BONUS: JP Morgan Co-Head of Global Banking Filippo Gori

On this special, bonus episode of Masters in Business, Barry speaks with Filippo Gori. He's co-head of Global Banking at J. P. Morgan. arry Ritholtz sits down with Filippo Gori, Co-Head of Global Banking at J. P. Morgan. Gori shares insights from his climb through the firm's ranks across London and Hong Kong, plus discuss the current state of banking, capital markets and more. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.

• 2:04Barry Ritholtz?

  This week on the podcast, what a fascinating conversation. Filippo Gori is co-head of Global Banking at JP Morgan. He has started in London and eventually moved over to Hong Kong, where he worked for 13 years before coming recently to New York. He's seen just about every aspect there is when it comes to commercial, corporate, investment banking around the world. I thought this conversation was quite fascinating, and I think you will also. With no further ado, JP Morgan's Filippo Gori.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:40Barry Ritholtz?

  I'm fascinated by the mispronunciation of your name. Filippo Ogore? Did the people in Hong Kong really think you were Scottish or Irish?

• 2:51Speaker 04

  At the beginning, when I just moved to Hong Kong, people were surprised when I arrived there because the way they pronounce my name and surname, it sounds more like Philip Ogore. So they were expecting an Irish or a Scottish person. Then they had an Italian, so they had to adjust to that.

• 3:07Barry Ritholtz?

  That's very, that's very funny. So, so let's roll a little back before Hong Kong. You get your Masters of Science in Economics, summa cum laude, from, is that Bocconi or University in Milan? Was markets and investment banking always the career plan?

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Absolutely not. The plan, well, not that I really had any plans back then, but my passion was and still is history. So my idea was I was gonna, I grew up in rural Tuscany, and I'm a byproduct of the Italian state education. So you have, you take your high school exam at the age of 19, and then you apply to university. So in the three months between finishing high school and deciding where you go to university, I thought I was gonna go and study history in Florence. But my dad, who has been a central figure in my life, suggested to me, why don't you

• 4:09Speaker 04

  apply to Bocconi University? I didn't really have an idea what it was, and I only knew it was in Milan. And maybe more to please him, I took the test. And, and I went on with the rest of my holidays, summer holidays, and then I got accepted to Bocconi. And I decided to go there, but with no real plans back then.

• 4:39Barry Ritholtz?

  Well, you mentioned you were a history, thinking about going into history. You taught classical civilization in the UK? Tell us, was the academic career ever in the cards?

• 4:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, so when I, when I finished with Bocconi, I thought I was gonna do a, I graduated in economic history. And I thought I was gonna do a PhD in that, in that, in that topic. Back then, there was a rule whereby you are not allowed to move from master to PhD straight away. You need to work for a couple of years, and then you apply for the, for the PhD. And therefore, it made sense to think about, okay, you know what, I'm gonna remain in academia as I start thinking about the dissertation that I, that I will work on for my PhD. And therefore, I, for a variety of totally strange reasons, I ended up as a teacher

• 5:36Speaker 04

  in North Yorkshire in an English college, teaching Italian as a foreign language and classical civilization too. And, and then by pure chance, I stepped into the opportunity to apply to JP Morgan, and I applied to JP Morgan, and kind of, I've never left since then.

• 5:59Barry Ritholtz?

  That, that was London in 1999?

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:02Barry Ritholtz?

  So first, you, you start, did you start in markets or in asset management or banking?

• 6:09Speaker 04

  I started, that's a very good question. I started in a graduate program back then. So I joined JP Morgan pre-merger with Chase. It was a tiny, back then, global institution of around 15,000 people globally. Think about now, we have 330,000.

• 6:24Barry Ritholtz?

  Amazing.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  And we had lost the COVID AAA rating back in the middle of the 90s, and it was a bank that had, was trying to find its, its roots back. So we were not one of the five broker dealers that were the shining objects of the era. We were probably a tier two, if not tier three institution back then. And I joined in a graduate program called Internal Consulting Services. The idea was they were hiring the most diverse people with the most diverse of their backgrounds,

• 7:04Speaker 04

  hands, somebody like me, to work on a variety of different things, including the internet, which was something that was coming to be back then.

• 7:14Barry Ritholtz?

  1999 was big back then.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  So they hired me, and the idea was you would rotate in this graduate program every three months on a different, in a different part of the firm. So you learn how the firm operates, and you can decide how, you can help interjecting internet into all of this. My first rotation was in asset management. My second rotation was in CRM, client relationship management, believe it or not. And then, as, back then, literally, the world was so small, they say, okay, suddenly, they need an analyst in the Milan office to do FX sales. They look around, they say, who is the last Italian who has joined us? Wow, somebody says, there is this guy in, I've seen him around.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  So they called me up and say, okay, do you know one plus one? Kind of, that was the interview. Say, okay, you moved to Milan to do FX sales. So that's how I moved to markets, to do FX sales. And then, and then things, the merger with Chase happened, they brought me back to London, I moved to derivatives, and, and I grew up in the mark, on the market side of the business.

• 8:21Barry Ritholtz?

  So London to Milan, and then what brought you to Hong Kong in 2013?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  In 2013, that's another interesting story. So we need to wind the clock back. It's 2012. I'm in discussion, I've been running Southern Europe for quite some time with, with, with a friend who was my co-head back then. And the opportunity to move to New York started to develop. So I discuss with my wife, who back then was working at Bank of England, whether she can be seconded to, to the Fed, and so on and so forth. So the conversations start happening as, okay, you know what, after 12 years or 13

• 9:10Speaker 04

  years at the firm in London, we're gonna move to New York. And, and then suddenly, May 2012, the London Whale happened, and the decision was, say, forget about it, you stay put. Back then, my wife said to me, please, please, I know that Asia is not on your cards, you want to move to New York, but if there is ever the opportunity to move to Asia, please promise me that you will consider it. And as every Italian man do, of course, darling, absolutely. So roughly a year later, I get a call, and from my boss then, says, okay, Daniel Pinto

• 9:51Speaker 04

  was our, the CEO of the CEB back then, wants to see you tomorrow to discuss about an opportunity to move to Hong Kong.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Don't don't sit on it thinking about too much. There is an external law, uh, there's they're considering somebody externally to so make up your mind pretty quickly. So as as you do in those circumstances, an Italian man, I what I did, I sent a text to my wife and the text was something along the lines, darling, maybe tonight after dinner, we should have a conversation because there is an option to move to Asia, but it's highly unlikely, I'm not so sure. She replied five minutes later, tell them that we are going. So the following morning, when I went to interview with the boss, it's kind of say, that's fine, whatever, then yeah, we're going. So literally I moved to Hong Kong. I'd never been to Hong Kong in my life.

• 10:41Barry Ritholtz?

  Wow.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  And I'd never been to Asia in my life, but the family was happy or so it was a family adventure, so we took it um like that. So literally the further east I'd been was India, but I'd never been to Asia when I moved there.

• 11:00Barry Ritholtz?

  Why was your wife so enthusiastic about Hong Kong and Asia? Had she been before?

• 11:04Speaker 04

  She had traveled around Asia definitely already. She had been to Japan and other parts of of the region.

• 11:11Barry Ritholtz?

  Japan and Hong Kong, very different.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Very different. And she want, she said, it's it's the right time with, we were both late thirties, the girls were still young, life is about the journey. Um, and therefore it was an, it was the right thing to do. Interestingly enough, from a career standpoint, was a totally non-traditional choice. And everyone was saying to me, you're gonna come back in a body bag. Or there was this acronym, FIF, failed in London, try Hong Kong.

• 11:48Barry Ritholtz?

  Oh my god.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Because there was a little bit idea back then that if you were not good enough to operate in Europe, they used to ship you to to Asia back from the colonial days.

• 12:00Barry Ritholtz?

  I was gonna say, that might have been true fifty years ago, but in the nineties and two thousands.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Well, still there was that view. So, but we went there and we loved it. We absolutely loved the Hong Kong to the point that we spent twelve years there.

• 12:15Barry Ritholtz?

  Wow. Uh, so, so obviously there's a bit of culture shock, but I'm really interested in what was it like being an Italian who worked in London, now going to an entirely different culture, different way they do business?

• 12:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:33Barry Ritholtz?

  How, how challenging was that transition?

• 12:35Speaker 04

  It was, it was interesting in the sense that I I thought they knew diversity because back then I was running Southern Europe, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, which although common, there are commonalities from a cultural standpoint, there are different way of doing business. And I know that for us, an Italian and a Spaniard are not the same things, the same thing, but largely the reality is that we are, we have a lot in common culturally. So you move to Hong Kong and you run a region of sixteen, sixteen, seventeen countries that is truly, truly diverse.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  And the best definition that I got of Asia was is a conglomerate of countries that happens to share the same time zone.

• 13:23Barry Ritholtz?

  But that's it.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  And even that definition is wrong, because if you think about Wellington in New Zealand and Mumbai in India, seven and a half hours.

• 13:32Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  So it's wider than the US. So they have really nothing in common. So you spend a lot of time trying to understand how the business operates around you. And and there is no way that you manage to do it unless you put the the experience, you put the years. So after twelve years, I feel I am comfortable in understanding how Asia operates, but it took me truly, truly a long time.

• 14:02Barry Ritholtz?

  So, so I was gonna ask, you say how Asia operates, but sixteen different countries, different regulations, different ways of doing business, different cultures, different languages?

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So let me give you an example. You go to Japan, you, it's not so important what is said in the meeting, but what is not said in the meeting, how it is and and the concept of face and how things operate. You go to Australia at the opposite end of the region, and it's very much in your face. They tell you very clearly what they think of you and and so on and so forth. And then you have between these two extremes, you have every shape and and and and and things. So it takes time, but it's fascinating. And I loved the getting to know the culture, getting to know the history, getting to know

• 14:55Speaker 04

  uh quote unquote, the biases, getting to know the opportunities. And if you think about it, um, and this is probably not well known, but by most likely by the end of this decade, fifty percent of the global GDP will be housed in Asia Pacific. And the second, third and fourth largest countries from a GDP standpoint will be Asians.

• 15:18Barry Ritholtz?

  China, Japan, Korea, is that the?

• 15:21Speaker 04

  No, China, India, Japan, most likely.

• 15:23Barry Ritholtz?

  South Korea doesn't make the top, top four?

• 15:26Speaker 04

  South Korea doesn't make the top four.

• 15:28Barry Ritholtz?

  Hmm, really, really interesting. To say nothing of Taiwan, and then obviously Vietnam and other countries are much smaller.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Or Australia, uh, which is a continent in itself with all the peculiarities. So it is, it is a remarkable, interesting region that is not well understood, both from an opportunity standpoint and the challenges standpoint. And it's interesting, in Chinese, the sign for opportunity and challenge is the same.

• 15:58Barry Ritholtz?

  Hmm, really, really interesting. English, the universal language over there or was, so when you're, uh, when you're in, uh, obviously Australia and New Zealand is is gonna be easy, but when you're in China or, or easier language wise, uh, two people separated by a common language is the old joke about America and the UK. But what was it like trying to communicate in places like, you know, Thailand or Vietnam or the Philippines or Malaysia?

• 16:29Speaker 04

  No, so in English is, in Southeast Asia, English is more widely used for historical reasons. Think about Singapore, Thailand and and some of the other locations.

• 16:44Barry Ritholtz?

  Colonialism, sure, of course.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Malaysia and so on and so forth. In North Asia, it is not as widely used and therefore you need to learn how to communicate through um to translations or the whole ritual that there is at times related to the translation. And at times in, especially in the mainland in China, even in meetings where your um audience will speak English, the meeting will be held in Chinese with the translation. So there is a whole understanding on how you operate in those countries that that is that is complicated.

• 17:25Barry Ritholtz?

  So you've said that the corporate outlook has remained very resilient despite, it seems like an endless run of geopolitical uncertainty, we've had tariffs, we've had wars, we've had um inflation. Uh, what are people in various regions doing to cope with this and and what underlines this ongoing resiliency?

• 17:51Speaker 04

  So the resilience is probably one of the biggest surprising factors of of twenty twenty six. If you think about what has been put through the global economy in the last couple of years, the global economy has been exceptionally, exceptionally resilient. This is through of of the world. Then depending on where you are around the world, clients are focused or regulators or governments are focused on on on on different topics. So if you start, for instance, with the US, clearly the economy is doing fantastically well.

• 18:35Speaker 04

  Um, and there is a sense of how can we continue to to dream about outcomes that were not even possible a few years back and how we can participate in this incredible engine of growth at this super resilient economy. There are some concerns around inflation every now and then, you hear people talking about it, but generically, and this tells a lot about the cultural attitudes store of different places in the world. Here there is a sense of optimism that is clearly, clearly palpable. You move to Europe. And the environment is resilient.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  Europe is doing to a certain extent better than at times we give it credit for. But it is preparing for a heavy electoral cycle that will come next year. Italy will go to election. The parliament will come to an end next year. So will do France. And the UK most likely will have a new prime minister after the summer. So there is already, as you go around Europe, a sense of we are beginning the electoral cycle. And there is concerns around inflation in Europe spilled over from the Iran crisis and how would that prompt the ECB, which has already high rates?

• 19:59Speaker 04

  And how would that shape the European economy? There is a war on the eastern border with Russia, between Ukraine and Russia, that is impacting the rest of the region. It's shaping the way leaders and business leaders are thinking about the future. And there is, to a certain extent, a sense of admiration looking towards the US and the sense of, is there more that can be done to make Europe like the US? Then you go to the Middle East. Clearly, the Middle East is still recovering from what's going on, but that part of the world is for sure the winner in a global south narrative for a variety of different reasons.

• 20:44Barry Ritholtz?

  The Middle East is going to be a winner.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  It will remain a winner of the global south narrative for a variety of different reasons and notwithstanding the geopolitical headwinds. And you can see the investments that are still going there and they will keep on going there. There is an infrastructural shift in the way the Middle East thinks, also in building infrastructure that is fundamental. Then you go to Africa, which is a supremely important continent for a variety of different reasons. Very, probably the most extreme in terms of dealing with countries in which we are not really used to. We have presence, a large presence in South Africa, in Nigeria, Kodawara, and Kenya.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  And there you see importance of critical minerals, the importance of urbanization, the demographics that are exceptional in favor of that part of the world. So while for the past decade and this decade, Asia has been a fundamental part of the global economic landscape, we need to start thinking that after the Middle East, Africa will become the next big thing. And then you move to Asia. Asia, to a certain extent, is not up and coming. It's already arrived. I already mentioned second, third, and fourth largest economy in the world. And there it will be a matter of dealing, to a certain extent, with the geopolitical

• 22:15Speaker 04

  winds. Sometimes they blow in a direction, sometimes they blow in a different direction. The strategic angle of that part of the world, there is a narrative out there that globalization is finished. I beg to disagree.

• 22:29Barry Ritholtz?

  A little exaggerated?

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Because the economies are so intertwined. And if you see how much manufacturing happens in Asia, it is very difficult to reach. It doesn't mean that you should not try, but shift in supply chains takes years, if not decades. So that part of the world will remain fundamental. And there you have Japan, that is exceptionally well performing and is super interesting. You have China, that remains supremely interesting from an opportunity standpoint. And the way they are changing their own economy in that sense. You mentioned Korea.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  Think about the importance of Korea from a memory standpoint for the AI ecosystem. Then you have India, you have Southeast Asia, you have critical minerals in Australia. So different parts of the world are dealing with the current setup in different ways. And you have probably the two extremes, if I think about with Europe in the center, US and Asia, really gunning for growth, while Europe is still trying to figure out a way to grow more in this current environment.

• 23:51Barry Ritholtz?

  So we're going to talk a whole lot more about Asia in a bit, but I want to circle back to the Middle East and to Africa. When you say, I think a lot of us think of the Middle East as just a collection of petro states with sort of Israel in the middle and then whatever geopolitical turmoil surrounds that structure. It sounds like you're looking at the Middle East more as not only a changing set of infrastructure, becoming a financial center. What else is happening in the Middle East that's a huge change?

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Part of it, you mentioned it already, sure. It is becoming a more relevant financial center. For sure, the UAEs are becoming much more important from that standpoint. And you can perceive it when you go there, the degree of investments that are taking place from global players positioning themselves over there. Then there is the whole set of investments and reform to the economy of the kingdom and how that is shaping the changes of Saudi into the future. And again, it is remarkable, the changes that you see happening day to day over there.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Then you have Qatar. And there is an enormous infrastructure play taking place in that part of the world. Typical solid infrastructure, but there is also digital infrastructure that is taking place over there. Think about energy and how fundamental is energy for data centers. And therefore, that part of the world becomes super fundamental from that point of view too.

• 25:43Barry Ritholtz?

  We used to think of finance centers as New York, London, Hong Kong. Do we add Dubai to it? Is Dubai in that?

• 25:52Speaker 04

  I think you need to add Dubai and for sure Singapore too. You cannot forget Singapore. And to a certain extent, I think Tokyo still is a fundamental player, especially in the equity markets globally. Those are the ones that in my mind I would consider fundamental. And then, if you allow me, there is also Europe, continental Europe, and so there are a few centers there.

• 26:20Barry Ritholtz?

  So we're going to circle back to Europe also, but last question about this area, I have to ask about Africa. We all know about rare earths and other minerals. Africa stands out as one of the few regions who isn't going through the same sort of fertility crisis that we're seeing in the rest of the world. Is that a driver or is it something more fundamental than that?

• 26:45Speaker 04

  I think you have, what you said, demographics and urbanization are super fundamental. Then you have the richness in critical minerals. And I would add that Africa, to a certain extent, has probably been not ignored, but not on the radar screen of the Western world for too long, to the point that Africa has, the influence in Africa is heavy from Russia, by Russia and China. So I think it's in our interest to make sure that the Western world understands Africa and operates over there for a variety of different reasons.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Africa is the southern border of the European Union and it is fundamental. And it is not well understood, for instance, how at times Russia does not only create problems for Europe from an eastern border standpoint. It creates problem to Europe from a southern border standpoint by operating in some of the Saharan Africa, African countries and pushing immigrants towards the shores of Europe.

• 27:56Barry Ritholtz?

  Which has been a problem in Europe. It led to Brexit. It's a problem here in the United States. Whereas I should say it's an issue, not so much a problem.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Starting from the assumption that Europe has a natality on a demographic issue. And therefore, we need to figure out a way to.

• 28:14Barry Ritholtz?

  Increase population or?

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Or accept that Europe needs a certain degree of immigration. How to do that? It is not well understood.

• 28:30Barry Ritholtz?

  It seems to be a function of wealth that when a country hits a certain per capita income, people have options and they tend to have less children. Is anything going to change that or is that just the way it is?

• 28:44Speaker 04

  I think some components of it, there is also, I don't think it's only wealth, it's also cultural. If I look at Italy, which is a wealthy country in itself, although relatively small if you think about it, less than 60 million people live in Italy. Italy has been in a demographic crisis now for 40 years. And at the current pace, there will be no more Italians in just over a century.

• 29:20Barry Ritholtz?

  Wow.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  And Italy is also losing a lot of talent. Every year, between 115 to 100,000 young Italians leave the country to go and work somewhere else. So there is a lot of it that is cultural too.

• 29:35Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Filippo Gori, co-head of global banking at JP Morgan, talking about the growth of JP Morgan into a powerhouse. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

• 30:02Speaker 00

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• 32:25Barry Ritholtz?

  I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest today is Filippo Gori. He's co-head of Global Banking at JP Morgan, having joined the firm in London in 1999. He has since relocated through Hong Kong to New York. So you've had really such a unique perspective. You've led businesses in Asia-Pacific, in emerging markets, in London, and now in New York. Do you have to adapt your leadership style or your strategy when you move from one region to another?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Absolutely. It's part of the exercise of growing into the job. One of the things I've learned early on in my career, you cannot have the same leadership style with every colleague. That was particularly true in Asia, where if you use the same tone of approach to a Japanese colleague or an Australian colleague, for sure, you get it wrong in one of the two cases. So you need to adjust how you react to your colleagues and your clients, and you adjust your communication, your delivery, what's important, how you deliver the importance of certain things, and so on and so forth.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  I'm still trying to figure out the US, full disclaimer.

• 33:49Barry Ritholtz?

  Well, I'm curious. I'm going to assume New York is more like Australia than Japan.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 33:55Barry Ritholtz?

  But I would also imagine a lot of differences from London.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  Absolutely. London is very much understated, and there is a way in which you say something but without really saying it outright.

• 34:10Barry Ritholtz?

  And New York is pretty much the opposite, huh?

• 34:13Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 34:14Barry Ritholtz?

  No mincing words.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Yes. So it's been interesting so far.

• 34:19Barry Ritholtz?

  I can imagine. So your charge is Global Banking.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:24Barry Ritholtz?

  And when I think of that department, that's everything from investment banking to corporate services to commercial banking. How do you get all those lines of businesses to collaborate as opposed to compete? It seems like all the horses are pulling in different directions.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  It's actually the other way around. So it's three. Global Banking is three lines of business. Corporate banking, sorry, commercial banking, corporate banking, and investment banking. They have been put together under this global banking umbrella that spans 46 countries, around 200 major locations around the world, and let's call it around 70,000 clients, give or take. And the idea is you cover all the wholesale banking businesses under one umbrella. So from every corporate that makes at least $20 million of revenues and above, less than $20 million is called business services, business banking, and it belongs to Chase.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  So you're still using the branches. The moment you qualify, let's say, from a revenue standpoint or a size of business standpoint to the wholesale part of the firm, so you become part of JP Morgan, then the whole client continuum is covered by the same management team, the same group of leaders, with the same rules, the same capital allocation, and so on and so forth. So it is becoming particularly important, especially in this day and age, think about the innovation economy, whereby a corporate or a startup graduates to become a multi-billion dollar corporation supremely fast nowadays.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  In the past, it could take 20 years, 30 years for a corporate to grow through the various stages of life. Here, it's kind of from cradle to infinite at the speed of light. So it is important that the transition and the support happens within an homogeneous management and the same way of looking at the clients.

• 36:36Barry Ritholtz?

  So JP Morgan emphasizes technology investment and the importance of artificial intelligence.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 36:44Barry Ritholtz?

  What parts of banking is AI changing? What is very much ahead of the curve? And what do you think are the areas that are most ripe for disruption?

• 36:55Speaker 04

  So it is very difficult to assess whether you are ahead of the curve or ahead of the pack or whether you're just doing what everyone else is doing. Because things are changing so rapidly that I would not dare to say, oh, we are ahead of the curve. We are investing is a giant leap of mankind in terms of revolution that is happening under our eyes. There is clearly efficiency that can be achieved through the use of AI processes and procedure and tools so that you can provide better client service or better customer service while being more efficient, which means that you can probably cover more clients.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  And our ambition is to cover more clients, let's say, to reach 100,000 clients by 2030 in a more efficient way. So technology and quote-unquote AI are helping us scaling the business through much faster than before and ideally without having to increase the costs.

• 38:03Barry Ritholtz?

  Really interesting. I think we all are aware that AI is changing everything so rapidly. Where do you think human judgment is irreplaceable? What part of the business is, hey, we could become more efficient with AI, but the ultimate decision-maker has to be a person?

• 38:24Speaker 04

  It's fundamental that a human is in the loop. Because for a variety of different reasons, ultimately, I will simplify it this way. You are dealing with clients. Clients are human beings. And at the end of the day, I think a client wants to here, wants to be dealt with through a client, through a person. So the human in the loop remains fundamental. It can help speed up some processes, can help achieve better scale, but the individual remains fundamental in our business.

• 39:01Barry Ritholtz?

  So when you joined JP Morgan back in 1999, you mentioned was not in the top of the league tables. What was the reason that it managed to break into the top tier? Was it this emphasis on technology investment? Was it a strategy? What led the firm to becoming, you know, a global top-tier bank?

• 39:27Speaker 04

  Okay, so I think there is an obvious answer, and then there is a less obvious one. I would say the obvious answer is JP Morgan Chase went through a series of merger, including acquiring Bank One in 2004 that brought to the firm a certain Jamie Dimon, who changed the way in which the firm operated. Think back then. The JP Morgan Chase-Bank One merger was still a conglomerate of institutions that had merged together over the previous 20 years, and many of those mergers have not actually been fully executed. You had Manny Hany merging into Chemical, merging into Chase.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  You have First Chicago merging into Bank One. You had JP Morgan and a variety of different things. I forgot Kazanov. There was Kazanov in the middle, too. So you integrate. The integration of all of this was a fundamental piece that made us who we are today. And Jamie was the leader and the individual that could see, could have the vision of how to do this and create the fortress balance sheet and everything else that came with that that made us who we are today. I think the less obvious answer is we went through 2007, and I hope I'm not being controversial here,

• 40:57Speaker 04

  but probably we were still busy with the merger and everything else that we didn't have time to focus on some of the other stuff that then caused the problems. And Jamie's view was very clear.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  We do things that make sense for the customers. We do things that make sense for the firm. Fortress balance sheet and so on and so forth.

• 41:24Barry Ritholtz?

  If I recall correctly, I want to say it was around oh five. There was a minor little subprime issue with J P Morgan. Long before it was a problem everywhere else. And if I remember correctly, Diamond said, get all that crap off our balance sheet. We we don't play in that sort of speculative waters. So when the real trouble hit in oh eight, oh nine. They had a very clean balance sheet. That so so that's that's a factor.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  And then since then, investing, investing, investing, investing and investing going through the cycle. You invest, you keep growing. You are growing not because you like it per se, but you're growing because you can provide best better customer service. You work towards the betterment of the communities where you operate. And you keep investing, investing absolutely through the cycle. So when I arrived in Asia in 2013, the firm-wide revenues that we made in that year are less than what we made in this quarter, in in the first quarter of this year. What has happened?

• 42:35Speaker 04

  There has definitely been the growth of Asia in the meantime, but it's been also us investing in the region across products, countries and jurisdiction. So that if you build the infrastructure, then you are there to serve the clients, the business will come.

• 42:52Barry Ritholtz?

  Interesting. What does one firm mean in practice? The the big motion towards J P Morgan, one firm. At what point are you in the middle market? When does it become a global enterprise or public markets? To explain the thinking behind this.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  So the thinking is you want to make the organization is huge. It's 330,000 people. So the idea is to make the company feel small to our clients and to a certain extent to our employees.

• 43:24Barry Ritholtz?

  In other words, you don't want scale to be a disadvantage.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Because when you have 330,000 people, maybe the objective that you associate with us is not nimble, but we try to be. Make the firm feel small to our clients, to our employees, to the communities and everything else. So we try to maintain a personal and human angle in everything we do.

• 43:50Barry Ritholtz?

  And you've now been at J P Morgan 26, almost 27 years. Kind of unusual these days, people staying with one firm.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  I'm one of the new kids on the block at the firm. There are people that have been.

• 44:02Barry Ritholtz?

  Really?

• 44:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Doug Patton, I think, is going 37. And many of the other seniors, my cohead, John Simmons, I think is just is crossing 34. And and many of the other folks around me are are in the same zip code, if not have spent more time than me.

• 44:21Barry Ritholtz?

  So what keeps you and these folks at at the firm for so long?

• 44:26Speaker 04

  I think the people and the culture. So you for me, J P Morgan becomes part of me and my family. And you stay because you like the people, you like the environment, you like the you like what you do on your day to day. But fundamentally, I think the people.

• 44:44Barry Ritholtz?

  And you mentioned 330,000 people. How big can J P Morgan Chase get? Is this going to be a half a million employer sometime soon?

• 44:55Speaker 04

  I think from a scale standpoint, we are where we need to be in terms of people. The idea is that can we use A I to grow the business without having to grow the footprint much more?

• 45:09Barry Ritholtz?

  So this is probably it for the next decade.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  I I would, I mean, I'm not Jamie, so you should ask the question to Jamie. But from a global banking standpoint, yes, I think that the headcount that we have now, we are trying to try to keep it stable for the next few years.

• 45:24Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Filippo Gori, cohead of global banking at J P Morgan, discussing the state of capital markets today. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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• 48:07Barry Ritholtz?

  I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest today is Filippo Gori. He's cohead of global banking at J P Morgan, where he's been working since 1999 in London, Hong Kong and now New York. So so we touched on this earlier about resiliency in the face of all this macro volatility. But it's not just the economy. It's been a ton of M and A and deal making. And and this this year, we've seen a lot of I P Os and and giant I P Os at that.

• 48:46Barry Ritholtz?

  Why is all this holding up so well despite all of the geopolitical turmoil we see?

• 48:54Speaker 04

  I think there is a variety of different things. To a certain extent, there was a little bit of a pipeline that I have built over the years that needed to find.

• 49:05Barry Ritholtz?

  It had slowed down post pandemic for a while.

• 49:08Speaker 04

  Exactly. So I P Os, we thought 2024, they were going to come back. Then 2025, finally, we see the return of the I P Os, which is kind of, it's good. It's a component of cyclicality. It's it's the right time for this to happen. M and A, I think there is probably an extent of what we discussed earlier on. Boards are observing the resiliency of the economy, of the global economy. They think it's the right time to make strategic decisions. They're probably getting comfortable that the cost of capital will not go much lower than where it is now. Probably there's a sense of higher for longer to a certain extent.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  And the four people are are are are getting their hands dirty in terms of dealing. And and we are just witnessing what could be from a wallet standpoint in pure investment banking, if not the best ever year, which was 2021, very close to be the best ever year in terms of volumes.

• 50:16Barry Ritholtz?

  Probably the biggest change over the past decade has been the rise of private capital, whether it's private debt, private credit, private equity. How is that changing a global bank? Do you guys look at this as competition? Or is it expanding the range of solutions you can offer to clients?

• 50:34Speaker 04

  It's it's a little bit of both. So private capital plays definitely a role in the everyday economy in the sense of after the G F C for traditional banks, certain sector in certain cases became harder to to deploy capital. And therefore, to a certain extent, there there is a a group of clients that arrive to be the beneficiary of the of the private credit because simplicity of solution, the unit ration and so on and so forth. So that has caused the growth of that sector. And we have been operating, we've been doing.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  Loans, a private loan is just another form for a loan for two hundred and twenty five years. So we launched our own initiative, our loan private credit business back in many, a few years back, but we increased it last year officially around February last year to fifty billion dollars of our own capital allocated to it. And the idea is when you go through a client, you try to offer an agnostic set of solution. So we can do anything you want, from the traditional private lending solutions to more innovative solutions, to the traditional syndicated financing facilities and so on and so forth.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  So the idea is to offer the clients all the potential tools in the J P Morgan Armory.

• 52:09Barry Ritholtz?

  So these private transactions have been rising really since after the financial crisis. What does this tell us about public market, M and A? How do you look at the difference between all these public companies, or I should say these few public companies, and these rising number of private companies?

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Look, it's a trend that has been going on since the nineteen eighties. The number of public companies in the U S or around the world has reduced substantially since then. There is a couple of, there's various reasons for that. Part of it could be the cost associated with being a public company. Part of it could be the fact that some of the companies have grown in size and have acquired some of the smaller companies and so on and so forth. I am absolutely in favor of unhealthy public market because it's one of the greatest strengths of the United States. The fact that there is a market out there where you can raise capital, you can finance

• 53:16Speaker 04

  yourself, there is a discovery price mechanism, which I enormously love. If I come, if I look at other countries where I've operated and the size of those public markets are smaller, you see that those economies struggle to gain scale, struggle to gain opportunity. So for me, the public market in the U S is a treasure that must be cherished.

• 53:44Barry Ritholtz?

  Fair enough. We've seen a number of mega deals happen over the past couple of quarters, including the giant SpaceX IPO. We have Anthropic coming up, there's a bunch of other A I IPOs coming up, but there's also been a lot of merger activity in that space. What's driving these big transformative deals?

• 54:10Speaker 04

  As I mentioned, to a certain extent, is perception of stability of the cost of financing, opportunity for the regulation that will make some transaction possible, and I think the backlog that has been created over the years. But in general, the boards are very sanguine around, this is the right moment, let's take the opportunity, let's transform. Many boards are also looking at what's happening with A I and thinking that, okay, it's a Copernican revolution that is happening, therefore I better be ahead of it and take

• 54:53Speaker 04

  the opportunity with this and so on and so forth.

• 54:56Barry Ritholtz?

  Otherwise, you're behind. So your charge is global, you get to look around the world at opportunities. I'm curious, how do you measure where opportunities are greatest? Is there specific data points you're looking at, like volume of IPOs or mergers? How do you look at the world region by region and figure out, hey, we need to spend more time and capital in region X?

• 55:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. So what we do is, this is a constant process whereby we challenge ourselves consistently as C I B, Commercial Investment Bank Management Team, and we say, okay, we operate in forty six countries. Should we operate in five more? And if so, okay, which one do we look at? What is the opportunity? Why does strategically make sense to invest more in that country versus another? Or where, why don't we invest more in an existing country and so on and so forth? Bearing in mind that one of the fundamental ways in which we look at the world is the following. We have never left a single country since we entered it.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  So being in a country, it is not the same thing as owning a share or a stock. You don't like it anymore, you sell it. Once you make the decision to enter a country, you are there forever because you are there for the employees, for the clients, for the communities, the regulators and so on and so forth. So we think about that very carefully. We look at some macro trends. We try to understand where the world is going, where the opportunities are coming. We ask our clients, some of our clients are some of the largest companies in the world, and you try to see, they think how they operate. Can we support them everywhere around the world where they operate or not?

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Or similarly, there are companies that are developing in some of these countries, they want to go global, can we support them in that case? So that's kind of the exercise that we do, and we look at it collectively as C I B management team across the various products, whether it's banking, whether it's payments, whether it's markets, whether it's security services, and we collectively make a decision on where to invest. And we do it on a quasi-regular basis, we discuss this.

• 57:16Barry Ritholtz?

  So I want to talk about the E U and Asia, but before we dive into those areas, any other areas of the world that are presenting a great number of opportunities?

• 57:29Speaker 04

  Well, Latin America for sure.

• 57:31Barry Ritholtz?

  Latin America.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, we have not discussed about it, but if you think about Brazil and Mexico, for sure, are super interesting markets, super important for us, and they are at the doorsteps of the United States. So it is fundamental that we have a critical presence over there and that we keep on growing it.

• 57:52Barry Ritholtz?

  And you mentioned earlier, you think the European area is almost overlooked, that they're on the verge of the next phase of growth. What's going on in Europe?

• 58:06Speaker 04

  So what I meant is, there is generically a degree of pessimism around Europe. The pessimism comes from the fact that the growth of the European Union in terms of G D P growth here on here has been anemic for now, call it twenty five years. It grows zero point five, zero point seven, maybe one percent, and we consider ourselves lucky. And that has been one of the challenges. Because growth brings jobs, growth brings wealth, growth brings all the things that I see here in the United States. At the same time, as a European, I always want to remind folks that Europe, at times

• 58:49Speaker 04

  is not widely understood, the European Union concept was not born out of idea of an economic union. It was born out of the dream of the founding fathers of the European Union not to have war on European soil ever again.

• 59:08Barry Ritholtz?

  From a securities perspective, not economic perspective.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  It was actually, they were visionaries. If you think about the Gasperi in Italy, Adenauer in Germany, and some of the others, the Second World War had just finished, the Carbon and Steel Treaties of the beginning of the nineteen fifties. The idea was, if we are intertwined from an economic standpoint, it's less likely that we'll go to war together.

• 59:36Barry Ritholtz?

  And it's mostly worked.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  And this worked, and the next thing was the Treaty of Rome, and that was the beginning of the European Union as we know, and then Maastricht and everything else. So I just want to remind people that Europe does exist, the European Union exists, first and foremost, not to have war on European soil. And we need to grow, don't get me wrong, less bureaucracy, more growth, but we should not lose the sight of what the founding fathers gave us.

• 1:00:04Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's talk about, the perspective from the United States about Europe is, lovely place to visit, but a challenging place to do business, great place to live, because much of Europe, there's guaranteed healthcare, there's guaranteed paid education, paid retirement, but it makes it expensive to do business there, it's very hard to fire anybody.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Barry Ritholtz?

  Is that American bias accurate, or what is that's capping growth there?

• 1:00:41Speaker 04

  The criticism that is laid at the steps of the European Union is perfectly valid. All of the things you just mentioned and more, I can, the list is forever long. What I'm trying to say, though, is something different. You can't expect, this year we're celebrating two hundred and fifty, this week, two hundred and fifty years of the United States of America. Europe has over three thousand years of history, okay? So you can't expect the three thousand years of history get wiped out and everyone, they all row in the same direction.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  We have come from having had war every ten years to not having had war since nineteen forty five. We have strengthened that. We have culturally enormous social nets. And my concern is if the economies don't grow and we have a problem of demography, in the future, we will not be able to afford those social nets. So things have to happen in Europe. I'm perfectly fine, and former President Draghi, in his white paper, told us what we have to do. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to go and implement what he told us. Will we do it? Yes. Will it take us a long time? Absolutely yes, because it's Europe, but...

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  Europe exists for a variety of different reasons and we should never forget that.

• 1:02:15Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. So we've talked about regions. Let's talk about sectors. AI and technology, obviously a big sector. Manufacturing and industrial reshoring is going on, infrastructure changes, financial services, energy and renewable energy, healthcare, defense. So many different areas seem to be going through massive transitions. What do you do with such a target-rich environment like that? How do you decide where to focus? Or do the, does the market, do the companies reveal themselves and it becomes self-evident?

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  So we had, and we have an accounting plan year by year by sector. By sector, by region, where we looked at the various sectors. And while you mentioned all of them in one go, not every sector is hot at the same time. So the focus is within all the sectors in every country and by sub-sector. Do we have the 28 sub-sectors? Do we have enough bankers? Do we have enough resources allocated? Can we do more? Should we do more? What's the, if we have to prioritize, how do we prioritize those asks? And that's what we do. So there is an enormous amount of account planning, which if you do well,

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  then the results will come.

• 1:03:44Barry Ritholtz?

  And you know, the Draghi White Paper sort of veers into government-driven industrial policy. Obviously, that's big in China. It was big in the United States up until about 40 years ago. It seems like it's coming back. How do you think about government involvement in these private company decision-making and growth?

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  So Europe does have already a larger component of the economy that are state-owned or partially state-owned companies. So from a European standpoint in itself, it's not so rare to have concepts like that. Concepts like that. The idea to me is more, can we have pan-European champions? We have done that in the automotive sectors. We have done that in the airline industry. We have not really done that in other sectors. So Europe has freedom of movement for people, for capital.

• 1:04:54Speaker 04

  But there is no real freedom of movement for services yet. So that's one of the things that we should try to implement. And therefore facilitate the growth of European champions in the various sectors that some of them you mentioned, so that we will be able to compete better with the US on one side or with Asia on the other side. Europe suffers, not suffers, Europe has still a little bit of a bias and then small is good.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  Because more protects the consumer.

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  From an economic standpoint, thinking about oligopolies and everything else. I think it's a stage where right now size matters. And therefore, we should facilitate the creation of larger European companies.

• 1:05:51Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  Pan-europeans, not country-specific, but pan-europeans.

• 1:05:57Barry Ritholtz?

  Like Airbus? That's the model?

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  Airbus could be one. There are plenty of other examples.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  In consumer, there are a few.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  In cars, Stellantis is an example. We should do that in financial services, for instance. I think it's fundamental that Europe does have larger financial services player and so on and so forth.

• 1:06:26Barry Ritholtz?

  What's fascinating to me about Europe, so I appreciate what you're saying about smaller companies need to get big. In the US, where we used to enforce antitrust rules but kind of stopped in the 1980s, not only have these companies gotten big, but they've become mega-companies that dominate their space. To be clear, that's very unlikely to happen in Europe, right? You want them large and global and competitive, but not necessarily, at least if I'm going by...

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  Yes, that would be a step too far from a European Union. Fundamental way in which the Europeans look at the business. But larger companies, absolutely.

• 1:07:10Barry Ritholtz?

  Right. I was curious because they seem to be very, I don't want to say hostile, but very specific about regulating the Facebooks and Apples and Googles of the world versus smaller companies that are trying to get a toehold in the global marketplace. All right. So before I get to my favorite question, one last question. What do you think most people in investment banking and/or commercial or corporate banking aren't thinking about, but really should be? What's the important topic that's not getting enough focus?

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I think there is a ton of focus on AI, geopolitics, inflation and other things. And I think we don't spend enough time in focusing more on the people and how we prepare the people for the future that is coming.

• 1:08:14Barry Ritholtz?

  So is that education? Is that corporate training or everything?

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  It's a little bit of everything. How do we explain to folks how we see the future? So we should do more from that point of view and prepare them for a future that is coming. But that starts with academia and how we recruit people and so on and so forth.

• 1:08:37Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's jump to our favorite questions we ask all our guests. Starting with, tell us about your early mentors who helped shape your career.

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  So I had been lacking to have many people looking after me over the years. I've been lucky to have worked for the same individual for 19 years. I joined, I was his analyst, I was the associate on the desk. And 19 years later, we were two senior managing directors, but I was still working for him. But there are a couple that I think, three that I would like to mention. One is Matteo Del Fante. When I joined in London, he was the most senior Italian at the firm and is now the CEO of Poste in Italy, is a friend, somebody who has looked after me and helped me, guided me. He's from Tuscany too.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  And then probably Mark Batriciani, who retired in 2024 and was running the markets business. And Carlos Hernandez, who was running banking before me. And I still remember when he was, when I was in Hong Kong during COVID, he used to call me twice a week, religiously, every week without booking a meeting. Just call him and say, how is everything going? All good? Tell me what's happening? So that human element was really, really, really, really important for me.

• 1:09:58Barry Ritholtz?

  Let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites? What are you reading currently?

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  So I'm reading, I'm an avid reader, so I read lots of stuff, nothing financial-driven.

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  Right now, I'm reading three Italian books at the same time, which is a little bit complicated. But one book that I read that recently, I like novels, I like fiction. But the one book that I read quite recently that impressed me was a book called The Wealth of Shadows.

• 1:10:34Barry Ritholtz?

  Wealth of Shadows?

• 1:10:35Speaker 04

  The Shadows of Wealth, sorry, by Graham Moore. And it explains in a fictionalized way how the US during the Second World War used its economy to cripple the German economy. And you have individuals like Keynes playing to this and how ultimately this became bread on woods and the role of how the dollar overtook the pound and so on and so forth. That was fascinating. And I read another book called A Girl Called Samson, that it's about the Revolutionary War here in the United States. And a woman that, it's a real history, a woman that fought

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  in the continent, I think you call it Continental Army under Washington, dressed as a boy.

• 1:11:27Barry Ritholtz?

  Oh, really? Very, very interesting.

• 1:11:29Speaker 04

  Those are two. But I also use a lot Audible. So audiobooks have been lately my saving grace because I can listen to them while I'm traveling on planes.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  So I don't need to carry the books, the physical books with me. It's been, I'm a heavy user of Audible.

• 1:11:51Barry Ritholtz?

  Besides Audible, what else are you streaming? What are you either watching or listening to?

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  Watching, apart from your program, obviously. My wife and I loved Offlander on Netflix, which has just streamed the last season or I think it was starts here in the US.

• 1:12:12Speaker 04

  Then Drops of God about wine. It's a fascinating series and a few others.

• 1:12:21Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh, really, really interesting. We watched Offlander until the previous season, kind of like, all right, we're good right here. When they were stuck in the United States, but it was a really fascinating show. Final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college graduate interested in a career in either corporate, commercial or investment banking?

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. So take your time, understand the environment in which you operate. Try to focus on the bigger important things. Don't be too focused on just on the product, but understand the environment in which you operate. Remember, it's a people business, both internally and externally. So make sure that you invest in creating human relationships.

• 1:13:12Barry Ritholtz?

  And our final question, what do you know about the world of investment banking today might have been useful back in 1999 when you were first getting started?

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  It's a marathon, it's not a sprint, so never

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  never take things for granted and above all, don't make personal sacrifices that you're going to regret later. At times, I've been not as present as I would have liked it with my family.

• 1:13:47Barry Ritholtz?

  Interesting enough. Filippo, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Filippo Gori. He is co-head of Global Banking at JP Morgan. If you enjoy this conversation, well, check out any of the 650 we've done over the past 12 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I would be remiss, fun, and thank the crack team that helps us put these conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. I'm Barry

• 1:14:31Barry Ritholtz?

  Ritholtz. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

• 1:14:51Speaker 09

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