The Jamie Dimon Interview

0:00 David, we completely blew it. We Went into Jamie Diamond's office, had our little meet and greet. We did not ask about The dual pistols. Yeah.

0:10 From the duel, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which JP Morgan Owns. And keeps in their headquarters. And We blew it. We didn't ask to see them.

0:20 We'll just have to come back. When they finished the new building. I'm sure they will be in the executive floor. We can go get a viewing. of the uh you know piece of American history.

0:29 All right, speaking of American history. Let's do it. Let's do it. Welcome to the summer twenty twenty five season of Acquired. The podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal.

1:10 And we are your hosts. Today's episode is the story of a rising star on Wall Street in the nineteen eighties. Who worked with his mentor to merge and acquire their way to the top of the financial world in the nineties. Who then got fired.

1:26 Unexpectedly. By that same mentor. Who cast about deciding what to do next. And then in two thousand Except at a job turning around

1:34 A poorly run. Midwestern bank. Then over the next twenty five years he would orchestrate One of the most remarkable runs in banking history. And really all of corporate history.

1:46 This is the story of Jamie Diamond. And how he created the modern financial behemoth, JP Morgan Chase, out of the beleaguered component parts. Oh. Bank one. JP Morgan Chase.

1:57 Bear Sterns. Washington Mutual. and First Republic. Jamie is now the longest serving CEO of any major Wall Street bank and is viewed as kind of the great stabilizer of the American financial system.

2:10 Especially during the two thousand and eight financial crisis. He now sits atop the largest bank in the US. with an over eight hundred billion dollar market cap. Which is more than twice their nearest competitor. They are the only bank within spitting distance of these sort of big

2:25 trillion dollar tech companies that we've covered here on acquired. And to really put a finer point on The dominance They are the most valuable company east of the Mississippi in the United States, and the only company east of the Mississippi Worth more than half a trillion dollars.

2:40 Incredible. So the question, of course. is how did he do it? I mean banks fail. Financial firms often have spectacular blow ups.

2:49 Period, financial or not. can often get so bloated that they slow down to a crawl. So what did Jamie Diamond do differently? Well, today's episode we have Jamie with us himself to tell the story.

3:02 We recorded this live in front of six thousand acquired fans at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. So you'll notice it's a different format than our usual episode. We're always trying to figure out what version of acquired works live with an audience. And this is our latest iteration. The Radio City Show also had a second act, a late night talk show, where we had conversations with the CEO of the New York Times, Meredith Cobit Levian, and the chairman of IAC, Barry Diller.

3:27 Plus some cameos from around the acquired cinematic universe, and we cannot wait. to share all of that with you. At a later date. Well, if you want to know every time an episode drops, check out our email list, acquire.fm slash email. Come join the Slack. and talk about this with us afterwards. Acquire.fm slash slack.

3:45 If you want more acquired between each monthly episode, check out ACQ2, our interview show, where we talk with founders and CEOs building businesses in areas we've covered on the show. So with that, this show is not investment advice. Dave and I may have investments in the companies we discuss. And this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. On to our conversation with Jamie Diamond. Well this feels appropriate.

4:11 You dressed up for us too. Thank you. Last year we had you on the video board at uh at Jason. Uh you were looking very summary there. You look great tonight. Well, we know you're a big history buff, and we consider ourselves

4:25 historians above all else so Uh what we'd like to do here tonight Is walk through the twenty year story with you of sort of how you turn JP Morgan Chase from A bank among many a a bank among many.

4:38 to the most systemically important financial institution in the world. Are you game? Sound good? Sounds great. Thank you. We want to start In nineteen

4:49 Ninety eight. You and your mentor, Sandy Weil. Have just spent the past thirteen years. Building The modern

4:58 financial institution conglomerate. Really the the the blueprint for what JP Morgan Chase. is today. Except it's not JP Morgan, it's Citigroup.

5:07 And everybody On Wall Street and the entire world expects that you I'm gonna be named CEO of Citigroup. In short order. This is nineteen ninety eight. Nineteen ninety eight. This is not what happens.

5:18 Instead you get fired. And you have to restart Your whole career. Everything your whole life. From scratch.

5:26 Sorry to start here, by the way. Before we get into what you do next. What was the model that you and Sandy built Okay. First of all, I am thrilled to be here. I wanna congratulate these guys for building the acquired.

5:41 Uh It's a it's a great intelligent addition to What we need to learn in society and so I would say it wasn't quite the model, because if you look at what we did at commercial credit primaric with then travelers and mergers, we were a financial conglomerate. We bought lots of companies and lots of different businesses. We fixed them up, we turned around, we made money.

6:01 Uh and then we merged it with Citibank, which obviously was a huge bank. And uh you know, I my view is I was gonna we should skinny it down and kind of shed the parts that aren't that important to the rest of the company and keep the things that strategically belong together together. The future of the company. And so um

6:19 But it was big, it was make a lot of money, it was quite successful at the time. Uh and then I got fired. So so how are you feeling in that moment? When I got fired? Yeah, that moment. Well, you know, my wife is here and I was hosting a hundred people.

6:34 Uh recruiter recruiting kids in my apartment in New York City, same apartment I have now. And uh they called me we have a management Sunday at four PM that night. And Sandy and John Reed called me up and said, Can you come a little early? We've got a bunch of stuff to talk about. I was the president chief operating officer.

6:51 I drove I said I can't. They said well it's really important, so I drove up there Uh and I sat down in the room with Sandy and John and they said They want to make a few changes. And there are three of them. And they said we one one we want to make this person in charge of

7:05 That's I said, Okay, well it didn't make sense to me. The second one they wanted to make someone in charge of the Global Investment Bank, which I was running, I thought it was another stupid decision. And the third is they said and we want you to resign. I should

7:19 Okay. 'Cause you know, at that moment I knew it was all arranged. The boards had voted, the press release was written. The management team is coming up. So I waited uh

7:28 you know, for the magic team to come up, I wish them the best. I said you guys have a chance to build one of the great companies. Oh they all thank me. Uh he they Sandy said, You want to do the press with me? I said, Yeah, but I'll do it from home. So I went home. Went to see my kids, they were like one of my daughters here too, they're like

7:44 Twelve, fourteen, twelve, and ten. And I walk in the front door. And uh I tell them I I was fired. And the youngest one says Daddy

7:53 All right. Do we have to sleep on the streets? I said, No, no, we're okay. And the middle one who was always obsessed with college for some reason, can I still go to college? And he said, Yeah. And the one who was here was the oldest one said Great.

8:05 Since you don't need a I have your cell phone. And then That night. About fifty people came over.

8:13 All the same people I just met, all the management team bringing whiskey and it's like have been at your own wake. And there's one really tall guy who came in, very good friend of mine. And he looks and my my daughter looks up and says, Who are you? He says I used I work for your daddy. And she says, No anymore, you don't.

8:30 That was it. I was okay. You know, I was like I tell people your my net worth, not my self worth that was involved. And for anyone who doesn't sort of already know Jamie's story. You were the rising star. I mean you were The city was the biggest bank. You were the air apparent. I mean this is this was like unfathomable and for you to take it this gracefully

8:50 Uh You know, it says a lot. So You're sort of wandering in the woods as I best I can kinda reconstruct it for about eighteen months, is that right? Figuring out what's next.

9:01 Yeah. I you know, it took me a while to exit and sign agreements and get out. They're kinda mean. Uh but And then I step into office and it was late. We went for a nice long vacation and stuff like that.

9:14 Uh when I got back in September, so that was just six months later I went to my I started going to work here. I had nothing to do, but I went from you know to nine to five and started calling people and thinking about what I'm gonna do. It was in the Seagre's building, so I go for lunch. Uh downstairs every day. And I had four seasons. I had the four seasons. And I explored everything, throwing my own merchant bank. I could have retired just teaching

9:34 Oh just investing. But I was forty-two. And you you took a call about running Amazon, right? You took a call about running Amazon, didn't you? I went to I love I went to visit Jeff Bezos. But it was like a bridge too far, even though that movie just came out when Sally met Harry. I was thinking, my God, I'll never wear a suit again. I'm gonna live in a house boat. This would be really great. It would have been an ultimate universe, but I'm still good friends with Jeff, so I got at least one good thing out of it.

10:07 Uh and then I was then I got serious, you know, and I was i I was offered jobs to run you know big other big global investment banks. Uh Hank Greenberger in AIG called me up and said, You should come join us. I'm gonna go from Sandy Wilde to you? I mean I have to have my head examined to do something like that. Uh

10:24 And then you know the AIG story. I got a phone call from a head hunter. about bank one. And I was also you guys a lot of you probably know Ken Langone and Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank ran home depot. My w I loved them. But at my first dinner with them I went to see Melanti, I said I have to make a confession.

10:43 And so you guys called I had never been in a home depot. And we were actually wondering. David and I were debating. We were talking about New Yorker. My friend made me go up there and get some equipment and plants and stuff like that. So but I love their culture, their attitude. They want me to do it. Ken Langone says he still sh I still should have gotten you. I wasn't gonna pay you enough. Of course it had nothing to do with anything like that. And I had bank one.

11:09 was my habitat I was used to financial companies you know services banking It wasn't quite global. It was a little global at the time. Uh and you know it's a trouble bank And you know, I decided that you know life is what you make it. It was hard in my family. I had a we had a move, I think for

11:26 Anyone who's gonna move kids that you know I think they were fourteen, twelve, ten or something, it's hard. It's not in New York. It's a large bank, but it's a troubled bank. Large David, it's a it's a thirty billion dollar market cap bank. City group where you just had been before was a two hundred

11:46 Yeah. You you have the right numbers, but it's did a split and so if you look back it's more like twenty twenty million or something like that. Yeah. And City was two hundred, but you know, I I didn't worry about that. I was like You know, in life you make things what they are.

11:59 I don't like complaining about s over spilled milk, you know, you just And uh, But you it sounds like you had opportunities to stay in New York. I didn't know.

12:13 The other ones would have been some investment banks. I didn't really trust some of the people who were talking to me about that. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff that I explored. I took phone calls, some small companies, some big companies, a couple of subprime mortgage companies who called me and I was like, absolutely not. We'll get to that. And uh so I just thought this was a chance, you know, and Uh you know if the family's willing to move.

12:38 We had lived in a rental for a while, but got a nice brown stone and Yeah, we love end up loving Chicago. Chicago's a wonderful city in a lot of different ways and And you know, like I said, it is what you make it. You know, and I w I I put half my money in the stock at the time. Yeah, you can't. I was gonna be the captain of the ship, I was gonna go down with the ship.

12:57 You know, I made it clear to everyone I was here permanently and it'll be what it is and so I got to work like literally the next day. Did we do the math right that right before you joined Bank One you bought of stock? I did. I mean I I that's I've never heard of someone taking a CEO job and saying I'm gonna invest half my net worth in this company now. Yeah. I thought it might be overvalued a little bit because there's a

13:21 people thought it might be sold or something like that, but I didn't care about that. You know if you work at a company and the new CO comes in he's from out of town Uh and you're gonna have a lot of shareholders and you know I knew I knew a lot of the shareholders, I was going to know a lot of the shareholders, I wanted to know I was in a hundred percent. Lock stock and barrel. There was no question I would never sell that stock. And I'm gonna go down with the ship or go up with the ship. And they're also you as making decisions that I thought were right for the long term health of the company.

13:47 No, not for a short term type of thing. So so what did you find when you got there? Day one on the job, you start investigating is it better or worse the same than you thought? You know, there there's been uh an analyst called Mike Mayo done a report I remember one of the great lines in the port, even Hercules couldn't fix it. It had been an amalgamation of Bank One, First Chicago, National Bank of Detroit. They had never put the companies together.

14:09 So they had multiple statement systems, processing systems, payment systems. Yeah. SAP systems Uh they had different brands. You know, we have t services coming down, we're losing accounts, they were closing branches.

14:23 It was a mess. But you know, it was all of it. Systems, people, ops. But again, I just No, I just I met The management team I it's hard. You know, it I walked in, I met six of the directors,

14:35 I There tw there were twenty one directors. Eleven Hated the other ten. Yeah, even though it's not a good thing.

14:42 There were twenty one. board members. They they were tribal. They ended up hating each other. I knew that when I went in because I knew one people and you know, I spoke to a lot of people and did research in the bank. But again, in life you get handed these things and it's not perfect. You know, even today people want to be handed something perfect. It's not perfect. And I was so I met six of the uh directors, I walked in. When I got up for the job, I shook all their hands, I told them I'm gonna do the best I do, I'm telling the truth, the whole truth, and the truth, the good, the bad, the ugly. We're not gonna bullshit, we're gonna try to build a great company. I need your help.

15:16 And uh And then they said. They left. Yeah. So now I'm on the executive floor.

15:24 I don't even know where to go. You know, and so I kinda knocked on someone's door the head of H O I said, I do need an office and I really need an assistant. And they were going to give me the chairman's office in the corner. I said, No, no, I want to be like right in the middle, so I can see people and stick my head out. Uh and then I Mm went to meet the management team. I went to this they put them all in this conference room a nice

15:45 White plush carpets. I walked in with her. cup of coffee and they said uh Jamie we don't drink coffee here for obvious reasons. So I looked at them, I looked at the coffee, I looked at them. I said, You do now.

15:59 And then I then I just started V with them all and the systems were terrible, the company's losing money. I didn't know all the businesses really well, so the credit card company had collapsed. That's probably the business I knew the least. Uh but again it didn't that didn't matter to me. I was gonna try to fix it. It had some good assets and Things like that. So I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.

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18:45 Um We asked you in context of JP Morgan. Like what are the critical things in your mind that has made JP Morgan what it is to say. And the first thing you said was risk. And with risk.

18:57 And the culture around risk and the industry risk. Understanding by management of risk. When you got to bank one. I think this is where you first started putting into practice the culture around risk. the risk culture at Bank One and how did you change it? Yeah, I

19:12 You know, I've always been very risk conscious. And risk conscious does not mean Getting rid of risk. It means properly pricing it and understanding the potential outcomes. I uh And so when I got there, you know, I just started meeting people and going through I quickly realized that

19:27 Bank one had more US corporate credit risk. than Citibank did. And they the way they accounted for it was Unbelievably aggressive.

19:38 And you know, so they had less capital, less reserves, less this. They they were calling these things profitable. They were basically losing money. Uh and you know loans in liter a lot of business you have to be very careful about the credit business and once I found out that I kinda panicked a little bit. And I went through every single loan in the books. I marked them all down put up more reserves, told the board. uh about it and then wanted to earn more revenues per dollar of risk.

20:03 So for example in the middle market business we had for every loan NI We had like eighty cents and twenty cents. And twenty cents of other revenue like payments. By the time we merged with JP Morgan, we had 40 NII for the loan and 60 percent NII NIR from other type of things like payments. And one year being paid for the risk and one year being paid little for the risk. And I always stress test it and I showed the board that if we have a recession and we're about to have one.

20:32 Uh how much money we'd lose in credit. So I hired a woman called Linda Batman who said, Okay, if you're gonna If you're gonna let me do credit, you're gonna let me sell loans, they said yes. Hedge loans, yes. Can I do ten billion? I said yes.

20:45 She said, Okay, I'll join and we probably reduce the balance sheet by fifty. Because and then we did have a recession, but we were kinda okay by then. With one big bad one, which is United, which went bankrupt. And we basically owned it for us. Small period of time.

20:58 There seems to be kind of a fundamental Jamie Diamie Jamie Diamondism. Which is don't blow up. I mean a lot of other people uh have gotten decent at pricing risk. But everyone else seems to be willing to get closer to the line than you. W where did you sort of develop this?

21:15 Don't blow up at all costs. So there's you know look around risk, there's always this ecosystem. You've always heard it, everyone's doing it, everyone's okay, this is gonna work, this time is different. And you know, the history tells you learns teaches you a lot. And I always say if you didn't, my dad was a stockbroker. And so I bought my first doc when I was fourteen. In nineteen seventy two

21:35 The stock market hit a thousand. It did a thousand in 1968. I was already helping a little bit with stuff. By Nineteen Seventy Four down forty five percent. All the limousines in Wall Street were gone. Restaurants were being closed.

21:51 You know, markets move violently. And then you know we had kind of a recovery. In nineteen eighty you had a recession, eighty two you had a recession, and eighty two was lower than it had been in nineteen sixty eight. And in eight eight hundred. And then in eighty seven the market was down twenty five percent one day in nineteen ninety All these banks, JP Morgan, City, Chase, Chemical, were all taken to their knees by real estate losses, and they're all worth about a billion dollars.

22:16 I remember I think City was three billion at the time and the other ones were about a billion dollars. And then you had the ninety uh seven Uh also a real estate related thing, you had the two thousand internet bubble. No, and then you have the great financial crisis. And I could if you go through history, there's tons of these things. Andrew Warsorkin is in here and I just read his book

22:34 Oh, he's nice enough to send it to me in nineteen twenty nine and Man, history does rhyme. Too much leverage, too much risk. Everyone thinks it's gonna be great. No one thinks it's gonna go down a lot. You know, that stock market went down

22:47 twenty percent one year, thirty percent next year, twenty percent next year. At one point it was down ninety percent. It seems like your philosophy is The The most the worst thing will happen. So just

22:59 Plan for it. Don't don't say oh we're good as long as This crazy insane. you know, four sigma event doesn't happen, you're like, No, that will happen and happens often. Yeah, so when I got when I look at it, I always ask Like when I do stress tests and at risk for high yield

23:14 The worst I remember getting to JP Morgan and going through the risk books. And their their stress test was that high yield would move forty percent the credit spread. That's good. And at the time was it four hundred or whatever it was. That means five five sixty. Okay, and I said no, our stress test is gonna be worst ever. Worst ever was seventeen percent.

23:34 And they said that'll never happen again. The market's more sophisticated. Well It hit twenty percent. And you couldn't have sold the bond. There was no market. So you know, those things do happen. And the point isn't that you're trying to guess them, the point is you

23:48 You can handle them so you continue to build your business. And so I always look what I call the fat tails and manage that we can handle all the all the fat tails. And not the stress test the Fed gives us, but all the fat tails. Markets down fifty percent, interest rates up to eight percent, credit spreads back to worst ever. Of course, your results will be worse. Were you there? And and the thing about financial services, leverage kills you, aggressive accounting can kill you, which a lot of companies do do.

24:14 Um And you know, the goal should be and also confidence. If you lose money as a financial company, I always do this too. People the headlines are, you know, people read that And if they're relying on putting their money with you, they look at that differently. they lose trust. And that's which cause you've seen runs on banks and you've showed some recently

24:33 Uh because people run take the money out. So one there's a thing that you just said. Which is That you might do worse, but you're there. There there's sort of this trade off that you make where you're less profitable in the short term.

24:47 But at least you stick around. If you look back at the companies that you've run, Big One, JP Morgan Chase, is that true in the good years that you've actually been less profitable than those who are kind of risk on. He's saying that you know, if you look at the history of banks

25:02 From up until two thousand and seven a lot of banks were in thirty percent equity. Most of them went bankrupt. We never did that much. Okay, but in oh eight and oh nine we were fine and they weren't. And so uh but you want to build a real

25:17 strong company with real margins, real clients, conservative accounting, where you're not relying on leverage. And it's very easy to use leverage to you know to jack up returns in any business. You know, and but in in banking it could be particularly dangerous. So it seems like a Horror.

25:33 part, if not the entirety of this. distilled into your operating strategy is The Fortress balance sheet. Yeah. When did you first

25:43 I I've been talking I go way back to Primarica used to talk about that. I probably the nineteen nineties and Like I said, I grew up my father and I went through those market things. I remember how h hard it was on people in Wall Street.

26:00 But but the Fortress Bouncy is Yet you run a company serving clients well. You have good margins, good liquidity, good capital. I'm as conservative an accountant as you can find. I don't upfront profits when I can spread them over time. And accounting you know, of course account is hate when I say this. You can drive a truck through accounting rules. And accounting itself

26:20 You know, th that certain things are considered expenses, but they're good. They're an investment for the future, but they're cold and expense. And then revenues, you know if I make bad loans, they are bad revenues. They will kill you, but for a while they look pretty good. So I it's all those things, margins, clients. In the banking business, the character, the clients you have will reflect in your bank.

26:39 So the first thing is who are you doing business with? How you're doing business and uh And also making sure your compensation plans aren't Paying people for stuff which is stupid. Or unethical and you uh

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28:44 All right, David, catch us up to the So you run bank one for four years. From Chicago. And then In two thousand four.

28:52 Emerge with JP Morgan Chase. termed at the time a merger of equals. I think JP Morgante referred to it as that. Bank one shareholders get

29:03 Forty two percent. of the combined company. I mean I think people don't realize how much of JP Morgan Chase is bank one. Today. That's why it's a little irritating me when they say you've been running it since I was running JP Morgan. I was running 40 percent of the company for the whole time. I'm not working around the clock. I ha I already knew that a logical strategic merger might be JP Morgan.

29:26 I know all these companies and that's the other thing about Fortress balance sheet is you also have real strategies that Survive the test of time. You know, you're not flipping and flopping. Um And then I'm sitting there and of course the tape comes

29:38 JP Morgan chase to merge. So we're worth like twenty five billion, they're now worth like eighty billion or ninety or whatever the number was. I'm like Well, there goes that dream. But four years later Our stock was up to

29:50 You know, doubled or something like that. Those actually come in. And it was in the target range. And I had been meeting with Bill Harrison, the current uh chairman of We were talking about it.

30:04 They were kind of looking for a CEO. Uh so we were we had been talking probably for a year and a half before that. Th they're looking for a CEO. Didn't you? Did they give bank one shareholders forty two percent because they were looking for a CEO?

30:18 There were two lawsuits. Okay, uh so we got the premium. They got the name and the location and I w I I effectively had kind of control from day one. Because inside the merge agreement and this is almost unheard of When we get the premium is

30:34 That To not have me become CO eight months later. Seventy five percent of the board would have to vote me out. And the default was you were going to become a board was eight Bank one people and H A P Morgan people.

30:47 I knew a lot of the JP Morgan board members too who had who respected me and Bill Harris and I were very close. But that was the agreement. They got sued. For paying too much.

30:58 I got sued for not taking enough You can't win an eight. Every shareholder is probably. Yeah.

31:09 All right. Before we get to two thousand six When you're going through that process, and even maybe the couple years before you and Bill were talking, you're starting to think about JP Morgan as a partner. I'm curious did the brand Did the name of the

31:24 JP Morgan factor into your thinking at all? As an asset? I mean JP Morgan brand is a Tiffany name. I didn't value it in the deal. And what we what I looked at I had given my board I think it's I think the first is run your company well. And people thought I was gonna start doing deals immediately. I was like no We suck.

31:42 We don't we haven't earned the right to run someone else's company yet. When we're running a good company, we can merge with somebody and But I the but the first thing I looked at was business logic. and that every business we had a consumer business, they had a consumer business, we had a credit card business, they were both terrible. They had a credit card business, they had a big investment bank, we had a big US corporate bank. that needed some of those investment banking service. We both had a wealth management business.

32:06 I w I knew we could save a lot of cost saves, so the business logic would be impeccable. Then there's the ability to execute. Like can you actually get it done because you've all seen a lot of deals where they fall apart. They don't have management, they don't consolidate the systems, uh, they have infighting that kinda happened city. Uh, and so you don't effectuate and then there's the price. So I knew we had a Tiffany brand.

32:28 Uh but it d it didn't value, because if everything else didn't work out, I don't think it would have mattered that much. Interesting. I'm gonna fast forward last couple of years. It's two thousand six. You're officially chairman and CEO of the combined JP Morgan Chase. Go, go, go. Go, go, go, baby. It's like, you know, nineteen eighties all over again. Uh.

32:50 I think you had the same incentives as everyone else. But you behaved very differently. Am I missing something? Did you have the same incentives or did you pull JP Morgan back? hard on the risk side in two thousand six. So there there were crack out there in two thousand six. Maybe remember the quants.

33:08 There started to be a quant problem and late in two thousand and six we definitely saw subprime get in bed. And that's I pulled back on subprime. I I wish I had done more because if you look what I did, you say okay, well you saved half the money But you would have saved more has been. I'm gonna say less

33:26 Maybe a third of the leverage of the big investment banks. And a lot more liquidity. So in two thousand and six I started to stockpile liquidity And you know, looking at the situation, I was quite worried.

33:39 The leverage if you you may not remember this, but the leverage Because of accounting rules in Basel II, Basel I, investment banks, particularly the banks, the big investment banks, went from twelve times leverage. To thirty five times leverage. And and it was go go. So for every mode, bridge loans, the whole thing, like

34:00 In oh seven the bridge book of Wall Street was four hundred and fifty billion dollars. Today it's forty billion. JP One can handle the whole forty billion today, though we're not the forty billion today. And they were much more leverage deals. And a lot of them fell apart, collapsed and

34:15 Uh and then of course and that was before you had the collapse in the mortgage mortgage, which really But but you did have the same incentives. access to information that a lot of these other folks did

34:28 But you didn't blow up. Wha what explains this?'Cause usually behavior follows incentives. Yeah, uh well, first of all, if you work for me, I would tell you I don't care if the incentive is, don't do the wrong thing. And and don't do the wrong thing to the client. If you treat yourself if you're the client, how would you want to be treated?

34:47 And I I had gotten rid of I mentioned that one risk thing, there were multiple risk things like that. They were being paid to take the risk. You were telling us about the uh the autoloan business. Yeah, but all but they'd be being paid. But the second I put in all these new risk controls All of a sudden you weren't making money by taking that leverage.

35:04 Because I was looking at how much capital can actually be deployed if things get bad. And so I was looking at earnings through the cycle. Uh and then but uh very importantly All of these investment banks were doing side deals, private deals, three year deals, five year deals. I got rid of almost all of them. This is for computer. So today at JP Morgan Chase, there are no Yeah, we do do things but and I know some of my partners in the room here, but we all know about it.

35:28 There are no wings. There are no nods, there are no side deals, there's almost no one paid on a particular thing, because if you're paid on a particular thing, you can do the wrong thing. And meanwhile not helping the company, you know, manage its risk or something like that. So we change the incentive programs. And I'm quite conscious about the Senate programs that they don't Create Miss

35:47 No mis uh behavior, but it's also very important. If you're in a company and you say the incentive program is doing it, you should tell the company. This incentive plan is not incenting the right behavior versus vis the the customer. And a lot of it was leverage. So you if you look at the leverage in some of these securitization books and mortgage books, if you have thirty times leverage, You'll go to forty times leverage.

36:11 It's just gonna it's literally uh You know, twenty five percent to your bonus. And so I got rid of the profit pool twenty percent and the leverage. And I lost some people too in the meantime. Yeah, I think it's a very important thing You know, JP Morgan as part of the system had the same incentives, but you change the incentives for team within the company.

36:28 Alright, we gotta go to two thousand eight. March. March. Thirteenth. Thursday. Two thousand eight. Yeah. It's Thursday night.

36:37 You get a call. See you. The stock closed that day. At fifty seven dollars a share.

36:44 It's like a hundred and fifty a couple months before. Three days later. God, I remember it like yesterday. I was working on Park Avenue and Wall Street. I remember that night. Two dollars a share. You're buying very stern.

36:57 So I was at Avra on 47th Street with my parents and my parents' favorite restaurant. My whole family was there. It happened to be my birthday. Uh I I don't normally get emergency. Yeah. Alan Schwartz who was the current CEO, we've seen their stock go down. I knew they had some real problems because we saw the hedge funds and Some of the things that were taking place there. And he said, Jamie, I need thirty billion dollars tonight.

37:21 Before Asia opens. Which I said. I don't know how to get thirty billion dollars for you. Uh and have you h called Paulson, you called Tim Geitner Uh so we all called I called up the management team, I went back in

37:33 I probably had a bite and said goodbye and went back to the office. Probably had a hundred people come in that day, that night. They all got dressed, they went back to work in this emergency. We now rang all the uh bells for emerging bear sterns went bankrupt, spoke to the Fed about Let's just get them to the weekend. We had one day. And we need a Saturday and Sunday and we

37:52 concocted this loan so we couldn't lend the thirty billion. And f the Fed technically couldn't lend the thirty billion, but the Fed can lend to us technically, and I can technically use the collateral of Bear Stern so that Uh so we got the literally one day loan. Uh and then the next day I had we had thousands of people coming due diligence, and we went through every loan, every asset, every balance sheet, all the derivatives, all the lawsuits, all the HR policies, like real due diligence of two or three day period. And bought the company at that night two dollars a share. Hank Paulson was telling, Why are you paying anything for it?

38:25 I said, Well I do have to get shareholder votes. And which became bear shareholders to appreciate it. It was a public deal, and the worst part is I was going to get the lawsuits from the bear holders. And I knew that you didn't pay enough for it. But but we couldn't let it go bankrupt. There wasn't like an industrial car you can buy in bankruptcy, it would be gone. And the crisis would have just unfolded so What's the right thing?

38:45 Two questions. What would have happened? If

38:52 If it if it went down. Two. Afterwards did you think it was over? No. Uh we so we we already had so that was March

39:01 Uh you know what happened with Lehman was an uncontrolled failure. There's money up everywhere. People panic, they start pulling money up everything. That would have happened with Bayer. So it did stop that. And I would have thought that

39:13 It gave other people other time to clean up their act. So literally six months later, I would have thought some of the other firms were much had more liquidity, more capital. and were a little bit more prepared for might be happening, we already had the stress in the system. was you saw it already. It was gonna mount, it wasn't gonna go away, there were tremendous losses coming. Uh uh

39:33 So we bought it and you know, it probably did help and hindsight it didn't stop. Yeah, it didn't stop the crisis from unfolding. We bought it. And then the like a coup like a week later we changed it to ten dollars a share. It had been at one twenty.

39:46 It was three hundred billion of assets. In a twelve billion dollar book tangible book value. We wrote off the whole tangible book value in the per in when we bought the company to pay we had to liquidate the loans, we had to hedge stuff, we had severance costs, lawsuit costs.

40:02 And we basically used all that. So we paid we paid a billion for a company that had been worth Uh twenty billion dollars. recently the building we're now was worth a billion dollars on the balance sheet for zero. And we got

40:15 The the fact we got some very good people And we got some good businesses, but it was a extremely painful process. I've seen estimates that in the fullness of time after really dealing with unwinding all the stuff there. It cost you fifteen to twenty billion dollars. So it cost twenty anyway. It was the it was the twelve billion we wrote off. That didn't cost us. We didn't really pay for it. And then the government sued us on the mortgages, which I was quite offended by. No.

40:41 And I really was. You know, the the whatever government you you did a deal with That's not the government down the road who decides, I don't care, we're going to come after you anyway. So while we kinda saved the system a lot, we bailed a lot of people out. They made us pay five billion dollars on

41:00 The m the bad mortgages that bear stones have done. And that's what made me make the statement I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't put it this way, uh I don't know how to say this, I wouldn't really trust the government again. Yeah. Would um

41:17 I gotta I gotta ask a follow up question to that. Um Yeah. Is that a

41:25 structural thing. Just the way that we're set up with a new administration every four years? Yeah, they they don't feel obligated And you know, contract even some contracts were violated in this thing, which I won't go through

41:42 Uh literally contract. I mean it would have been torturous interference had it been company to company. But they basically you know since you Operate Under their laws, you know, they can basically take you down. So you

41:54 Yeah, I w I went to see Eric Holder. trying to settle this mortgage stuff which we settled. I brought my lead directory. He expects me to come and be pounding my chest and Uh and I went in and said, I am here to surrender.

42:08 I cannot fight. And I cannot win against the federal government. You know that a criminal indictment can sink my company. I will not do that to my company or my country. I'm here to surrender. Before I surrender, I want you to know the circumstances.

42:22 by which we bought WAMU and Bear Sterns, because eighty percent of what they're asking for related to Bear Steins and WAMU, not J Morgan Chase. And I went through the whole thing. No, uh he said thank you, uh I'll take in consideration but they never gave me the accounting, so I don't know what they did. Uh and so it is what it is.

42:40 It was quite painful. Uh but We'll move on from the specifics. Whether you would have done it again wouldn't have, you know.

42:56 Very clear. It was not a great deal on paper. For JP Morgan. But As we look at it now. The reputational value

43:08 The reputation of JP Morgan now. is unlike any other in the industry. Part of why you're worth eight hundred billion dollars is that reputation. Yeah. A lot of what created that reputation. Yeah. I you know if if you're yes, and I know I say I wouldn't trust the government if the government called me up, they did Yeah. If they call me again and said, We need your help to save our country Well of course I'm gonna

43:29 I'm a patriot that way. I just I would just try to come up some ways to avoid the punishment by the next president. I would come up with something nice. You know what you need like uh the version of the merger agreement with JP and Morgan Chase where it's like a seventy-five percent of Congress needs to vote not to sue you. The default is you're not gonna get sued. All right listeners.

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45:39 Bearance happens. Six months later you get another phone call. WAMU is going under. You do buy Wamu. Contrary to everything we're talking about with bearer.

45:48 WAMU is actually a great acquisition, right? Yeah. So this is a a less about acquisitions. It's very hard. Remember, we bought Wamu a week after Leman went bankrupt. And and most boards wouldn't have touched that at all.

46:08 Uh uh parts of Nevada, Arizona not Arizona, uh Georgia, Florida, which we weren't in. So think of these really Uh and they had, you know, uh twenty three hundred branches. They were And they ha they had huge mortgage problems. But we had looked at it over and over and over.

46:27 So we knew their mortgage books Cold. And we wrote off And this was all before it for thirty billion dollar discount at tangible book value. Because they had debt.

46:38 And we left the debt behind. And so and that thirty billion was approximately what the Moore's loss was gonna be. So we bought the company think of we bought a company clean, we wrote off all that stuff. The books were clean, and then we did something unheard of, too. The next day or two days later, I went in the market raised another eleven billion dollars of equity. Which I didn't really need.

46:58 Uh I was like, you know what? This could get even worse. And and I don't want to be short capital liquidity. So we you know, we raised that to make sure our balance sheet was just as strong as it was after Wamu.

47:11 Than it was before Wamu. And you already had the reputation to pull this off, right? I I'm imagining Yeah. It was Yeah. People people trust you.

47:26 But yeah, we knew a lot of shareholders and you know you earn your trust over time with shareholders and Yeah, we explain we g we we gave him a a quick little presentation over the you know uh Uh yeah, and a lot of them stepped up and said, This is great. Um They also know we can execute it,'cause behind the bare sterns, people forget the work is

47:43 The next day you got fifty thousand people consolidating five thousand applications branches, compensation programs Uh you know, settlement programs, you know, payment systems, it's a lot of work. But we obviously have the capability to do that and we have the capability to do Wamu. I think we finished the Wammu consolidations in nine months.

48:02 All of them. So that within nine months they were all in the same systems, which allows you to start doing a better job in customer service. Uh and things like that. So th this fortress balance sheet strategy and raising this equity capital and having additional margin of safety and conservative accounting. In retrospect

48:19 It seems like the obvious right strategy for running a large financial institution. Why wasn't everyone else copying it ha have people changed and does everyone else run their banks like this now? I think people But the people are more conservative today. I think regulars are more conservative today. But again, I go back to people get involved in aggressive accounting.

48:40 Uh they don't look at Stressing their own bank in in a real way. Uh you know, you saw People take too much interest rate risk, too much credit exposure, too much optionality risk. And and or or sometimes it's new products. So if you look at the financial services, very often it's the new products that blow up.

48:56 It takes a while. They haven't been through a cycle. And you ha you had that with equities way back in nineteen twenty nine, you had it with options, you had it with equity derivatives, you had it with mortgages, you had it with Gini even Ginny Mays at one point blew up. Even though they're government guaranteed.

49:11 Quant and with LTA. And then people then become more rational how they run these balance sheets and how they think through the rest. So I have to ask you, is this private credit today? It again? it is this private credit today. I I don't really think so. I

49:29 I don't think it's two trillion dollars. It's grown rapidly, that's an issue. But what happens the other thing about Mark is there's some very good actors in it. Who know what they're doing.

49:39 Customers like the product. So I always say well the customers like it and but they're also people who don't know what they're doing and it's grown rapidly. So there it may there may be something in there would become a problem one day. I don't think it's systemic. So that two trillion, the mortgage, when the time it blew up, was I must say nine trillion. And a trillion dollars was lost.

49:59 This is you know and it was also more than a trillion dollars back then. Yeah, a lot of these private credits are not leveraged like that. Th does doesn't mean there won't be problems, but it's it's slightly different. But we c you got but you look at the whole system, there are other things out there. That you know, or leverage that No, can cause problems. potentially problematic today.

50:24 Well I look I I look at when you look at asset price they're rather high. You know I'm not saying that's bad. But If we if if today P E's

50:33 Fifteen. As opposed to twenty three. I say that's a lot less risk. Lot left to fall. And you have some upside.

50:40 I was saying twenty three. There's not a lot of upside and there's a long way to fall. And that's true with credit spread. So I we and we look at We stress test everything. We do like a hundred stress tests a week. You know, and to make sure we can handle a wide variety of things. And then the other thing and the biggest risk to me is cyber.

50:57 I mean I I think the cyber stuff is you know, we we're very good at it. We work with all the government agencies. They would say the chain was up we spend eight hundred million dollars a year or something on it, we educate people on it, we just do But it is you're talking about grids and communications companies and water Uh uh and even part of the military establishment the the protections are not what we need. Uh, if we ever get any any kind of war where cyber's involved.

51:23 And China is very good at it. And so is Russia, but Russia is mostly criminal, which is slightly different. I'm gonna pull us back to the story. We're gonna fast forward to twenty twenty three. We're not really equipped to talk about Russia. Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. Both fail.

51:45 You're there again. Did you see it coming? What lessons did you learn from how two thousand and eight went that you could apply in twenty twenty three, obviously you bought First Republic. There's a Silicon Valley Bank, you know they both Silicon Valley Bank did some very good stuff. But they the they both had something something unique that we didn't know at the time.

52:05 I'm gonna call them concentrate deposits. Not uninsured, because people are misdating that concentrated. And so a lot of venture capital, what happened with Silicon Valley Bank and kind of the First Republic is some of these large venture capital companies call them there are hundreds of them, maybe a thousand, told their constituent clients that they invested in We all bank the Silicon Valley First Republic.

52:26 The banks aren't safe, get out. And they all remove their deposits. I think they had two hundred billion deposit, three hundred billion, a hundred billion in one day. And that caused the problem, but they also had other problems. They didn't have proper liquidity. Uh they didn't have their collateral post to the Fed.

52:43 And they had taken too much instrument exposure. And the interest rate exposure was hidden by accounting. It's called held to maturity, where you don't have to mark even treasuries to mark it. And I always hated health and maturity because Uh but it gives you better regulatory returns and stuff like that. But when that held to maturity,

53:00 The tang if you said what's the tangible book value of one of these banks, you said it was a hundred Well all of a sudden it was fifty if you just marked that one thing to market. And and there's now here now you're into judgment land. At what point if you saw a bank where just that one mark had the tangible book value drop to forty or thirty cents to the dollar, would you panic?

53:17 I would have said that's too much risk. And You know, the regulators helped this because they said r rates are gonna stay low forever. So these banks put a lot of three percent mortgages. And when you know three percent wars when rates went up to five percent, you know, worth sixty cents in the dollar. Or fifty cents.

53:33 And that was it. And so both those had they they took too much instrument exposure, known to management. And it was known to the regulators. And you know uh And fixable. So you know we we knew about a little bit about Silicon Valley Bank.

53:47 We were trying to compete in that area, so we learned a lot afterwards about how to do a better job for that ecosystem of venture capital. We have a whole campus in Palo Alto now. We've hired five hundred innovation bankers, we cover uh venture capital companies. We're not as good as they are yet. We're we're gonna get there because we're we're organized slightly differently. And we knew First Republic. We were watching it. I called Janet Young. That I said that th that company's in trouble and one or two others. If you want to, we'll take a look. We could probably buy it and eliminate the problem. They waited a little bit too long, it's kind of a little melting ice cube.

54:18 Uh but you can imagine the day we bought it, you never heard about it again. We hedged all their exposures in a couple of days. And you know, we merged everything, we wrote everything down. And But we did get some good stuff from them. We actually got some good people. You know, the the normal thing in acquisition is they're terrible, get rid of them, or they failed. But we also looked at what they did.

54:36 how they dealt with clients. Some of you may be clients here. They did a great job with high net worth clients. Single point of contact. You know, conscious services. So now if you go down Madison Avenue, you see things called JP Morgan financial. Center. Because it's it's kind of based on that. When you walk in there, we know your small business, we know your mortgage, we know your consumer banking.

54:59 Uh we can get you travel, we can do a whole bunch of different stuff. So we're very high levels uh services, but I think we have twenty of them now. But I'd love it. And if it works, you know, in twenty years we'll have three hundred. And so these things are opportunities and I hope it works. You know, you don't always know they're gonna work for a fact, but But so far, so good.

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56:28 Yes. If we're now trying to answer the question, How did you separate from the pack? Why did you become a completely different animal than your whole competitive set? What are the things in your mind that led to this success? Well I look I I mean I d I don't know totally first of all, y'cause we skipped over strategy a little bit.

56:46 And this is an important fuel that We we we have What we do is the same thing that a community bank does other than investment bank global investment banking. Okay, so if you walk into a small community bank They know your business account, they know your consumer account, they usually have it

57:01 Trust company. Used to man they used to call trust. We'd manage your private affairs, they set up a trust for you and they too stuff like that. And their CRM is up here. They don't need a Salesforce CM because they know everyone in town. And

57:13 They didn't do big time global investment banking. But The strategy those businesses fit together, they feed each other, and so does investment banking. A lot of our middle market clients use investment banking products. A lot of our consumer clients use some FX, so all of our businesses feed each other. There's no extraneous. We got rid of everything that didn't fit.

57:33 A strategy. And then you start building client businesses and client services, fortress boundary, fortress accounting, all those various things and And you know I I and I've always talked about So it's it's it's holding a portfolio of things that we're gonna do.

57:47 Whereas you know, City had Consum commer consumer finance, that didn't fit. Life insurance, that didn't fit. Property capital, that didn't they eventually got rid of them all. City just wanted to do more of them. Yeah, he bought American generals did uh

58:01 Truck leafy, for God's sake. I mean and you y once you get involved in these things it's hard for people to understand the risk in each one of these businesses when but all of ours fit. I don't like hobbies, I don't like things, you know, we made and we've made plenty of mistakes, because you ha you have to try and test things. And then you're always investing for the future.

58:20 People. Branches. And technology. That's true whether investment banking people or Consum people are opening consumer branches, or I think Dick Doug Penno's here and Troy Rohrbach, who run the Global Investment Bank, but they've opened the U.S.

58:34 You commercial banking branches all over Europe. And I think you're telling me I mean it's it's it's going great. You know and it's feeding all other parts of the company. So just sticking to your knitting, constantly investing. You know, not overreacting to the market. Your markets are like accordions.

58:50 And then sometimes, you know, it's uh if you're strong when others aren't, you have a chance to buy things you want to buy And then always look at the world from the point of view of the consumer. What do you want, how do you want it, how do you want to get it, can we provide it to you? Uh uh in a way that makes sense for us too. You know, not going for the last dollar and not

59:06 Nothing like that. And so uh and building teams of people, you know, our people are Curious and smart They have heart, they have soul, they give a damn about Uh you know, the guards in the company and the receptionists and the No, it's not just about the big time bankers and

59:21 people pounding their chest. Yeah, we don't try not to put up with that. And we have big time bankers. They are exceptional. You know, and Uh but The company you know serves the clients and we have uh and I think the clients know that. When when you really dig in to start analyzing JP Morgan's financials, you kinda see this.

59:38 one thing that jumps right out at you, which is the efficiency ratio. For every dollar that you make compared to your competitors, you get to keep fifteen cents more of that dollar as profit. It's not hard to see how that compounds and how that allows reinvestments and Why is your efficiency ratio so much better than competitors?

59:58 It's it is literally continuously investing and g gaining business at the margin and not stopping and not stop starting and Yeah, the thing is the thing about margins too is that We we have that margin while investing a lot. It's much easier to have that margin and just you know, we can cut billions of dollars of marketing out tomorrow.

1:00:18 We can stop opening branches and save a billion dollars next year. We can do a lot of things. Your margins will go up. Your growth will go down, your long term margins will probably get worse. Uh so we kinda look right through the cycle and we look at the actual economics that we do, not the accounting of what we do. I

1:00:33 And yeah, we have you know we've built it over time. We have great People and great products and There there's some secret sauce I'm not gonna tell you about. We do invest today. And we tell everyone everything. And I'm sitting there watching my p I never do presentations. I'm watching them do the

1:00:48 I'm saying Oh God, we've just given away too many secrets here. But you I saw Howard Schultz here before, you know? I'm not supposed to say that probably. It's okay. No, but he built over the years. Yeah, the consistency, the curiosity, the heart, the

1:01:09 Yeah, branch by branch, products. It's just Always doing that, knowing you're gonna make mistakes. But building the culture that just kind of plows through that and you'll know I I do use sport. Sports is a great analogy. If you have a a a sport team with a bunch of real jerks on it, are they gonna be a great team?

1:01:25 Almost never. You know, if a if if the team members aren't giving it their their best every day during practice, you learn that Tom Brady every day at practice you worked hard. You know, if people are not giving their best, how you're gonna have a great team. It's not that different in business. The difference in business you can BS about it all the time. You can make up stories, but in sports you see it, you know, on the playing field. The do they have the team? Do they play together. They don't even have to be friends, but they have to practice, know their teams, and so I do think companies have that. It's like a sauce that works. You've seen it lots of different companies, you know, not just JP Morgan Chase.

1:01:59 So Alright, we've got One last question for you. Uh

1:02:05 If you look back To two thousand eight. Which was a long time ago now. Oh

1:02:15 Of the other. Leaders. That were involved in that era. have long since retired. Many folks within

1:02:22 D Morgan Chase have long since retired. Since then. It seems like you're working As hard as ever. Yeah.

1:02:32 Why are you still here? What keeps you going? Yeah. Uh So I wanna thank my wife who's here too, who suffered through all this with me all these years and probably couldn't have done it. Couldn't have done it without her. Oh

1:02:46 I don't know. I I don't know. But I do believe My my grandparents all Greek immigrants. My grandparents all Greek immigrants who didn't finish high school Uh but there's a Greek ethic, you know, which I and I don't even realize you're learning from your parents, you know, from the ground up and Judy's parents, my wife's parents were the same, which is

1:03:06 You know, have a purpose. You know, have and that it could be art, it could be science, it could be military, it could be business, it could be it could it could be just be a great parent, a great teacher, you know. But have a purpose and then Do the best you can. You know, give it give it your all. Don't like be one of those people who complain all the time. You know, you give it your best.

1:03:25 And uh And then treat everyone properly. Everyone. You know, like I if I and you know, including like if there's a bully beating up on someone, you had to stand up for the someone.

1:03:35 You were not allowed to allow a bully to do it, so y how you treat people you do and So in in my hierarchy of life, the most important thing is my family. Uh still is. The second thing is my country, because I think this country is the indispensable nation that brought freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom enterprise. All right.

1:03:55 Which we have to teach everywhere we go about how important it is. I don't think people fully understand it sometimes. And then my purpose'cause you know, they my fellow isn't want me home every day and This is this is my contribution to this company. I can help Сіті, стай, скулс, капіс, імплої. And I I get the biggest kick out of that. And so Uh that's what I do. As long as I have the energy I'm gonna do it. I can't imag I'm not I don't play golf.

1:04:20 No, my daughter. One of my daughters said, Dad, you need some hobbies and I said I do. We W hanging out with you, family travel, barbecue and wine, we now like whiskeys and uh I love read I love history. I think history is the greatest teacher of all time. Hiking, I can't play tennis anymore'cause my back, but those are my hobbies. I don't buy fancy cars and

1:04:42 Stuff like that, but this gives me purpose in life. Beyond family and beyond country. Plus I think this helps the country. You know I get to do a lot of things for our country uh that I just think are quite meaningful from this job. And So when I'm done with this, I don't know how teach and write. I may write a book like Andrew Russorkin did.

1:04:59 Uh I'll do something, but I gotta do something. I'm not gonna twiddle my thumbs and smell the flowers. Um There are a lot of people who have floated your name for uh political or policy roles over the years. It is hard.

1:05:13 There is only one job that could possibly impact the country in a bigger scale than you're currently doing. Do you agree? Right now, yeah. Mm-hmm. Well,

1:05:25 That's probably a great place to be. Jamie. Thank you so much for joining us. David Ben. These guys are great, by the way. So Thank you.

1:05:43 Well that is it. For our conversation with Jamie Diamond listeners. Thank you so much to all six thousand of you who came to watch in person. Was so cool. So cool.

1:05:54 As always, a huge thank you to Arvin Navarotnam at World League Partners for his excellent write up on the Jamie Diamond years of JP Morgan, which is linked in the show notes. If you like this episode, go check out other recent episodes like the start of our Google series, which is off to a scream and start. Our Rolex episode, which is another one of our Biggest ever. And then our interviews Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz.

1:06:18 If you're new to the show. I think all of those are great places to start. After this episode, if you are still looking for more and you're like, I've already listened to all of those other episodes, we have a second show for you. A CQ two, the most recent is an episode with Jesse Cole, the founder and the CEO, founder and owner. Owner, yeah. Yeah, he wears a lot of hats, all of them are yellow. At the Savannah Bananas.

1:06:41 For something completely different. Yes. And if you want to talk about this with the acquired community, come join the Slack acquired.fm slash slack. Without listeners. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Who got the truth?

1:06:57 Is it you, is it you, is it you Who got the truth now

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