We need to get a historical perspective of where we are. And there is no one better to do that than Greg Fleming chief
executive officer of Rockefeller Capital Management who spent decades running Merrill running Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
and Investment Management. You have perspective running the big wealth management shops of Wall Street throughout history. So
what is the best analog from a historical perspective. For the moment that we're in you know this it's interesting. If you're
looking at analog I'd pull back pieces from different times. So we're still in the time that we were in in the last 10 or 15
years. We're technologies driven deflation and prices coming down and productivity improvement. So that's still here. At the
same time we've got vestiges of the 70s and early 80s in terms of pressure on the energy side of the equation that we really
haven't seen to that degree since then. And a real inflation numbers this week that came in hotter than we've seen literally
in decades. So you have a combination of historical times coming together to create the unique time that is 20 20 to this moment
was a pivot point this week when we got that nine point one percent inflation print when we got some of the data out of
banks showing that they were suspending share buybacks despite the fact that it might be mandated by the Federal Reserve. How
much do you view the markets as perhaps being overly pessimistic rather than not appreciating the difference of now versus a
decade ago. You know I think that markets are a tug of war. Every time there's data out I mean today people said retail
sales were better than they expected in June Michigan sentiment was better. So they start to you know markets go up. It's like
wait wait a minute. Maybe we'll get through the recession risk and be able to bring inflation down. See this tug of war on the
data constantly. But the reality is the biggest player here and you all know this because we've seen this historically. The Fed
is focused and needs to stay focused on inflation. And they will. They have got to change. The expectations are getting
embedded from an inflation standpoint. Greg in the time we've got left as Lisa mentioned we want to go bigger and broader with
you. And I don't think you've ever gotten the credit for literally inventing modern wealth management. How does it feel
like to see every single firm out there do a press release that says we want to be like Greg Fleming we need to go to Asia
together. High net worth assets. Gorman's doing 28 percent growth at the shop. You invented it. Morgan Stanley every Credit
Suisse has announced UBS of course leading the way. But Credit Suisse wants to be Greg Fleming. What do you say about an
industry where everybody wants to get in. Well first of all what that means is that the business is a good business to be in. And
you know that time the characteristics of wealth management fee based advice counsel to clients recurring earnings. So it has
characteristics financial characteristics that make a lot of people want to be in the business. But I say and this is what
we're doing at Rockefeller Capital Management is defined the way that we're going to operate with competitive advantage. And what
we're trying to do for clients is provide them advice across the full range of their needs through private advisors that are
experienced on the investment side open architecture an investment platform where you bring in the best of outside
managers. We've put together and we marry that also with family office services. We'll take care of bills. We'll help you with
taxes. If you take care of the full needs of clients you can offer it's something that not everybody rise in the marketplace
offers. So we've tried to redefine what it means with high net worth and ultra high net worth clients. You and I have never
seen a bond market like this. The Lehman Barclays the Bloomberg total return aggregate negative 12 percent. Some of the
corporate high grade stuff has negative 18 percent. How does quiet money manage with bond prices down 12 percent. Well you
know the reality is there are a number of things including on the macro side and we'll come back to this. But on the macro
side you have virtually full employment and everybody worried about recession. So there's things Tom that even we haven't
seen. Back to Lisa's question. What are the historical analogues. There really aren't some for number of the things
we're dealing with here in terms of the bond market to have the equity market off as much as it's been this year and fixed
income off to the degree that you describe. That's something we haven't seen in history as well. So the quiet money was very
careful about fixed income when rates were virtually zero across the spectrum. How much have we fully appreciated the absence of
Japanese investors the absence of certain Chinese money the absence of some of the international flows amid domestic crises
throughout the world. Well I think that you know that's one of the things Lisa that's that's happening both on the financial
flow side and even on the trade side which is you know the internationalization and the globalization retrenching for
really the first time in my career and the 90s and in the first part of the. Three people were focused on following those
financial flows across markets from a trade standpoint from an investment standpoint.
All the major financial firms in the US we're trying to build major presence in those markets. And now you have a retrenchment
back to home markets on both a financial basis to some extent as well as on trade.
This is inflationary. And it was also perhaps a headwind to true growth which raises a question of how long it will take before
60 40 works again. Well you know for different clients if you might be re
rebalancing the 60 40 in a different direction. But I think it's going to take a while for the Fed and for the
current situation to work its way out. When you have the kind of inflation numbers that you have now people are talking about
when we're gonna be back to 2 percent. The reason they're going to go after this very aggressively is it's going to take some
time to get back to 2 percent. They need to break the back of the expectation over the next six
or 12 or 18 months in order to have a hope that a 60 40 portfolio in 24 or 25 might make sense for investors. And now
folks it's time for the Wall Street question Lewis Rukeyser never would ask because this is a rude question. I'm going to
ask you because you're qualified. I want you to tell me in banking New York City banking London banking and such. The
delicacy of chairman and CEO being held by one person at the same time. This is a debate that's out there. What is the
efficacy of having a separate chairman and a separate chief executive officer. You know in theory the efficacy is is making
sure that all the different alignment of interests that are in place. What's your experience. My experience is it depends on
the institution. And I bet you've got very you've got a number of examples of very strong institutions with management you know
doing the right things across the landscape and shareholder return being where you want it to be. And then you have
situations where splitting the roles works. I think it really is. It boils down to looking at individual
cases. We have we've been astral lab one of those medieval clocks in the surveillance room where we meet every morning. And
it's trying to gauge when Credit Suisse has taken out. And the basic idea there is American banking the siren call of going
over across the Atlantic and running into European banking headaches.
Should the banks that you built and lived in. Should they be buying European Bank assets. I think Tom it's it's more going
the other way to the point Lisa we were talking about before. I think that major financial institutions but also again back to
trade. I think regionalization it's coming back and it's the first time in 25 or 30 years that that's happened. Well to that
point and just to clarify that that or is it a Paul I am wondering whether the expansion into China and in China is John
Michael Barr. It has the the different ball game of a choice on the backside of it. I'm wondering though do you expect to see
some retrenchment from financial firms Chinese arms in the face of some of the international fissures as well as the zero Covid
policies. Yeah I know about it retrenchment but much more caution in terms of the level of capital investment the
aggressiveness of the growth strategy. There's no question. In fact they say you can take it further.
You know I think you're going to see critical industry start to come back and more of a regional basis. And it's an opportunity
for the United States actually where manufacturing of precision products could take place increasingly here. And who would have
thought we would have been talking five years ago about pulling manufacturing of semiconductors of you know clean energy and
some of the. Yeah. But all of these things are inherently inflationary. These all are inherently inflation especially with
the dollar where it is especially because it is cheaper to go overseas and to do it elsewhere. How do we take that in to our
market costs. Well I don't disagree with you. I think that a lot of these things are inflationary. And this is
why I said that the Fed is going to in rhetoric and reality stay right on top of this because they recognize now that they've got
expectations out of whack that they have to pull back. They've got some macro like what you're talking about Lisa where
regionalization could create more inflationary pressure that nobody would have conceived of five years ago. Greg Fleming one
minute on a Friday evening. You executed this which was the birth of BlackRock. What a triumph for Mr. Think the way they
have done that the way they have executed not so much wealth management but almost wealth husbandry.
Did you see that coming. Have you been stunned at the success of BlackRock.
It was impossible time given the magnitude of success to see it coming. We took it public by the way in nineteen ninety nine at
fourteen dollars a share. We merged Merrill Lynch's asset manager business as you know in 2004 or five into BlackRock and
took back a 49 percent ownership stake. I'm proud of the role that I played in that we played in helping create the. Firm but
it would have been hard to conceive of a firm with eight nine 10 trillion dollars in assets under management. And that doesn't
even really reflect the dominance they've created in certain spaces.