: we really wanted to do was to try to shine
Speaker 4: the light on the people who are on the other
Speaker 4: side of the table.
Speaker 7: Can you give me an example for my mom listening
Speaker 7: to this. We know about the nursing home impact. That
Speaker 7: seems to be a popular one, but is there one
Speaker 7: that you think will be most surprising to readers of
Speaker 7: the book?
Speaker 4: Well, I think healthcare affects so many people that healthcare
Speaker 4: is always going to resonate.
Speaker 8: We have a.
Speaker 4: Doctor in the book who was fired. He worked in
Speaker 4: an emergency department in a hospital in the Midwest, and.
Speaker 2: He was fired because he was.
Speaker 4: Trying to get the hospital to change the code blue
Speaker 4: practices that they had. It was really impacting patients, it
Speaker 4: was really going to have problems, cause problems. He was
Speaker 4: fired by his staffing company, which was owned by private equity,
Speaker 4: because he was making too much noise trying to protect
Speaker 4: the patients. So that is I think a great example.
Speaker 4: There are some other ones in the yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: I think on.
Speaker 5: Top of that, even more broadly than healthcare, another major
Speaker 5: example is the purchase of one of the last of
Speaker 5: the Rust Belt businesses, a large aluminum company, rolling company,
Speaker 5: which was the largest employer in the county of one
Speaker 5: of the poorest counties in the country. Private equity comes
Speaker 5: in leverages up an already struggling business, forces the governor
Speaker 5: to get involved to get them electric utility rate reduction,
Speaker 5: while they're taking money out the back door, and within
Speaker 5: a matter of six months they've taken all their money out,
Speaker 5: and within three or four years they end up bankrupting
Speaker 5: the company, laying off more than two thousand employees, almost
Speaker 5: all of the employees, and there goes thirty percent of
Speaker 5: the school's tax base, right, And so this is hollowing
Speaker 5: out America.
Speaker 2: No, and I hear what you're saying. I gotta say,
Speaker 2: we've been talking about this book in the newsroom a lot,
Speaker 2: because I think it's been an interesting time where we're
Speaker 2: seeing a few banks get into trouble and you know,
Speaker 2: we're wondering about, you know, with shadow banking, the term
Speaker 2: itself feels like it's it's shady, but having other sources
Speaker 2: of funding out there, especially if you think about middle
Speaker 2: market companies who can always tap into the JP Morgan's
Speaker 2: or the big banks that are out there, that it
Speaker 2: has provided, you know, a necessary you know, funding avenue
Speaker 2: if you will. So I wonder you know how you
Speaker 2: think about that, Gretchen.
Speaker 4: Well right to that point. I had an email today
Speaker 4: from a guy who said, I just heard your interview
Speaker 4: on another station, and he said this happened to me,
Speaker 4: and he wrote chapter and verse about how his small
Speaker 4: ash company was taken over by private equity. He said,
Speaker 4: my founders got rich. I got a little bit richer,
Speaker 4: but they savaged the company and left me as roadkill.
Speaker 9: And so this is just the.
Speaker 4: Kind of thing that has happened so often across America.
Speaker 4: I think we're going to be hearing a lot of
Speaker 4: stories as people read this book.
Speaker 9: It's all.
Speaker 5: So to your point though, also, Carol, I think that
Speaker 5: you also have to think about there are proper ways
Speaker 5: to do it. We're not condemning private equity, period We're
Speaker 5: condemning private equity the way it's largely done with huge
Speaker 5: amounts of debt foisted on the company with special dividends
Speaker 5: out to the equity holders quickly, with a short term
Speaker 5: return focus rather than a partnership, longer term focus, which
Speaker 5: is what it should be. Right, If the purpose of
Speaker 5: capitalism is to aggregate and allocate capital through the system
Speaker 5: for productive purposes, this isn't that.
Speaker 7: But then shouldn't regulation be part of that conversation?
Speaker 5: I think that's very fair. I think I think that's
Speaker 5: part of what we're hoping comes out of this, is
Speaker 5: that there's a recognition that there needs to be more oversight.
Speaker 5: There needs to be fewer waivers on transactions being able
Speaker 5: to occur. There needs to be some constraints on if
Speaker 5: you're taking over the company, you need to actually retain
Speaker 5: an equity interest and not special dividend and leave the
Speaker 5: carcass for someone else to clean up.
Speaker 2: But there are some you know, go ahead, gretcha.
Speaker 4: The other thing is that we really do need to
Speaker 4: know how pervasive private equity is in this country. You know,
Speaker 4: does everyone know that forty percent of the emergency departments
Speaker 4: are run by private equity firms? No, It's very hard
Speaker 4: to find that information out, and so consumers can't make
Speaker 4: the right decisions right if they don't know who owns
Speaker 4: these companies. And so I think just even the transparency
Speaker 4: of knowing who owns the company, who backs the companies,
Speaker 4: and whether they are building up enough you know, anti
Speaker 4: competitive type behavior. I think the FDC is starting to
Speaker 4: look into private equity in that way. I think DOJ
Speaker 4: is starting to. This is an area that has just
Speaker 4: been left to grow and grow and grow with very
Speaker 4: little oversight.
Speaker 2: And you get into though, like you know, the gaps
Speaker 2: that are out there, And I guess I would argue
Speaker 2: too that there's a lot of reasons why there are
Speaker 2: the gaps and inequities. We've been talking about it a
Speaker 2: lot coming off of the pandemic, but whether it's government
Speaker 2: programs or access to financing or financial literacy, like the
Speaker 2: gaps that are out there, and I'm just curious how
Speaker 2: you kind of counter that, well.
Speaker 5: But the gaps that are out there matters. Remember we
Speaker 5: had a period coming out of COVID where we had
Speaker 5: surprise billing becoming a major issue where people would go
Speaker 5: into an emergency room, right they'd end up with a
Speaker 5: bill because the emergency room actually had outsourced parts of
Speaker 5: its business to affiliates who weren't part of the insurance,
Speaker 5: so they could then actually boost their fees and so
Speaker 5: that became part of the problem again.
Speaker 2: The bad actor. A bad actor was a spece.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is why they take over the emergency
Speaker 4: departments is to you know, generate higher revenue.
Speaker 2: Josh Rosner's with US Managing Director Graham Fisher and Company
Speaker 2: here in studio and at Gretchen Morgenson, senior financial reporter
Speaker 2: at NBC News Investigative Unit, their new book, These are
Speaker 2: the plunderers How private equity runs in rexs America. Somebody
Speaker 2: on Twitter is saying, please ask them who most of
Speaker 2: the LPs are in these funds, public pension funds, public
Speaker 2: pension funds, right.
Speaker 4: CalPERS, cal stirs.
Speaker 2: Now they are there in private equity because they want
Speaker 2: the outsize returns. That's correct. Are they getting the outsetce?
Speaker 4: They need the outsize returns.
Speaker 9: We will all agree with that.
Speaker 4: Right, they have obligations that they cannot meet. But now
Speaker 4: the returns are not They're reverting to the mean to
Speaker 4: the S and P five hundred much cheaper, you know,
Speaker 4: less opaque, much more transparent, you know what you own.
Speaker 4: Plus you don't have the problem with the weird marks,
Speaker 4: you know, marking to market that private equity can do
Speaker 4: where you don't really know what the value is.
Speaker 7: But the pension funds think that they're getting a better turns.
Speaker 4: Absolutely because the private equity people told them they were.
Speaker 5: And they're not looking at it necessarily net of expense.
Speaker 9: Yeah, right, And that's.
Speaker 5: Part of the problem as well. The other piece with
Speaker 5: the with the whole game is the pension funds really
Speaker 5: are the enablers here, and you know, it's partially due
Speaker 5: to it's partially due to the accounting rules that we
Speaker 5: had an underfunded pension system for a very long time
Speaker 5: where the pension funds were allowed to make actuary assumptions
Speaker 5: about what their future obligation was and therefore impute what
Speaker 5: the returns needed to be. And so we ended up
Speaker 5: with most of our pension system wildly underfunded, and so
Speaker 5: they had to swing more and more aggressively for the fences.
Speaker 5: They thought this was the solution, and it's become less
Speaker 5: and less of the solution, to the point where PE
Speaker 5: is now buying insurance companies as part of the way
Speaker 5: for them to stuff those future liabilities.
Speaker 2: So you guys are great, and you know some of
Speaker 2: The criticism that has probably already come back is that
Speaker 2: you know, you looked at certain studies and then you know,
Speaker 2: maybe didn't take is wide. There's been some other studies
Speaker 2: that I've been reading that you know that actually private
Speaker 2: equities holding their investments for longer. So what do you
Speaker 2: say to some of the things that are I know,
Speaker 2: you're just starting your media tour that are coming at you.
Speaker 4: You know, it's funny that you bring up academic studies
Speaker 4: because there are so many academic studies times that are
Speaker 4: funded by private equity. You really have to look hard
Speaker 4: to see and the authors sometimes don't tell you about
Speaker 4: the conflicts, and so you look and you see, oh, look,
Speaker 4: this author has an affiliation with a private equity firm.
Speaker 4: When I was helping do the reporting with Josh on this,
Speaker 4: I went to the American Investment Council and I said,
Speaker 4: please give me studies that you would like us to
Speaker 4: look at on the benefits of private equity. Also asked
Speaker 4: them for best deals. You know, we really want to
Speaker 4: hear that side of the story. And you know, unfortunately
Speaker 4: they just gave me a lot of studies that had
Speaker 4: private equity, you know, sort of affiliation. Next and I
Speaker 4: said to them, I'm sorry, I'm just not going to
Speaker 4: do that. Really need to have unbiased resources here. The
Speaker 4: other thing we had was we did have interaction with Blackstone.
Speaker 4: Blackstone said that they have created two hundred thousand their
Speaker 4: portfolio companies have created two hundred thousand new jobs, and
Speaker 4: that they don't go bankrupt as often as the generic
Speaker 4: sort of academic research shows, and so therefore that our
Speaker 4: research was incorrect. And I said, well, that's fantastic. I
Speaker 4: really want to report that. I really love to see
Speaker 4: the data, and no, no data. Respectfully decline, Well, I'm curious,
Speaker 4: did you talk to all of who in terms of
Speaker 4: looking at this universe?
Speaker 2: Do you throw all of private equity in this bucket?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 5: No, again again I think that look, private equity is
Speaker 5: a is a big field with a lot.
Speaker 2: Of players, correct, and private equity for really not just
Speaker 2: private appa.
Speaker 5: That's correct, and so we're really just talking about the
Speaker 5: more traditional leveraged players, the.
Speaker 4: People who used to call themselves leveraged by it.
Speaker 5: Exactly right, exactly, That's what we're talking about. Is that
Speaker 5: business model should have died a long time ago with
Speaker 5: the end of greed is good, and.
Speaker 2: It didn't Okay, so three minutes left, let's solve the problem.
Speaker 2: But I'm curious if if you buy into what you're saying,
Speaker 2: and where does it end, like what happens then you
Speaker 2: say it's going to wreck America? Well you would, says already.
Speaker 5: I think it already has in many ways.
Speaker 2: I think it's what's the extreme?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think the extreme, as we were saying,
Speaker 5: is most of these firms that we're talking about have
Speaker 5: also bought insurance companies more recently less and so the
Speaker 5: next level is you're essentially taking over retirement plans, putting
Speaker 5: those into annuities, stuffing those retirement accounts with riskier deals,
Speaker 5: and you're essentially begging for a future crisis not only
Speaker 5: for retirees, but for the insurance industry and for the
Speaker 5: public in that And I think that may well be
Speaker 5: the terminus that we should be looking forward to.
Speaker 4: And this is in part why we started with the
Speaker 4: executive life situation, because it is really almost full circle.
Speaker 2: So what what should be done?
Speaker 4: We need more transparency, we need more antitrust activities. We
Speaker 4: just need more scrutiny on what these folks are doing,
Speaker 4: who they're impacting and affecting the pension funds really need
Speaker 4: to rethink whether they want to be in this business
Speaker 4: and actually, you know, promote it and give it the
Speaker 4: oxygen that it needs.
Speaker 2: Josh, you spent a lot of time up on Capitol
Speaker 2: Hill during the Great Financial Crisis, So what's you know,
Speaker 2: the will or interest in doing something more? And you know,
Speaker 2: to be fair, a lot of whether it's corporate America,
Speaker 2: you know, pick your institution or your sector, A lot
Speaker 2: of people are spending a lot of time in Washington
Speaker 2: or making sure that they're on the right campaign. So
Speaker 2: I'm just curious, what's the well.
Speaker 5: That was actually one of the one of the original
Speaker 5: impetuses for this was when Gretchen and I started at
Speaker 5: what was going on during the COVID crisis with everyone
Speaker 5: in corporate America going hand and you know, open to Washington,
Speaker 5: and we started seeing the private equity guys quietly lobbying
Speaker 5: for handouts. And I'm sorry to call it that, but
Speaker 5: that's what we're talking about, or bailouts. And I don't
Speaker 5: think that there's a lot of interest broadly in Washington.
Speaker 5: I think what's interesting is you're starting to see people
Speaker 5: on the progressive side and the very conservative side starting
Speaker 5: to recognize that this is actually a family a worker.
Speaker 7: A retirment interest loophole, right, Like that has bipartisan support,
Speaker 7: but it hasn't gotten anywhere.
Speaker 5: I think this is actually a little different because we're
Speaker 5: starting to see it talked about as a maintain street
Speaker 5: issue of jobs retirement rather than let's tax sure, right,
Speaker 5: And I think that you're starting to see that from
Speaker 5: the Elizabeth Warrens on the one side, to the JD
Speaker 5: Vance's rubios and Josh Hawley's on the other side, They're
Speaker 5: all sort of coming to the same place here, and
Speaker 5: that usually means the middle is going to start moving
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 2: What do you hope that somebody reads this book? What
Speaker 2: do you hope that they ask themselves or kind of explore.
Speaker 4: Well, I hope that they say this is wrong and
Speaker 4: I want it to change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm curious, like I'm going to do some
Speaker 2: googling on my various medical practices that I'm a part
Speaker 2: of your quick glass thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, I mean I think that it would be nice
Speaker 5: if we all started becoming aware of every company that
Speaker 5: we interact with daily.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think transparency across the board, whether it's
Speaker 2: private equity or everything, and I think this is what
Speaker 2: you're seeing with ESG kind of going through a racketing
Speaker 2: in a big way. Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2: Really appreciate it. Josh Rosner, Imagining Director, Graham Fisher, Gretchen
Speaker 2: Morgenson over at NBC News. These are the Plunderers, How
Speaker 2: private equity runs and wrecks America. This book is new
Speaker 2: and it's out.
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Speaker 2: We'll keeping an eye on shares of Tesla as well,
Speaker 2: stock down about three and a half percent just off
Speaker 2: their lows, and they have backtracked nearly twenty five percent
Speaker 2: since March thirty. First, we continue to see Elon continuing
Speaker 2: to shape strategy that includes betting the house on low
Speaker 2: prices and razor thin margin. So this story is today's
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Big Take. It's also the upcoming new issue of
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business Week on newsstands later on this week tomorrow.
Speaker 2: In fact, already online at Bloomberg dot com, slash BusinessWeek
Speaker 2: and on the Bloomberg terminals. So let's get to it.
Speaker 2: Let's get to Bloomberg News Globals. Are cars are Craig Trudell.
Speaker 2: He's on the phone in London, Craig, Good to have
Speaker 2: you here with us. So, yeah, it does feel like
Speaker 2: every day we come in and there's either another price
Speaker 2: cut or some kind of price move from Elon. Tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about your story in this strategy
Speaker 2: of mister Musk's.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well we'll see if I wake up to it
Speaker 10: and one overnight it'd be right in the middle as
Speaker 10: I'm sleeping. So, I mean, this has been a story
Speaker 10: of just yeah, relentless cutting all year long, and we
Speaker 10: really started to see hints of it even late last year. Uh,
Speaker 10: you know, whether there were there were some cuts in
Speaker 10: in China or some incentive offers in the US.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 10: But but in the end, we're we're now to a
Speaker 10: point where, uh, where it costs almost a third less
Speaker 10: to buy a model why now than it did just
Speaker 10: a little over three months ago. And and this is
Speaker 10: just something that we haven't seen before. Right, It's it's
Speaker 10: not a model that you know is really uh, you know,
Speaker 10: low low volume or or has been in this you
Speaker 10: know market decline. If anything, it's been their strongest model,
Speaker 10: and it's potentially, I mean, it could end up being
Speaker 10: the best selling vehicle in the world this year. Uh
Speaker 10: And yet it's a case of adding a heck of
Speaker 10: a lot of capacity very quickly.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 10: And and the model itself, you know, going into that
Speaker 10: process being quite high price, being high volume. Uh and
Speaker 10: yet with all that capacity coming online and real changes
Speaker 10: in the sort of supply demand dynamics for the broader industry,
Speaker 10: you know, all of those things have sort of combined
Speaker 10: to also, I guess add in a CEO who is
Speaker 10: sort of prone to making very sort of sudden changes,
Speaker 10: and boom, you get yourself. You know, these these massive,
Speaker 10: you know, price cuts in the last few months.
Speaker 7: Craig, does it work for the company?
Speaker 10: I think that's that's a question that's really difficult to
Speaker 10: answer because you have, you know, really smart people who
Speaker 10: come to just radically different conclusions where you know, some
Speaker 10: some will tell you it's it's desperation, and some will
Speaker 10: tell you it's just disruption, and you may even actually
Speaker 10: hear it, you know, hints of that in the in
Speaker 10: the same answer from the same person. And I allude
Speaker 10: there to Jim Parley, the CEO of Ford. He's talked about,
Speaker 10: you know, just last week, you know, he told reporters
Speaker 10: look up nineteen thirteen and he was referring, of course
Speaker 10: to Henry Ford and the Model T and how quickly
Speaker 10: Henry Ford dropped the price of that car when he
Speaker 10: sort of had an edge on the rest of the
Speaker 10: industry and had, you know, innovated with the moving assembly line.
Speaker 10: I think, you know, Musk thinks that he's pressing an
Speaker 10: advantage here, but I also don't think that you've cut
Speaker 10: your prices that much that quickly from a position of
Speaker 10: absolute strength. It's clear that he's you know, to some degree,
Speaker 10: been pushing on a string here.
Speaker 2: But I do wonder, you know, is this about forgive
Speaker 2: me going after the masses more easily, because these these
Speaker 2: cars have been even the lower and pretty expensive.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean just last year, I mean you had
Speaker 10: to pay sixty five thousand dollars plus for a Model
Speaker 10: why so, yeah, this was not a cheap vehicle. It's
Speaker 10: now to the point where you can you can get
Speaker 10: it in the mid forties. And that's you know, something
Speaker 10: that we haven't seen before where you know that that
Speaker 10: vehicle was not anywhere close to what the average transaction
Speaker 10: price was in the US, and now it's slightly below it.
Speaker 10: And so we've seen that change. It's been about twenty
Speaker 10: thousand dollars, you know, change in the differential. Our colleague
Speaker 10: Tom Randall had a great story on this yesterday. Just
Speaker 10: he's been very closely following those numbers. So you know,
Speaker 10: it absolutely is the case that he's unlocking, you know,
Speaker 10: a greater market. But you know, to what extent is
Speaker 10: he able to sustain the Model three, which is is
Speaker 10: you know, older, and then you have a sort of
Speaker 10: very different story with the Model S and the Model X,
Speaker 10: which are are very old and really having a hard time.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting what I thought in your story
Speaker 2: and you took us back to the Rick Wagner days
Speaker 2: at General Motors when he was CEO. Do you think
Speaker 2: it's fair like to share with our audience, you know,
Speaker 2: that comparison. But I do wonder is it fair to
Speaker 2: make that comparison, because I would say that it's kind
Speaker 2: of it feels a little different.
Speaker 10: Oh, it's it's definitely different. I do think that the
Speaker 10: sort of similarity there is, you know, a story of
Speaker 10: a company that has a heck of a lot of
Speaker 10: capacity and has to make some difficult decisions when you
Speaker 10: know it's having trouble getting and for the capacity that
Speaker 10: it has. I think the comparisons maybe due you know,
Speaker 10: to your to your point end there. And I think
Speaker 10: there's a great chart in our story today capturing what's
Speaker 10: happened to the cash and the debt on Tesla's balance sheet.
Speaker 10: We saw, you know, in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty,
Speaker 10: Tesla raise a ton of money from Wall Street and
Speaker 10: in the last few years has itself you know, added
Speaker 10: to its cash balance, you know, from its own operations
Speaker 10: and in the process it's it's also paid off about
Speaker 10: you know, ten billion, ten billion dollars worth of debt
Speaker 10: in the course of three years. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 10: just recently we saw Moody's raise Tesla to investment great.
Speaker 2: So it's a great chart. It's how you want it
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's Tesla in a structural state anywhere close to
Speaker 10: where GM was. Absolutely not. But I do think you
Speaker 10: know the sort of you know, it's funny, we we
Speaker 10: sort of thought that Tesla was something different and not
Speaker 10: like other sort of old line carmakers. But you know,
Speaker 10: this idea of sort of as we saw in two
Speaker 10: thousand and one, you know, just sort of resorting to
Speaker 10: discounting to sort of move the metal. It definitely brings
Speaker 10: you know, it sounds familiar there.
Speaker 7: So why aren't they pouring that money into generating freshness?
Speaker 7: Which I'm stealing from one of your sources. But Carol
Speaker 7: and I get a lot of our best ideas, or
Speaker 7: I do, at least from the makeup room. And what
Speaker 7: they always talk about is the lack of availability of
Speaker 7: different colors of Tesla's. I know that sounds silly, but
Speaker 7: is something like that on Elon Musk's mind.
Speaker 10: It's a good question. I mean, I don't think that
Speaker 10: they've really sort of, you know, talked a whole lot about,
Speaker 10: you know, significant changes to the product. And of course
Speaker 10: you always sort of run the risk when you sort of,
Speaker 10: you know, dangle this sort of next thing that you
Speaker 10: sort of have the consumer weight for the changes to come.
Speaker 10: And we may be seeing that a little bit. I
Speaker 10: think there's been reports recently that the Model why and
Speaker 10: the Model three are going to undergo some upgrades fairly
Speaker 10: soon and so are we seeing some consumers hold back
Speaker 10: and wait for the pressure models? I think another fair
Speaker 10: question to raise here is, you know, if you're a consumer,
Speaker 10: why the heck would you want to buy a Tuessle
Speaker 10: right now when when the prices are coming down so quickly?
Speaker 10: You know, why not wait a little bit more and
Speaker 10: see if these prices sort of settle down a little
Speaker 10: bit before you, you know, go out and purchase something
Speaker 10: that you know, a few weeks later, might you know
Speaker 10: the price may depreciate another two thousand dollars, we'll go up.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say there's a flip side no
Speaker 2: elib hey, I just I am curious, Craig, is Tesla
Speaker 2: going to be like any other carmaker though that like
Speaker 2: every year there's a new model. It doesn't feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, Elin just does it so differently. Should we
Speaker 2: expect as consumers that that's how.
Speaker 8: He's going to do it?
Speaker 2: Or is it going to be I don't know akin
Speaker 2: to I mean Apple watches, I mean, or something that
Speaker 2: come out every few years. I mean, how do we
Speaker 2: you know, how do we think about that when it
Speaker 2: comes to Tesla?
Speaker 10: I think I I think absolutely that's a that's an
Speaker 10: observation that you know, he has very much sort of
Speaker 10: bet on this idea that I don't need to sort
Speaker 10: of regularly do these redesigns the way the industry has
Speaker 10: been doing for a long time. I can make these
Speaker 10: incremental improvements to my product with software, and to his credit,
Speaker 10: he's done that in a way that I don't think,
Speaker 10: you know, the incumbents are still caught up in terms
Speaker 10: of the over the air update capability that Tesla's have,
Speaker 10: and it's still an edge that Tesla has over the
Speaker 10: rest of the industry.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 10: But that being said, I do think that, you know,
Speaker 10: the consumer has been sort of trained over the years
Speaker 10: to expect, you know, this model will at least get
Speaker 10: you know, a bit of a freshening up, you know,
Speaker 10: a bit of a nose job on it, something to
Speaker 10: get me excited.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 10: They did try to do that with the Model S
Speaker 10: and X a couple of years back. It just didn't
Speaker 10: really go over that well.
Speaker 2: Craig Trudell, great story, Thanks for hanging up Later there
Speaker 2: Over in London, Craig is Global Cars are here at
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. He is joining us on the phone from London.
Speaker 2: That story, by the way, in the upcoming new issue
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg Business Week on newstands tomorrow, already at Bloomberg
Speaker 2: dot com, slash BusinessWeek and on the Bloomberg Terminal.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekdays from two to five pm Easter.
Speaker 6: On Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App, and you too.
Speaker 1: You can also listen live to our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, Well, the Repo Man is back. Where
Speaker 2: are you laughing?
Speaker 7: I'm so sorry that I can't control.
Speaker 9: My It's kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Well, this whole idea is just really charming. He's back,
Speaker 2: perhaps a sign of our times. We're talking about the
Speaker 2: repo Man. Yeah, it was not just a movie. It's
Speaker 2: actually a real man or woman who's out there repossessing
Speaker 2: our cars. Let's get into it with Bloomberg News Personal
Speaker 2: finance reporter Claire Valentine, who tracked him or her down
Speaker 2: uh and a convention who knew there's actually a convention
Speaker 2: out there. The stories of the upcoming new issue of
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business Week on newsstands starting tomorrow, already online at
Speaker 2: Bloomberg dot com slash Business Weekend on the Bloomberg terminal.
Speaker 2: So let's get to it and more on her reporting.
Speaker 2: Claire joining us in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio along
Speaker 2: with the editor of Bloomberg Business Week, Joel Weber and
Speaker 2: Jill I have to say when Claire I was in
Speaker 2: the makeup room a while ago and she's like, you know,
Speaker 2: even believe what I'm doing. I'm like, repo, what what's
Speaker 2: going on? So so glad we can talk about this story?
Speaker 8: Are we not going to talk about Boys to Men?
Speaker 8: Because the Boys to Men?
Speaker 3: Who was?
Speaker 2: Is that a movie?
Speaker 8: I mean, it's a certain movie. I don't know if
Speaker 8: it's going to be this one. But somebody got to
Speaker 8: the end of the road. All right, Okay the connection
Speaker 8: so you get yeah, you get that, there's that road there. Yeah,
Speaker 8: the producers all over that one.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 8: So this immediate with the moment Claire started talking about
Speaker 8: that story about the return of the reap a man,
Speaker 8: I was like, oh man, you had me at the
Speaker 8: But the repost story is a really significant one. The
Speaker 8: car is so central to the American economy, and when
Speaker 8: people start to lose that car, I think it has
Speaker 8: some bigger implications for the US economy, But I do
Speaker 8: want to start with this convention because lo and behold,
Speaker 8: there's a convention for everything, and of course there's one
Speaker 8: for REPO men. What goes down at the REPO convention?
Speaker 13: Claire, Well, as soon as I heard that this existed,
Speaker 13: I told my boss I have got to go to
Speaker 13: this and just see what it's all about. And it
Speaker 13: did not disappoint. It was a two day convention in Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 9: So I went.
Speaker 13: Down on an airplane full of screaming children going to
Speaker 13: Disney World and college students on their way to spring break,
Speaker 13: and got this convention. And the first thing that really
Speaker 13: struck me was how many total trucks they managed to
Speaker 13: get in this hotel. They had displayed all their tow trucks.
Speaker 13: There was all these vendors, all this technology on the
Speaker 13: best way to repot cars. And it really got real
Speaker 13: when one convention attendant looked at me and said, yeah,
Speaker 13: everyone in this room has been shot at at least once.
Speaker 13: You are these individuals?
Speaker 2: Is it largely men?
Speaker 13: A lot of men? But it's you know, it really
Speaker 13: is all small business. And I'm really glad I went
Speaker 13: because in doing stories about the repoeman in the consumer
Speaker 13: it was nice to put actual faces to this. And
Speaker 13: what really struck me was that, you know, there is
Speaker 13: this narrative of the evil repo man, and I'm sure
Speaker 13: it's true in some cases, but no one here is
Speaker 13: getting super rich off repoing cars. He's a very down
Speaker 13: to earth, regular Americans that just happened to make their
Speaker 13: money taking cars from people.
Speaker 8: Okay, so how is that business trending? And by business
Speaker 8: I mean repos? Right, this is not something that you know,
Speaker 8: we've really seen for a while, right is it? How
Speaker 8: is it back? And how big is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 13: So during the pandemic, repos largely dried up. There was stimulus, checks,
Speaker 13: a lot of leniency from lenders on paying auto loans.
Speaker 13: Now things are kind of starting to turn, and I
Speaker 13: think this convention really marks almost the start of what
Speaker 13: we're going to see as a surge in repossessions. The
Speaker 13: estimates are that they were about one point two million
Speaker 13: in twenty twenty two. It's up from last year, but
Speaker 13: still down from about one point seven million and twenty nineteen.
Speaker 13: So these are really picking up, and I think the
Speaker 13: convention as a whole was this great window into the economy.
Speaker 8: Right now, do they play any jokes on each other
Speaker 8: at a convention like this?
Speaker 13: The jokes that I saw, Let's see who's there. The
Speaker 13: highlight was definitely the Repo demo. There's some jokes thrown
Speaker 13: around there. With the Repo demo was all of the
Speaker 13: convention attendees filed out to the parking lot where I
Speaker 13: thought this was very poetic. It was a giant tow
Speaker 13: truck that was repossessing a Toyota Hybrid. So it was
Speaker 13: like this very liberal car that they were like repossessing,
Speaker 13: and they everyone was crying around. The tow truck was
Speaker 13: getting hooked up to take this car away, and they
Speaker 13: were demonstrating all the best techniques and how you know
Speaker 13: what the repo agent technique towing techniques. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 13: I meant. That was the best one. Well, the thing
Speaker 13: that stood out to me the most is that they
Speaker 13: really emphasized that when your back is turned to the
Speaker 13: situation behind you, that's the most vulnerable because you're at
Speaker 13: risk of violence because you have to.
Speaker 2: Do it right, as somebody who's repossessing, right, you have
Speaker 2: to physically do it so like.
Speaker 13: You're not and it can get really dicey. That was
Speaker 13: another big takeaway. I had no idea how dangerous this
Speaker 13: industry was.
Speaker 8: There's the other side of this. You talk to people
Speaker 8: who have had their vehicles repossessed, and I'm curious what
Speaker 8: came out of those conversations.
Speaker 13: A lot of people really struggling right now to afford
Speaker 13: their car loans. We saw car prices skyrocket during the pandemic,
Speaker 13: a lot of supply chain issues. A lot of people
Speaker 13: in America just have to have a car. There's no
Speaker 13: way to get around if you're don't live in a
Speaker 13: city with good public transportation. So people are taking out
Speaker 13: loans with insane interest rates, I mean nineteen twenty percent,
Speaker 13: and their car payments are just so high. There's not
Speaker 13: enough money to go around, especially with inflation.
Speaker 2: You talk about Sarah Fader in your story, and she's
Speaker 2: the one right who's got a nineteen percent interest loan
Speaker 2: from American Credit Acceptance.
Speaker 13: Yes. I went up to New Haven and met Sarah,
Speaker 13: met her family, saw the car, really talked with her
Speaker 13: about her situation, and it really hits home just what
Speaker 13: a lot of people are dealing with right now. Rent
Speaker 13: had gone up, or groceries were so expensive, she's got
Speaker 13: two teenagers and with a high car payment, there's just.
Speaker 9: A tough spot.
Speaker 7: And lenders are excited about making these loans, even if
Speaker 7: they're letting out that money to people who they know
Speaker 7: can't necessarily afford it.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's a whole way. They package up these auto
Speaker 13: loans into bonds. In some cases, investors would still get
Speaker 13: their money back with interest if even three quarters of
Speaker 13: barers to falls it on the loans. So it's of course,
Speaker 13: you know, moves to Wall Street where they're eager to
Speaker 13: package these up and sell them and make money off
Speaker 13: of them.
Speaker 8: Okay, So with the people that you talked to, see
Speaker 8: your car gets repossessed and you know you've lost out
Speaker 8: in that vehicle, where does the story go from there?
Speaker 8: What do they have to do to get it back,
Speaker 8: to get back to work, to get all that stuff
Speaker 8: that not only has impacts for them but also the
Speaker 8: economy as a whole.
Speaker 2: Ring.
Speaker 13: Yeah, and in many cases it's not just the back
Speaker 13: payments that they have to make that they haven't paid
Speaker 13: so far. It's additional fees for repossession and for towing.
Speaker 13: And then there's the hit to their credit score which
Speaker 13: is going to affect them in the future. I talked
Speaker 13: with a couple of people who'd had their cars repossessed
Speaker 13: that essentially just had to count it as a loss.
Speaker 13: They didn't have the money to get the car back,
Speaker 13: so they were going to have to just move on
Speaker 13: with their lives in any way they can. But it
Speaker 13: definitely you know, when people suddenly don't have a car,
Speaker 13: they can't get to work, maybe they lose their job,
Speaker 13: and it's just this whole spiral cycle.
Speaker 2: So you know, what I'm also curious about is the
Speaker 2: individuals who are the REPO man or woman. Do they
Speaker 2: think about this, like in terms of that there are
Speaker 2: people and you know, with problems and financial problems. I
Speaker 2: just wonder, is it a job or is it a
Speaker 2: lot more than that.
Speaker 13: I think that's a great question, and it is. You know,
Speaker 13: I don't think they're ignorant of that, but I do
Speaker 13: think what came away from me from the conference was
Speaker 13: very much I think there's this attitude that REPO men
Speaker 13: are misunderstood, and it was a bit.
Speaker 11: Of a.
Speaker 2: That's another new movie or talking about, but go ahead,
Speaker 2: go ahead, that the REPO men were sort of like,
Speaker 2: we're the good guys and we're just doing our job.
Speaker 13: No one understands how hard or how dangerous that is.
Speaker 13: And I think, you know, it's it's easy to point
Speaker 13: your finger out at the villain in these situations. I
Speaker 13: do think the truth is more nuanced. You also have
Speaker 13: in some cases predatory lenders that are giving out loans
Speaker 13: was kind of high interest rates. So it's a whole
Speaker 13: system that contributes to this kind of crisis.
Speaker 8: Okay, I'm curious about the Python. Can we talk about
Speaker 8: the Python?
Speaker 13: Yes, the Python.
Speaker 8: The Python.
Speaker 13: It's a pretty impressive truck. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 8: It must just like make this room get really excited,
Speaker 8: a room full of REPO people.
Speaker 13: I wish I had seen them get these toe trucks
Speaker 13: into the conference room because it's it was a very
Speaker 13: nice conference center. I mean this was like palm trees.
Speaker 13: I mean it's Florida. It was Florida. It was very nice.
Speaker 13: And then all of a sudden you look around and
Speaker 13: there's five toe trucks sitting around. It's I mean, they
Speaker 13: were huge, and what I love the most is that
Speaker 13: to sort of demonstrate how they work, they had this
Speaker 13: little toy car that they were towing that was just
Speaker 13: like the size of a kid's little tricycle.
Speaker 2: It's showing how you hook it up, so they have
Speaker 2: a sense of humor.
Speaker 13: There's a certain extent.
Speaker 2: Eighty eight thousand dollars though, what well.
Speaker 8: And these are small businesses, you know, I found them
Speaker 8: to be really interesting, Like it's it's not like it's
Speaker 8: some big company. It's like you're out there on your
Speaker 8: own repossessing vehicles. Was that true for everyone in the room?
Speaker 8: Were they all small businesses or how many of them
Speaker 8: work for somebody else?
Speaker 13: I mean, I would say most of them were small businesses.
Speaker 13: I mean you look around at the clientele, and these
Speaker 13: are not you know, millionaires, businessmen in suits. These are
Speaker 13: very you know, blue collar kind of workers. And I'd
Speaker 13: say maybe they have, you know, a place with at
Speaker 13: most to thirty employees, but there are really giant firms
Speaker 13: doing this. Well.
Speaker 7: It makes me wonder, Claire, like, on a personal level,
Speaker 7: was it ever hard for you to walk up to
Speaker 7: people and just say like, hey, can you give me
Speaker 7: your life story?
Speaker 9: Were you like nervous at all?
Speaker 13: I was only because I'm pretty sure I was the
Speaker 13: only journalist there. I'm sure I am one of the
Speaker 13: only women, one of the only women. These people are
Speaker 13: not huge journalism fans, so got a lot of that,
Speaker 13: got a lot of people coming up to me and
Speaker 13: being like, oh, hey, I heard you're the journalist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so me.
Speaker 7: Honestly, I went to a men's rights conference for Bloomberg
Speaker 7: a few years ago.
Speaker 13: It sounds very similar.
Speaker 7: You're like, hey, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2: It was Did you talk to the journalist?
Speaker 13: Yeah? I do think. You know, there are pros and
Speaker 13: cons to being a young woman in this industry, and
Speaker 13: you know, lots of cons as you and I know,
Speaker 13: but one of the pros is that kind of non threatening.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 13: I think if I'd been a big guy coming in
Speaker 13: there talking to the reputman, it may have been a
Speaker 13: little different. So it was a very unique situation.
Speaker 8: Report and why is that I've been in does make
Speaker 8: me wonder who do these people work for? You know,
Speaker 8: like and like how do they get their next job?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 13: This is fascinating. I had no idea the technology behind
Speaker 13: all of this. There were so many firms that were
Speaker 13: advertising their databases. So in some cases these small businesses
Speaker 13: sign up to have access to databases with all this
Speaker 13: license plate data that's all proprietary, right, And it was
Speaker 13: fascinating to me. I mean these are all this is
Speaker 13: public sector, this is or private sector. This is not
Speaker 13: government data.
Speaker 2: So somebody's feeding it into these these apps if you will, or.
Speaker 13: Whatever, base like readers that compile all of this and
Speaker 13: then REPO agents can access it to then track down
Speaker 13: your car.
Speaker 8: AI that's work.
Speaker 9: What do they make?
Speaker 2: How can they afford that?
Speaker 9: Idiot? That's a dullar? What is it called?
Speaker 8: Python?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: What I want to see is what the python get repossessed?
Speaker 13: They'll circle right, Yeah, definitely, yeah. I you know, in
Speaker 13: terms of profit margins on these, I don't have an
Speaker 13: incredible idea. I do think they have had a tough.
Speaker 9: Couple of years.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because the numbers went down, right like the pandemic
Speaker 8: there was you know, we the chart and the story
Speaker 8: sort of says it all. It's like it's back because
Speaker 8: you know, there was a lull and so and speaking
Speaker 8: to everyone there, though, do they think that this these
Speaker 8: numbers are going to keep going up?
Speaker 13: I think so, yeah. I mean that's I think it's
Speaker 13: the fact that they drop so much really has contributed
Speaker 13: to this sort of you know, our industry is in
Speaker 13: crisis and risk kind of mentality. And now what I
Speaker 13: saw at the conference was a lot of people getting
Speaker 13: more excited or getting more like, our industry is on
Speaker 13: the upswing now we are.
Speaker 2: Bad news is good news.
Speaker 13: Bad news is good news. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also thought it was interesting that, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the things we talk about with I feel like
Speaker 2: everybody who comes on is like the tight labor market,
Speaker 2: and they're dealing with that too, just quickly they are.
Speaker 13: Yeah, they're having a lot of trouble hiring workers, especially
Speaker 13: because many of their repo agents from pre pandemic went
Speaker 13: to other industries.
Speaker 2: Right right, Exactly did they try to recruit you? I'm
Speaker 2: just curious.
Speaker 13: I quite have the profile to Prussia.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable, really funny. You took us to a place that
Speaker 2: I think nobody has really seen. Clear Valentine. She's personal
Speaker 2: finance reporter at Bloomberg News here in studio with us
Speaker 2: a long retil Weber, the editor of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 2: and of course, the story, as we mentioned, coming up
Speaker 2: in the new issue of Bloomberg Business Week, out on
Speaker 2: newstands tomorrow, already online at Bloomberg dot com, slash BusinessWeek,
Speaker 2: and also on the Bloomberg terminal.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. That's us
Speaker 1: live weekdays from two to five pm Easter.
Speaker 6: On Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App, and You too.
Speaker 1: You can also listen live to our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa, Play Bloomberg, You Love and thirty.
Speaker 2: Right now, we want to get to some of the
Speaker 2: trends that are going on in the workforce. We're kind
Speaker 2: of counting down not only to a FED meeting, but
Speaker 2: our next read when it comes to the late market
Speaker 2: and with us is Emma cod of Deloitte. She's a
Speaker 2: global inclusion leader and they did a survey that looked
Speaker 2: at they do an annual report on women, specifically it's
Speaker 2: up today and what they found. One of the findings
Speaker 2: one out of five women surveyed have left their employer
Speaker 2: in the past twelve months. That's a pretty big statistic.
Speaker 2: So let's get to it and get some understanding of
Speaker 2: who they talk to and more on the findings. Emma
Speaker 2: joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Great
Speaker 2: to have you here. I do feel like this is
Speaker 2: very indicative of our times post pandemic.
Speaker 15: Welcome, thank you, great to be here.
Speaker 2: Nice to have you here. So tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about who you surveyed specific So.
Speaker 15: We surveyed five thousand women in the workplace across ten countries,
Speaker 15: really try and get a good global outlook, so you know,
Speaker 15: European countries, it's sort of over to Asia, Latin America.
Speaker 15: It's really a good represent sample and the affect few
Speaker 15: women in work in roles, in jobs. Eighty eight percent
Speaker 15: to them were in full time employment. And that's actually
Speaker 15: interesting when we come on to the well working findings
Speaker 15: because I would say some of those would rather be
Speaker 15: in part time employment, but given some of the issues
Speaker 15: that we've identified, they're not. They're working full time. And
Speaker 15: the aim for this research, as you said, this our
Speaker 15: third year, is really to understand it's less about policies,
Speaker 15: less about processes, to understand women's real experiences and actually
Speaker 15: to come you know, what is the secret source come
Speaker 15: up with recommendations that businesses can use because we're not
Speaker 15: making enough progress.
Speaker 7: So what was the main thing then for businesses?
Speaker 15: In terms of a takeaway, I would say, look, there
Speaker 15: are a couple of main takeaways things that really actually
Speaker 15: concern me. Last year we saw very high numbers around burnout,
Speaker 15: around exclusion during hybrid working around non inclusive behaviors. And
Speaker 15: I do think that was partly a sign of the times.
Speaker 15: We're in this weird sort of coming back to work slowly,
Speaker 15: and we were you know what we've been through the
Speaker 15: last couple of years. This year, those numbers have come down,
Speaker 15: but I want to really emphasize they're not good, that
Speaker 15: they're still poor. So specific you look at mental health,
Speaker 15: mental health, more women are feeling very stressed. You know,
Speaker 15: you asked them, are you feeling more stressed than you
Speaker 15: were a year ago? Yet around half of them are
Speaker 15: always on. There are more women who are saying I
Speaker 15: feel the need to always be on. So that's a
Speaker 15: big hangover from pandemic times. It's worse than last year,
Speaker 15: but fewer women feel comfortable talking about mental health at work.
Speaker 2: Emma, hang on for a second, Like, how would you
Speaker 2: say this compares to pre pandemic. I was pretty frazzled
Speaker 2: pre pandemic.
Speaker 15: I was pretty fuzzle pre pandemic too.
Speaker 2: So is it because I'm trying to get an understanding of, like,
Speaker 2: you know, pandemic, which was lousy and so many people
Speaker 2: had very difficult situations. But I'm just wondering, you know,
Speaker 2: I have to say my first few months. I love
Speaker 2: being home from me and my family. It made us
Speaker 2: all stop for a moment.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm just wondering, like, how do you think about
Speaker 2: it that way? You've been doing this survey since the period.
Speaker 15: Yes, and we did a pulse during the pandemic and
Speaker 15: the pretty bad findings well from that, So how does
Speaker 15: it compare to pre look? Mental health has always been
Speaker 15: an issue. You know, we have our physical health, we
Speaker 15: have our mental health. It's just talked about more and
Speaker 15: I think the workplace, I think how it compares is
Speaker 15: the workplace has started to talk about it more because
Speaker 15: of the pandemic. But you know, the mental health and
Speaker 15: mental ill health has existed long before that, always on
Speaker 15: has existed long before that. I think we got into
Speaker 15: habits during the pandemic that I don't think they're going away.
Speaker 15: And I think hybrid working is something that's new. You know,
Speaker 15: we didn't some of us hybrid worked, just we didn't
Speaker 15: call it hybrid working. Hybrid working is a new way
Speaker 15: of working that. You know, it's still some challenges there
Speaker 15: for women. So you know non inclusive behaviors. Forty four
Speaker 15: percent of women have experienced non inclusive behaviors in a
Speaker 15: workplace context in the last year.
Speaker 2: How would does that mean?
Speaker 15: So that effectively means microaggressions or harassment. So of the respondents,
Speaker 15: nearly twoy five hundred women said I experienced it on
Speaker 15: at least one occasion a behavior that was you know,
Speaker 15: it was a microaggression or harassment. So you know, and
Speaker 15: was that proper the case? Yes, I mean, you know,
Speaker 15: workplace culture has long been a challenge, and it was
Speaker 15: a challenge pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: We had a story the other week on the terminal
Speaker 7: from Pew Research data showing that US women now make
Speaker 7: as much or more than men in half of marriages.
Speaker 7: But I think that's really interesting to square that with
Speaker 7: some of the findings that you have on women still
Speaker 7: feeling the need to deprioritize their careers. Can you talk
Speaker 7: about the dichotomy there?
Speaker 15: Yeah, and this is interesting because the survey has been
Speaker 15: going three years, but this is the first time we
Speaker 15: wanted to find out about responsibilities in the home and
Speaker 15: about prioritization and who is the primary income source. And
Speaker 15: the findings were they surprising on the share of household responsibilities?
Speaker 15: Sadly not, they weren't. So we had you know, just
Speaker 15: under half women saying I have primary responsibility that only
Speaker 15: ten percent of women said their partner did. So that's
Speaker 15: the first thing. And don't forget most of these women
Speaker 15: are working full time as well. And then when we
Speaker 15: looked at income source, majority of women were not the
Speaker 15: primary income source. Majority of them prioritized their partner's career
Speaker 15: over their own. Now, the interesting thing there is that
Speaker 15: was still one in five for women who are the
Speaker 15: high earner. So we had Yeah, so you know two
Speaker 15: and five, we're not one in five, we're not. So
Speaker 15: there is this challenge, and to me, it's like this
Speaker 15: sort of vicious circle almost because if you're deprioritizing your career,
Speaker 15: then your chances are becoming the primary earner in the
Speaker 15: household are reduced.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so just get about forty five seconds left here.
Speaker 2: So what do you do with this? Because I feel
Speaker 2: like we spend years and years like we pull data.
Speaker 2: It's very useful. I think it gives us a great
Speaker 2: snapschat of what's going on, but so many times it
Speaker 2: doesn't get put into action.
Speaker 15: So what do we do with it? We need to
Speaker 15: know that we do not need to fix women. We
Speaker 15: need to fix the workplace. Okay, that's the first. What
Speaker 15: we do with it this report, What I love about
Speaker 15: it is it's data driven. It shows the impact and
Speaker 15: it shows the positive impact five percent in work for
Speaker 15: companies that are getting it right. So any employers out there,
Speaker 15: you can look and see what is the secret source
Speaker 15: for those companies. It's around culture, it's around process, it's
Speaker 15: around support, it's around removing barriers. That is what we.
Speaker 8: Needs to do.
Speaker 15: If we take this seriously, which we need to, then
Speaker 15: we can make a difference.
Speaker 2: And when it's a tight labor for us, which it
Speaker 2: still is, you know, workers are going to move to
Speaker 2: where they think they're going to have all of these
Speaker 2: things that they that they're looking for. And as you're senior,
Speaker 2: your service. Absolutely all right, Emma, Safe travels home.
Speaker 15: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Nice to have you here. Emma Cage's global inclusion leader
Speaker 2: at Deloitt. Here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business App, and you too. You can also
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Speaker 1: Alexa play Bloomberg Eleve and thirty.
Speaker 2: Well, Alexis o'hanian. He co founded Read It. He's a
Speaker 2: serial entrepreneur. He's got a VC firm, the seven seven
Speaker 2: six Fund. He's got a foundation with a similar name.
Speaker 2: He's also all in on sports, co founder and leading
Speaker 2: investor at the Angel City Football Club, the women's soccer
Speaker 2: team based in La We had a long ranging conversation
Speaker 2: earlier today, but sports that's where we began, you tweeted,
Speaker 2: I think just a few days. I love sports. Have
Speaker 2: you always loved sports always?
Speaker 11: I did not always love women's sports, though, to be clear,
Speaker 11: I'm not. I jumped on this bandwagon really when I
Speaker 11: met my wife. That was the first time I even
Speaker 11: ever watched tennis as a sport. Yeah, but then really
Speaker 11: went whole hog in twenty nineteen, so I'm new to it.
Speaker 2: Well, talk to us about Angel City in terms of
Speaker 2: how it came on your radar. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of well known actresses Mia Ham's involved. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of incredible women behind it. What was it, I
Speaker 2: don't know the conversations you had with him that said
Speaker 2: I want to be a part of this.
Speaker 11: Well, so back in twenty nineteen and I dug up
Speaker 11: these old tweets. It was March. I was just, you know,
Speaker 11: reading the news the US women's national team was fighting
Speaker 11: for pay equity, and I started looking at the numbers
Speaker 11: and I realized women's sports, and chiefly soccer, was being
Speaker 11: so so undervalued. And again I only just come of
Speaker 11: this as a businessman, as an investor, and you know,
Speaker 11: seeing the amount of attention that team was able to capture,
Speaker 11: seeing the number of follows their biggest stars had on
Speaker 11: social media, right, this is these are facts over feelings.
Speaker 11: This is just the democratic nature of social media, which
Speaker 11: says you are someone I want to pay attention to,
Speaker 11: I will click follow. Showed that these women were incredibly popular.
Speaker 11: They were individually capable of generating you know, millions of
Speaker 11: dollars in brand deals. And yet the league, the NWSL,
Speaker 11: was still kind of a mess. I didn't even know
Speaker 11: it existed. I think a lot of sports fans didn't.
Speaker 11: It was showing its matches on life Time Lifetime. No
Speaker 11: offense to Lifetime, but come on, you're not watching sports
Speaker 11: on Lifetime. And at the time a team had sold
Speaker 11: for like three million dollars and it was the same
Speaker 11: team that Megan Rappino played on. And you don't have
Speaker 11: think the smartest guy in the room to realize Megan
Speaker 11: Rapino can generate at least a few million dollars a
Speaker 11: year in brand deals, and really she is worth at
Speaker 11: least that much and soon money her entire team is
Speaker 11: only worth three millions. Someone was epically messing up, and
Speaker 11: so I started tweeting, and I just said, I was like, look,
Speaker 11: this is a huge opportunity. I want to buy a team.
Speaker 11: Who do I talk to? I want to start a team?
Speaker 11: Who do I talk to? And you know, Twitter showed
Speaker 11: up in a big way. The diehard women's soccer fans
Speaker 11: were like, all right, you know, don't just talk about it,
Speaker 11: be about it. And then there were also trolls who
Speaker 11: were like, you're going to waste all your money. This
Speaker 11: is stupid. No one cares what women's sports. So I
Speaker 11: started talking to existing owners. I realized pretty quickly I
Speaker 11: didn't want to inherit someone else's team. I needed a
Speaker 11: blank slate. And because I was so proactively honestly tweeting
Speaker 11: about it, one of the owners of La FC, the
Speaker 11: men's club in la introduced me to Kara Julian Knatt
Speaker 11: created Who at the end of I think twenty nineteen
Speaker 11: were out to market and couldn't find anyone who wanted
Speaker 11: to invest, and so I said, well, look I'm doing
Speaker 11: this and getting connected to them. You know, they shared
Speaker 11: a similar vision.
Speaker 2: And you know I wrote the check off and running.
Speaker 8: That's yeah, it was.
Speaker 11: It was kismet and I think tweeting, I mean seriously,
Speaker 11: and it's it's this.
Speaker 2: Show is like it can work. It's like incredible and
Speaker 2: connecting people.
Speaker 11: Yes, And look, I'm also the kind of person who
Speaker 11: likes being early and right. So I love calling my
Speaker 11: shots on Twitter because I love having those receipts later
Speaker 11: when everyone's like history, right, Yeah, bring the receipts baby.
Speaker 2: Well okay, god, I feel like there's a million places
Speaker 2: I could go. Well does that show?
Speaker 16: Do you?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to take a sidebar here, go for it.
Speaker 2: So social media Twitter, TikTok. There's a lot of things
Speaker 2: that are on you know, everybody's radar about usefulness, the
Speaker 2: problems that are created, you know, elin and Twitter is
Speaker 2: a whole other story. What's your take on social media?
Speaker 2: Has it run its course?
Speaker 9: Uh?
Speaker 2: We? And I love a lot one. Wow.
Speaker 11: Yes, Okay, Look, it has transformed the world. There have
Speaker 11: been good outcomes, there have been bad outcomes, right, I
Speaker 11: very publicly left read it in protest a few years ago,
Speaker 11: and I was thrilled. They didn't response. You know, they
Speaker 11: did finally ban hate communities, They did replace me with
Speaker 11: a black directory. They made changes as a result of
Speaker 11: my resignation that I was so happy with at the
Speaker 11: end of the day. But I realized, for me, I
Speaker 11: think social media is very much going to occupy a
Speaker 11: space that our children's generation will look back on with
Speaker 11: a raised eyebrow. I mean, that's a big part of
Speaker 11: the reason I left. I got a she was three
Speaker 11: at the time. Now she's five and a half, a
Speaker 11: daughter who I think is going to grow up with
Speaker 11: a very different experience on social media. And so I
Speaker 11: think part of that is cultural. You're seeing a generation
Speaker 11: of young people and their parents who are like yo. Actually,
Speaker 11: maybe this was pretty terrible for you know, going through
Speaker 11: adolescents where everyone has a little like button and follower
Speaker 11: account floating above their heads, right, you know, adolescents measure
Speaker 11: of value. It's hard enough to go through that time,
Speaker 11: and then you now productize and weaponize it probably not
Speaker 11: great long term. So I think you can already see
Speaker 11: culture shifting, right, you can already see this generation looking
Speaker 11: to other platforms. I'm not an investor, but you know
Speaker 11: the ascent in companies like be Real that are more
Speaker 11: about not living on your phone chasing hearts, but just
Speaker 11: sharing with people you actually care about, like what's going
Speaker 11: on in your life. I think you're gonna see that
Speaker 11: cultural shift, and you're gonna see more technology. So I
Speaker 11: social media's not going anywhere, but it will evolve in
Speaker 11: the way that we use it for sure.
Speaker 2: I'm curious how your daughter and your wife influence you
Speaker 2: in terms of you know, equity, easy equality women. Your
Speaker 2: daughter is an investor.
Speaker 11: Yes, I made sure I was the.
Speaker 2: Owner of a professional sports team.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 11: I set aside a few bucks to personally invest. I
Speaker 11: mean it was via her trust. She doesn't know this,
Speaker 11: by the way, so hopefully she's not listening to the
Speaker 11: podcast listen. I mean she has five and ass not
Speaker 11: to her.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it was important, right.
Speaker 11: I wanted her not just to be the youngest center
Speaker 11: in pro sports, which is kind of cool. Yeah, but
Speaker 11: you know, like any parent, you want to create, you
Speaker 11: want to give your children something and a legacy, and
Speaker 11: frankly also I wanted to give her what she was doing.
Speaker 11: So it was because of Olympia that really galvanized this
Speaker 11: in many ways because during the final the Women's World
Speaker 11: Cup that year, we were all watching at the home
Speaker 11: we were staying in Wimbledon, and I'd gotten Olympia and
Speaker 11: Alex Morgan jersey and She's running around kicking her ball,
Speaker 11: and I'd commented to my wife, like any proud dad,
Speaker 11: wouldn't it be nice one day if she played on
Speaker 11: the Ones national team? Wouldn't that be cool?
Speaker 8: With that missing a beat?
Speaker 11: Serena says, not until they pay her what she's worth,
Speaker 11: and I said, okay, challenge accept it, like all right,
Speaker 11: And so so you know this, this little three year
Speaker 11: old was part of the reason why I finally was like, no,
Speaker 11: I really this needs to happen. And so the least
Speaker 11: I could do is give her her due. And so yeah, look,
Speaker 11: I'm very aware of the fact that I am a
Speaker 11: now wealthy, but a white dude who occupies space his
Speaker 11: entire life very differently than my wife has and my
Speaker 11: daughter will, and so it has given me perspective. But
Speaker 11: I want to stress it is nothing about the moves
Speaker 11: I make or the things I do are.
Speaker 1: Charitable.
Speaker 6: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: What are you thinking because you're an investor?
Speaker 11: What I mean is none of this is none of
Speaker 11: this is because of charity. This is what I believe
Speaker 11: is going to lead to the most effective outcome long term.
Speaker 11: One of the I really believe, and this is something
Speaker 11: I talk about with my team all the time at
Speaker 11: seven seven six and with CEOs that I counsel now
Speaker 11: is I really believe the long term greedy mindset is
Speaker 11: just a very different way of thinking about building businesses,
Speaker 11: being more intentional about everything from the way you build
Speaker 11: teams to the way you deploy capital to the partners
Speaker 11: that you decide to have. And I actually, like, I
Speaker 11: worry the one thing I don't want people to hear
Speaker 11: is like, oh, well, this dude has you know, a
Speaker 11: black wife, a black daughter, and now he cares about
Speaker 11: these things, right, Because I don't think you should need
Speaker 11: to have those things in order to care. You shouldn't
Speaker 11: need to have a to care about women's sports.
Speaker 2: But if you didn't, do you think, oh, you'd have
Speaker 2: gotten to this point.
Speaker 8: Probably a lot slower, if at all. So no, I can't.
Speaker 11: So yes, it absolutely played a huge role in helping
Speaker 11: build my perspective in the same way. You know, it's
Speaker 11: a kind of education. You know, I didn't go to
Speaker 11: Harvard Business School, clearly, but my you know, I had
Speaker 11: a different kind of very formative education that's come from
Speaker 11: being in a relationship and then a marriage to someone
Speaker 11: like my wife, and having the lived experience of a daughter.
Speaker 2: But some would say much richer and much more real
Speaker 2: in terms of understand.
Speaker 11: I think so oh one hundred percent. So I think
Speaker 11: so yes, I can't deny how formative it's been. But
Speaker 11: I just want to stress that it's not Do not
Speaker 11: take away from this that that has to be the
Speaker 11: reason why it's exciting. Women's sports is not exciting just
Speaker 11: because a bunch of dudes have daughters and now feel like,
Speaker 11: oh we got to support this. No, like women's sports
Speaker 11: is exciting because it is a massive business opportunity that
Speaker 11: men and women, even dudes who don't have daughters, are
Speaker 11: going to be excited to pay attention to.
Speaker 2: Since I have you, I'm going to get in trouble find'
Speaker 2: actually if your question, sorry, well we did touch the media.
Speaker 2: I know you talked about this with our TV cogs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence. You knew I was going to ask.
Speaker 11: Sorry, Sure, that's fine, I'm using it everything.
Speaker 2: What's more interesting right now? Well, okay, so what has
Speaker 2: better investment opportunities AI?
Speaker 11: But interestingly enough, if we assume let's go down, let's
Speaker 11: I just think in ten year terms a gift and
Speaker 11: a curse. But so ten years down the road, AI
Speaker 11: continues to ascend. Like you can now spin up anything.
Speaker 11: I mean, it's the ability to generate let's say, content
Speaker 11: is trivial. Right, we could sit here, you could have
Speaker 11: you could say you want a birthday song sung by
Speaker 11: Beyonce naming you and your favorite puppy, and like you
Speaker 11: can customize everything and mention like I don't know pizza
Speaker 11: because you love pizza.
Speaker 2: Is that valuable?
Speaker 9: I think so?
Speaker 11: And so you need to figure out the you need
Speaker 11: to figure out the dollars so that artists get paid
Speaker 11: and all that stuff's going to get sort of But okay,
Speaker 11: imagine content is everywhere and anyone can create all the
Speaker 11: content they want. It actually now comes full circle back
Speaker 11: to why having a decentralized global ledger is so important
Speaker 11: because with a blockchain, you can now prove the prominence
Speaker 11: and authenticity of the original, the day one content, and
Speaker 11: so weirdly, I think in the long term the proliferation
Speaker 11: of a actually makes a strong case for the blockchain
Speaker 11: because blockchain.
Speaker 2: But what about crypto. You've invested in crypto, how do
Speaker 2: you feel about that at this point after the carnage
Speaker 2: of the last Sunerson.
Speaker 11: So I see he did coinbase in twenty twelve. I
Speaker 11: have been through every winter, and every winter I put
Speaker 11: on my parka and I go talk to people building
Speaker 11: and they build. And it's actually the best time to
Speaker 11: be investing in crypto because well, every cycle, the winter
Speaker 11: is the best time to be doing my job. Yeah,
Speaker 11: because when you're early, you know, this is when the
Speaker 11: noise is gone. This is when the builders are building
Speaker 11: things people actually want. They're not worrying about what the
Speaker 11: eath price is today. They're just building. They're shipping soft investing, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: And AI are you investing?
Speaker 11: Yes? And so in another two three years will come
Speaker 11: out of this criptocycle, it'll probably be I think gaming
Speaker 11: will be a big thrust of It'll be very consumer
Speaker 11: facing as well as infrastructure, and it's not going to
Speaker 11: use any of those words You're never gonna hear about NFTs,
Speaker 11: nor should You're never gonna hear about crypt It's just
Speaker 11: gonna be dope software that happens to be on chain,
Speaker 11: all right.
Speaker 2: That, of course, was Alexis o'hani and co founder of Reddit,
Speaker 2: founder of a VC firm, the seven seven six Fund.
Speaker 2: He's also got a foundation, the seven seven six Foundation,
Speaker 2: that to fight inequity, most recently giving about twenty million
Speaker 2: to young people of the next decade. It's all about
Speaker 2: working on climate. And then he's into sports. Co founder
Speaker 2: and leading investor at Angel City Football Club. Eva Longoria
Speaker 2: is invested in it. Jennifer Garner, I'm leaving out Natalie Portmant.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of people who are involved
Speaker 2: in it, but interesting.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekdays from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 6: On Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App and YouTube.
Speaker 1: You can also listen live to our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: It's well, thanks, Tell may be gain For the over
Speaker 2: one hundred million obese and overweight individuals in the United States.
Speaker 2: There is a story in the new issue of Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business Week. It's out on newstands, online at Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 2: slash BusinessWeek, and on the Bloomberg terminal. And many of
Speaker 2: these individuals would love to lose a bunch of weight
Speaker 2: to improve their health situation, and you know what, there's
Speaker 2: a bunch of drugs out there that can do that.
Speaker 2: The big problem though, is the cost and having to
Speaker 2: use the drug for the rest of your life. All right,
Speaker 2: let's get into it with our Bloomberg News healthcare reporting
Speaker 2: team who wrote the story of Emma Court and Bob Langreth.
Speaker 2: They are both here in our Interactive broker studio. So
Speaker 2: excited to have both of you with us. Emma, why
Speaker 2: don't you kick it off with us and tell us
Speaker 2: about this class of drugs which they were mentioned at
Speaker 2: the Oscars. Comedians talk about them. I think Elon Musk
Speaker 2: has talked about them. Tell us what we're talking about.
Speaker 14: Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much for
Speaker 14: having us on. Really excited about the story. It's the
Speaker 14: cover story this week, so we're thrilled. These new drugs
Speaker 14: are called effectively glp ones. They're named after a hormone
Speaker 14: they mimic that essentially helps people feel fuller, they have
Speaker 14: less appetite, they eat less, and they lose weight. What's
Speaker 14: interesting about these drugs.
Speaker 9: Is they're not all that new.
Speaker 14: This class has been around for diet beds for many years,
Speaker 14: but more recently pharma companies have been developing them specifically
Speaker 14: for obesity.
Speaker 9: There's a couple of different names for them.
Speaker 14: People are very familiar by now with ozembic, which is
Speaker 14: a diabetes drug. That's the one that Jimmy Kimmel joked
Speaker 14: about at the oscars.
Speaker 9: But there are also drugs.
Speaker 2: Called Everybody laughed or whether it was like deadpan, because
Speaker 2: it was like.
Speaker 9: Go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 14: There are a number of perhaps less well known drugs,
Speaker 14: including a new one called Munjaro that hasn't been formally
Speaker 14: approved for obesity, but likely will in the next year.
Speaker 14: There's also a drug called Wagovi, which was the first
Speaker 14: sort of highly effective obesity drug approved in the US.
Speaker 9: And what's really.
Speaker 14: Interesting about them is, you know, these are drugs that
Speaker 14: are helping people lose up to fifty pounds in some cases,
Speaker 14: so they're way more effective than anything that had been
Speaker 14: available for weight loss before. And it's getting a lot
Speaker 14: of doctors and patients excited about it.
Speaker 7: So Bob, come in here, because we've all, i think,
Speaker 7: heard in our lifetimes about a variety of different diet
Speaker 7: pills and ways to lose weight. Certainly as a woman
Speaker 7: growing up in the nineties heard about plenty of them.
Speaker 7: How is ozembag wee goob, how is it different? And
Speaker 7: what are the risks and the some of the benefits imotography.
Speaker 12: Yeah, one of the really interesting things for me as
Speaker 12: I've been covering drug industry for decades and you know,
Speaker 12: a b city weight loss that was kind of always
Speaker 12: like a graveyard for drugs. Dragonnacity had been trying for
Speaker 12: a long time to come up with drugs. There was
Speaker 12: the kind of there were a whole bunch of safety
Speaker 12: V calls. One of the most famous ones are infamous
Speaker 12: ones was fen Fenn back in the late nineties, where
Speaker 12: one of the components caused heart problems. So BC drugs
Speaker 12: for a long time and a bad reputation, and these ones,
Speaker 12: you know, sort of came a little bit almost out
Speaker 12: of left field. As Ema said, they were developed for diabetes,
Speaker 12: and drug companies increasingly started, you know, noting noticing the
Speaker 12: weight loss effects they were seeing. And as I started
Speaker 12: testing the drugs in people that didn't have dietabetes. There
Speaker 12: that were suffered from obesity but didn't have diabetes. They
Speaker 12: started seeing even larger amounts of weight loss. So the
Speaker 12: safety track record and diabetes is pretty good. Like all
Speaker 12: drugs are not without risks, you know, but they do
Speaker 12: have a number of side effects, including nausea, in vomiting,
Speaker 12: and diarrhea potentially, So do have a bunch of gi
Speaker 12: side effects and you actually have to tightrate them up slowly.
Speaker 3: These are injectable drugs. It's not a simple pill. You
Speaker 3: have to inject them, most of them weekly. Most of yeah,
Speaker 3: the new ones are weekly.
Speaker 12: And what's happened is as they've gotten to sort of
Speaker 12: more potent, long acting ones, they've seen the anti obesity
Speaker 12: effect increase, and that's when they've started to get some
Speaker 12: of these dramatic weight loss. And the Eli Lemanjaro drug,
Speaker 12: which is like the newest one, it's only approved for diabetes,
Speaker 12: but Eli Lily is very soon going to seek approval
Speaker 12: for obesity. That's the one that's showing some of the
Speaker 12: most dramatic weight loss effects so far. And they just
Speaker 12: had another positive study out today.
Speaker 2: Why is it so expensive it's the billion dollar me.
Speaker 2: I feel like we asked this so often about drugs,
Speaker 2: and I know we do, but why is it especially
Speaker 2: it's been around for a while, right, I'm just curious,
Speaker 2: why is it so expensive?
Speaker 14: So some of these drugs are newer, and they are
Speaker 14: the most expensive ones, so they are new.
Speaker 9: They can't say they've been around for many years.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 14: It's a difficult question, and we certainly asked the companies
Speaker 14: about it, and we didn't get a super straight answer
Speaker 14: on it.
Speaker 9: I would say, I'm curious what Bob thinks about those.
Speaker 12: Well, I've been asking drug companies about their pricing forever,
Speaker 12: trug forever. You know, that is one question when you ask,
Speaker 12: it's very very difficult to get. Like my senses, they
Speaker 12: don't really tell you the real answer, like what happened
Speaker 12: in the back room when they decided.
Speaker 2: I have a brother who was in pharmacuticals for ever
Speaker 2: twenty years and he was always like, listen, we do
Speaker 2: so much R and D, And I'm like, did I
Speaker 2: ever come on? You also make a ton of money
Speaker 2: on stuff.
Speaker 12: So but basically in the US, you know, it's a
Speaker 12: free market drug companies and price they are drugs at
Speaker 12: kind of whatever price they want. And these when they
Speaker 12: came on the market as diabetes drugs, they were priced,
Speaker 12: you know, fairly high.
Speaker 3: And they and some of the pricing.
Speaker 12: There's one that will Govi drug, which is a higher
Speaker 12: dose version of zempic that Nova Nordis sells her obesity
Speaker 12: they priced at an even higher price than ozempic. It's
Speaker 12: exact different doses of the exact same you know, chemical compound,
Speaker 12: but one is a higher price, the obesity one is
Speaker 12: a higher price.
Speaker 14: Second interesting aspect of this is like when you look
Speaker 14: at the sheer number of people who would be eligible
Speaker 14: for these drugs in the US, it's more than one
Speaker 14: hundred million.
Speaker 9: People, right, So it's like it's massive.
Speaker 14: Why are the prices so high given that the market
Speaker 14: opportunity is huge? And we actually talked to one of
Speaker 14: the sort of foundational scientists in this field. His name
Speaker 14: is Dan Drucker, and he was one of the guys
Speaker 14: who helped discover these hormones in the body many many
Speaker 14: years ago, and he said, you know, he's asked companies
Speaker 14: over the years, why don't you just do, you know,
Speaker 14: be the McDonald's in the space, which is kind of
Speaker 14: an ironic comparison if you think about it. But you know,
Speaker 14: why don't you come out with really cheaper versions of
Speaker 14: these drugs and lots of people take them and you'll
Speaker 14: still make a bunch of money.
Speaker 2: And you're talking about one in three that's our population.
Speaker 3: Of adults in the US have obesity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what's interesting too, And I feel like there's
Speaker 2: a bigger, broader conversation when it comes to healthcare, right,
Speaker 2: I mean being overweight we saw it in COVID like
Speaker 2: that could make you more susceptible to not having a
Speaker 2: great outcome. I mean, being overweight for most people causes
Speaker 2: all these other problems. We know, it's a big reason
Speaker 2: why there's so much diabetes. Where is the medical community,
Speaker 2: where's the insurance community? I'm thinking about if we can
Speaker 2: get people to be not so overweight that it's just
Speaker 2: better for their health, come, their their healthcare, their outcomes,
Speaker 2: and also their health care costs.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 14: One really important and interesting aspect of this is we
Speaker 14: often blame weight for a lot of things in our society.
Speaker 14: And it's interesting to look at this idea of BMI
Speaker 14: and realize it's kind of imprecise. Right, it was supposed
Speaker 14: to be kind of a population level measure, and instead
Speaker 14: it's been applied to individuals. So if someone has a
Speaker 14: certain weight, regardless of what their health looks like in
Speaker 14: other aspects, they are obese just because of their BMI, right.
Speaker 14: If you think about that, it's kind of an interesting aspect,
Speaker 14: Like you could be totally healthy, have no diabetes, have
Speaker 14: no high cholesterol, whatever, and you're still ill by some
Speaker 14: of these kind of modern standards. So it is kind
Speaker 14: of a nuanced, complicated topic. While higher weights have been
Speaker 14: really highly associated with lots of different diseases, it's important
Speaker 14: to note that there are a lot of shades of
Speaker 14: gray here. Another interesting aspect of this is like does.
Speaker 2: That mean not as many people would really kind of
Speaker 2: be eligible for these Well that's.
Speaker 14: The kind of million, right, So if you think about it,
Speaker 14: maybe not everyone who qualifies as overweight or obese is
Speaker 14: necessarily going to be the best candidate for these drugs.
Speaker 14: There's a big, kind of murky middle of people who
Speaker 14: where it's not totally clear how big a danger than
Speaker 14: they are we impose it.
Speaker 12: This is a really important question here, So like the
Speaker 12: risks of you know, suffering from obesity, uh, you know,
Speaker 12: as opposed to someone's normal way. A lot of that
Speaker 12: comes from epidemiological studies. You know, what's not been proven
Speaker 12: over the long terms. If you take the weight off
Speaker 12: with one of these drugs, you know, do you eliminate
Speaker 12: all these like actual like risks like the risk of
Speaker 12: heart disease and strokes and other like concrete you know,
Speaker 12: snple downsides. They haven't actually proven that in trials right now.
Speaker 12: It's not necessarily the case that you know, you'll get
Speaker 12: all that benefit because these are epidemiology studies and your
Speaker 12: you know, you're comparing risk factors, and there might be
Speaker 12: other things that are different, you know, when they when
Speaker 12: they do these complicated comparisons.
Speaker 3: So the companies.
Speaker 12: That that's what I'm sure say, that's what they say.
Speaker 3: This is not proven. There's only really proven to take
Speaker 3: off a lot of weight.
Speaker 12: You haven't proven that it prevents a heart attack or
Speaker 12: a stroke five years from now, and you.
Speaker 7: Have to take it forever, seemingly to prevent the heart disease.
Speaker 14: So the that's what the pharma companies are saying. That's
Speaker 14: what the doctors are saying. There have been studies of
Speaker 14: this new drug, wigov that show when people quit the
Speaker 14: drug after a year the way comes back for most people.
Speaker 14: So that is a big issue. Such an expensive drug
Speaker 14: like this is possibly a lifelong thing, and it does
Speaker 14: raise questions about, well, what is the side effect profile here?
Speaker 9: We're not talking about taking something for a few months
Speaker 9: or years.
Speaker 7: Forever potentially does does insurance tend to cover it? If
Speaker 7: you are at that BMI? Then what's what's the spread?
Speaker 12: It's all over the place right now. We do a
Speaker 12: lot of reporting this. It's all over the place right now.
Speaker 12: And you know, whether you have access to one of
Speaker 12: these drugs may kind of just depend on the luck
Speaker 12: of the drawer and what your particular insurance company you
Speaker 12: have to you end up at. But like basically three
Speaker 12: quarters of state we surveyed all fifty states state medicaid programs,
Speaker 12: three quarters the states have very little coverage for obesity drugs,
Speaker 12: and you're roughly approx give or take a few three
Speaker 12: quarters of private insurance generally don't cover obesity drugs either. Now,
Speaker 12: the coverage we've found signs that the coverage is starting
Speaker 12: to increase. For example, in Medicaid, eight different states told
Speaker 12: us they're considering it. But this is like, this is
Speaker 12: like the big battle that's going to be going on
Speaker 12: the next year between the drug companies and the doctors
Speaker 12: that favor more coverage and insurance companies.
Speaker 3: That's like, that's like the big battle.
Speaker 14: It was amazing to see how much coverage ranged in
Speaker 14: this fifty state survey of Medicaid plans, which Medicaid covers
Speaker 14: low income folks for health insurance. I mean, there was
Speaker 14: one state that literally told us we will pay for
Speaker 14: you know, some obesity drugs for people under the age
Speaker 14: of twenty one, for young people, but not adults.
Speaker 2: We're like, what, like, there's so much that, I mean,
Speaker 2: what would make it much more clear? I just got
Speaker 2: about thirty seconds. Is it some study that needs to
Speaker 2: be like, what is it? That would be like health
Speaker 2: insurance would be like, yeah, we got to be in
Speaker 2: on this or not.
Speaker 12: The big studies, the most important studies that are coming
Speaker 12: is that both Eli Lilly and Nova noordis, but they're
Speaker 12: the two makers. They're studying their drugs in people with
Speaker 12: a BC to show they can prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Speaker 12: And you know, if they do that, if those studies succeed,
Speaker 12: it's going to be much much harder for insurance to
Speaker 12: deny coverage.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and that's going to be a big, big thing
Speaker 14: that's going to come in the next couple of months.
Speaker 14: Heart disease is the leading killer of Americans, So this
Speaker 14: is something with really high stakes.
Speaker 2: All right, great story, guys. It is the cover of
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business Week. As we said, it is out on newsstands.
Speaker 2: It's already on the Bloomberg terminal and online at Bloomberg
Speaker 2: dot com slash BusinessWeek. Emma Court and Bob Langreth, both
Speaker 2: healthcare reporters here at Bloomberg News, joining us here in
Speaker 2: our interactive broker story. Be sure to check it out.
Speaker 2: It's also going to be in our weekend show on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekdays from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 6: On Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App, and you too.
Speaker 1: You can also listen live to our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the new issue Bloomberg Business Week. It
Speaker 2: is out, so too. Then is another pursuit section. And
Speaker 2: got to say it's a great mix of gems, tequila
Speaker 2: and backpack stay with us. We'll explain in just a moment.
Speaker 9: I mean, what more could you need?
Speaker 7: Right, We've got women leading the.
Speaker 2: Charge to the gems and the tequila in the backpack.
Speaker 7: Yes, exactly, it's perfect.
Speaker 9: It's perfect.
Speaker 7: We've got a woman leading the charge in the booming
Speaker 7: business of tequila, a set of stylish backpacks they could
Speaker 7: take your purson's place. And an interview with the CEO
Speaker 7: of Tiffany as the luxury jeweler debuts its newly renovated
Speaker 7: flagship store in Midtown Manhattan.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get to it with Chris rounds Or.
Speaker 2: He's the editor Pursuits. He joins us. Now with a
Speaker 2: look at the section, take us to Tiffany. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've been walking under this scaffolding for three years.
Speaker 16: Three years. The scaffolding is down. Finally.
Speaker 2: All right, you were at the ribbon cutting, weren't you?
Speaker 8: I was, Yes.
Speaker 16: So Tiffany has been renovating their flagship store, which they
Speaker 16: now call the Landmark on Fifth Avenue and fifty seventh Street,
Speaker 16: for three years now, and they during that period of time,
Speaker 16: Tiffany was acquired by LVMH, and so the LVMH people
Speaker 16: kind of tore up the plans for what was happening,
Speaker 16: and they redid it, and they brought in Peter Marino,
Speaker 16: which which is an art who's an architect and designer
Speaker 16: who they use on a lot of their other stores,
Speaker 16: and it's he's a very like chic European sensibility. Sometimes
Speaker 16: the stores are quite dark and romantic. But you walk
Speaker 16: into the Tiffany store, So I went in yesterday and
Speaker 16: it's just bright and huge, and I mean obviously full
Speaker 16: of jewels, but you walk into the main floor and
Speaker 16: it's got these big windows on the side that are
Speaker 16: actually digital screens showing scenes of New York City. It
Speaker 16: feels a little like an Apple store in that main floor,
Speaker 16: like it's it's got that color and with all the screens.
Speaker 16: But then you explore the floor the store and there's
Speaker 16: ten stories, including a new box that they built on
Speaker 16: the top, a glass box they called the Diamond on
Speaker 16: the top, and it's just every floor is different. There's
Speaker 16: incredible contemporary art. They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 16: on this renovation and it just feels cool.
Speaker 2: I have to say. The old store, although my heart
Speaker 2: is breaking a little bit because it was so iconic,
Speaker 2: but field story, like you could get off at the
Speaker 2: floor be like wait because they all did kind of
Speaker 2: look alike, even though okay, this was where the wedding
Speaker 2: stuff was or the silver or leg right, but so
Speaker 2: every floor is kind of different now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 16: So Angelina, who is our Paris based luxury reporter who
Speaker 16: covers ALMH, is in New York this week and she
Speaker 16: and I interviewed the CEO of Tiffany, Anthony Ladru, and
Speaker 16: he said, Yeah, on the old in the old store,
Speaker 16: you didn't know what floor you were on, so people
Speaker 16: didn't spend a lot of time there, and people didn't know,
Speaker 16: like didn't know how to explore it. And this now
Speaker 16: it's like brightly colored. There's every floor is different. There's
Speaker 16: VIP areas, there's like a you know, an area that
Speaker 16: has like dishware and you know, silverware and all that stuff,
Speaker 16: and there's like bags and accessories. It just feels like
Speaker 16: there's a lot to explore.
Speaker 7: You mentioned that it feels a little bit European. Do
Speaker 7: you feel like they are embracing what New York luxury
Speaker 7: is or do they not care to have to embrace
Speaker 7: New York luxury.
Speaker 16: It's definitely a very new York Institution, and it feels
Speaker 16: that way, and there's New York sort of elements in
Speaker 16: the design in addition to the scenes on the screens.
Speaker 16: When you get a like you can see Central Park
Speaker 16: from the top, there's a big there's a big apple
Speaker 16: on one of the balconies, New York, you know. And
Speaker 16: there's a Blue Box Cafe restaurant, which is you know,
Speaker 16: a run by Danielle Blude, who is of course who
Speaker 16: is French, but who is really a New York chef.
Speaker 16: And so it does feel New Yorky, but it has
Speaker 16: an extra layer of like sort of richness, like money
Speaker 16: in all the contemporary art that's there. There's more than
Speaker 16: one hundred million dollars with the contemporary art there, which
Speaker 16: that is that feels like added to the New York stuff.
Speaker 16: But to me, it did feel New Yorky.
Speaker 2: You know What's interesting too, though it does sound like
Speaker 2: they want to go even more high end. I mean,
Speaker 2: they've always had expensive stuff, but they've also had like
Speaker 2: I talk about their silver and I say that with
Speaker 2: much love, but it's been much more accessible, you know,
Speaker 2: to folks. But it sounds like they're trying to go
Speaker 2: to the moon.
Speaker 16: They are and all the luxury brands have learned this
Speaker 16: over the past few years. Like the air, the parts
Speaker 16: of their business that are growing are the very high
Speaker 16: end parts and the low end parts, the lower price
Speaker 16: point parts which are much beloved to me, Like the
Speaker 16: silver for example. Yeah, that's dropping off a bit, and
Speaker 16: it's still very much there when you go to the store.
Speaker 16: It's everywhere, but they have lowered the number of skews
Speaker 16: so like product lines that they have in the silver range,
Speaker 16: because people are spending less on the silver and they've
Speaker 16: raised they've sort of making more very high and stuff.
Speaker 16: And they're making a few new watches, the CEO told
Speaker 16: us coming in the next year, and they're trying to
Speaker 16: bring their watch business, which actually they had some entry
Speaker 16: level watches. The new watches are like one hundred thousand
Speaker 16: dollars five hundred thousand dollars. They're trying to bring them
Speaker 16: up to the level of like the high jewelry, which
Speaker 16: is for a very small number of people.
Speaker 7: Do we know how much the renovation costs?
Speaker 16: We asked, and they said that it was the most
Speaker 16: expensive store renovation that they've ever done. And so some
Speaker 16: some of the other stores that data's out there it's
Speaker 16: in the hundreds of millions. We asked if it got
Speaker 16: to a billion, and they said no, so somewhere in
Speaker 16: the nine.
Speaker 2: Well are they going to make their money back? I mean,
Speaker 2: what's their expectations? You talked to the head, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of sales at this place.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 16: So it used to Tiffany Store, which by the way,
Speaker 16: was like one of the top five landmarks to visit
Speaker 16: in New York City before it was being renovated. Account
Speaker 16: before the renovation accounted for ten percent of total global
Speaker 16: Tiffany sales, which is a huge amount to have riding
Speaker 16: on one store. There was a temporary store next door
Speaker 16: during the renovation in the old Nike Sound that made
Speaker 16: about two hundred million dollars a year, and Bernard Arnaut,
Speaker 16: who owns LVMH earlier this year, said he expects to
Speaker 16: double that in the news space. So that's sort of
Speaker 16: aiming at four hundred million dollars a year at some point.
Speaker 2: And they're looking to take this right and expand elsewhere, right,
Speaker 2: and create more Tiffany locations, if you will, around the world.
Speaker 16: Yeah, they're pretty global. They're already in China and Japan,
Speaker 16: you know, create all the places that you need to
Speaker 16: be Are there to do some of them. Yeah, they're
Speaker 16: redoing some of the places. They're building a couple of
Speaker 16: new places, maybe in Milan, maybe in Paris. And they're
Speaker 16: also taking some of the design cues from the store
Speaker 16: in New York and putting them in other places, like
Speaker 16: the way that the displays are. But they do want
Speaker 16: the New York store to be special.
Speaker 2: They're not messing around with the little blue boxes, are they.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 16: You go into the cafe and it's the blue Box Cafe,
Speaker 16: as I said, and there's just like hundreds of blue
Speaker 16: boxes hanging from the ceiling. And also all the contemporary
Speaker 16: art in the store, or most of it is blue.
Speaker 16: It's like tiffany blue, like a basqueyacht, a Daniel Arsham.
Speaker 16: It's very like all of a piece.
Speaker 2: Should we ask about the one piece of art?
Speaker 16: Oh, well you can. We can't talk about it, Oh
Speaker 16: we can, Okay, we not. In our reporting we had
Speaker 16: people had asked us if Bernard Arnaut was the buyer
Speaker 16: of a Marilyn Monroe Andy Warhol painting from nineteen sixty
Speaker 16: four called shot Sage Blue Marylynd which Larry Goes in
Speaker 16: the art Dealer, who is friendly with our no bought
Speaker 16: last year at auction for one hundred and ninety five
Speaker 16: million dollars. Now that is the most expensive sale at
Speaker 16: auction for any American artist and the second most expensive
Speaker 16: art sale of all time, behind the Leonardo da Vinci
Speaker 16: salvead Armundi. And it once painting was bought, it went
Speaker 16: away and no one knew where it went, and so
Speaker 16: people were playing it. Did Steve Cohen get it? Did
Speaker 16: Bernard or No get it? And then when we started
Speaker 16: seeing the art that was in the Tiffany store, which
Speaker 16: is all Tiffany blue, and this Maryland Maryland is an
Speaker 16: almost Tiffany blue amazing, we had to ask and the
Speaker 16: CEO said, oh, no comment, So we'll see.
Speaker 2: Wait for that unveiling. Just got a few minutes left here.
Speaker 2: Backpacks and tequila. There's the cover stories tequila just quickly.
Speaker 2: It's about women really calling the tequila shots.
Speaker 16: But I'm bumm, yeah, we had to do shots pun
Speaker 16: so in you know, there's tequila has a bunch of
Speaker 16: rules in Mexico. It can only come from certain places
Speaker 16: and mescal as well. And it was it's a long
Speaker 16: running industry and for a long time it was very
Speaker 16: male dominated, and then when corporations started coming in and
Speaker 16: buying up a lot of these these businesses, it became
Speaker 16: more male dominated rather than less. And so there's a
Speaker 16: bunch of leaders in the community who are starting their
Speaker 16: own like her company, the tequila companies, met or taking
Speaker 16: over family Mescal company, leading these businesses. And Eva Longoria
Speaker 16: from the US is an investor in one of the
Speaker 16: sort of female led ones. So it's a cool time, all.
Speaker 2: Right, And just real quickly, backpacks that we may want
Speaker 2: and an oyster we may not want.
Speaker 16: Yes, according to Crater, there's you got to read the
Speaker 16: review Kate's review the Kelly Oyster.
Speaker 7: In Lovemon, which is actually loves so much.
Speaker 16: I know it was nine pounds for an oyster, which
Speaker 16: is a lot.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't even look like an oyster. So Kate,
Speaker 2: I feel your pain.
Speaker 9: I feel your pain.
Speaker 2: You got to read through her article. And backpacks. I
Speaker 2: have to say, I love backpacks.
Speaker 16: It's very much a trend among women in New York
Speaker 16: and everywhere is functional, stylish backpacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this way you don't have to have a bag.
Speaker 2: You don't have to have a bag to carry your
Speaker 2: stuff in a little bag. To like kind of look
Speaker 2: like pulled together.
Speaker 7: And you always make me spend money.
Speaker 2: Chris like about to go by my mission packs really
Speaker 2: good stuff and fun to go through it all with you. That,
Speaker 2: of course, is the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser. Chris,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: As always, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Punks.
Speaker 1: Catch us live weekdays from two to five pm Eastern
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business App, and YouTube. You
Speaker 1: can also listen live to our flagship New York station,
Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: Well. The Milkin Institute Annual Global Conference gets underway next week,
Speaker 2: bringing together leaders in finance, business wellness, and more, a
Speaker 2: variety of minds working to tackle the most urgent and
Speaker 2: really to realize the most exciting opportunities that are out there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and the event gives our Bloomberg teams a chance
Speaker 7: to dig deep, especially into the day's big financial and
Speaker 7: market concerns and the bigger trends of our time. So Carol,
Speaker 7: you're going to be there along with Bloomberg TV's Romain Bostik,
Speaker 7: and Romaine joins us now for a preview of what
Speaker 7: we might expect romain very exciting.
Speaker 6: What are you saying?
Speaker 17: Well, what I'm expecting this is I think this is
Speaker 17: actually going to be a big one, right because we
Speaker 17: talk about where we are in the economy right now,
Speaker 17: this inflection point, and where we're potentially going. The lineup
Speaker 17: that you see at this conference, the folks that we're
Speaker 17: going to have on Bloomberg Television and radio on the panels,
Speaker 17: they are the economy. We talk so much about the big,
Speaker 17: gigantic banks, but we kind of forget there's this layer
Speaker 17: right underneath that we talk about private credit, private equity
Speaker 17: that are really financing most of the businesses out there
Speaker 17: in our commy.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of interesting because we've got guests
Speaker 2: on this week on the Weekend Show, Josh Rosner and
Speaker 2: Gretchen Morgenson who have a new book out, and they
Speaker 2: basically are saying that private equity is wrecking America.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I mean, I think we all have those fears.
Speaker 17: I mean, we've seen kind of the takeover of so much,
Speaker 17: but there's also a big question there as to if
Speaker 17: they weren't there, who would have financed it. We talked
Speaker 17: so much about kind of shadow banking, and it's always
Speaker 17: used as this sort of almost an insult, right, it's
Speaker 17: something dangerous, But you forget that shadow banking exists because
Speaker 17: there was a void in our economy that the JP
Speaker 17: Morgans didn't want to take. They felt like it wasn't
Speaker 17: worth their while. They wanted to focus on something much
Speaker 17: higher level. But you still had these middle market businesses
Speaker 17: that needed funding, and it was private equity, private debt
Speaker 17: markets that stepped in to actually finance them, and for
Speaker 17: better or for worse, I don't know, maybe ends up
Speaker 17: being our doom, but at least for right now, it's
Speaker 17: kind of keeping us afloat.
Speaker 2: I always think about that the flip side, right, that
Speaker 2: middle market we talk we don't really talk about it
Speaker 2: a lot, I feel like always at Bloomberg, but it's
Speaker 2: such an important part of kind of the economic activity
Speaker 2: that goes on. And you do think about those companies
Speaker 2: that maybe couldn't access capital and would just not be
Speaker 2: around anymore. So you do think about the role of
Speaker 2: private equity.
Speaker 17: Well, yeah, and there's a reason for that. I mean,
Speaker 17: the folks you talk to a milk and these are
Speaker 17: the people who really kind of have their hands in
Speaker 17: the ground and the soil, so to speak. You talk about,
Speaker 17: you know, the heads of Apollo, Mark Rowan, you talk
Speaker 17: about Ann Walsh over at Guggenheim, You talk about Katie
Speaker 17: Koch over at TCW. You know all of these big
Speaker 17: firms Blue oul Aris, Capital, Cressing, Capital, b and Y Melon.
Speaker 2: Jane Fraser of Geasure of a City Group.
Speaker 17: You know, these are the people that, for better for worse,
Speaker 17: are effectively kind of managing our economy to a certain extent,
Speaker 17: or at least a certain pocket of that economy, and
Speaker 17: you want to know what they're thinking. And one thing too,
Speaker 17: also I like.
Speaker 2: About this is the FED meeting while we're out there.
Speaker 17: The FED meeting is actually going to overlap, so we're
Speaker 17: going to get a lot of commentary on that. But
Speaker 17: also we talk about all the sort of the money managers,
Speaker 17: the investors, the bankers who are there. We forget there's
Speaker 17: a whole cross section of other industries represented, CEOs from
Speaker 17: other companies. We're gonna actually be interviewing the CEO of
Speaker 17: Mandali's Camera is a huge chemical company. Uh, We're going
Speaker 17: to interview a lot of folks in from the VC world.
Speaker 17: And there's a lot of talk right now about just
Speaker 17: the health of the California economy of the big exodus.
Speaker 17: We've seen of certain businesses and certain residents looking for
Speaker 17: more favorable business environment. So we're going to talk to
Speaker 17: a lot of local officials there kind of about the
Speaker 17: health of the economy.
Speaker 2: There, all right, So maybe we'll talk to each other
Speaker 2: always we might.
Speaker 17: And you know there's a big concert too, you know,
Speaker 17: the big headliner.
Speaker 2: Is how do I not know about this?
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, you.
Speaker 17: Didn't get an invite?
Speaker 7: Oh sorry, okay, okay, well you know what we're going
Speaker 7: to hear? IP section are your VIP.
Speaker 2: I got to talk to people you get there. It's
Speaker 2: all the good stuff you talk to I'll talk to
Speaker 2: miss ye. Yeah, thanks for that, fuddy.
Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
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