change liveses change organizations change organization change the world vicam it's a truly a pleasure to be here with you today um I don't think I've told you this yet but for a period of time in my life I had my student loan my home mortgage my checking account my savings account and my credit card always with City so in my mind you are too big to fail you've been paying on
[Laughter] [Applause] time so we've um had a chance to interact a couple times on Capital Hill that's right um and when I was on Capitol Hill often times senators and even the White House would say what does vickram think so I thought a good place to start would be to get your view of the state of play of of the global financial markets share with us what is
top of mind for you when you think of the global economy yeah I think that's a good place to start Derek it's good to see all of you it's a pleasure to be with you uh I saw Derek first when he was in Senator McConnell's office and this was during the depths of the crisis and uh it's nice to see you again in a different time uh as well so let me uh
say that uh obviously things have come a very long way since the crisis and uh and for all of you by the way these last couple years have been a good couple years to be in school as well um but uh there is still tremendous uncertainty ahead of us uh we may have avoided the crisis but there's a lot more work that needs to be done when I look around the
world we're living in a time of tremendous uncertainty uh on an economic basis Europe is a significant issue they've bought some time it remains an issue it's not exactly clear what the path is and what the destination is for that matter and that's that is a significant uh pillar uh that we need to get through it's costing us about a percent percent
and a half in GDP here and around the world so this is a significant issue to deal with there's the US debt issue how are we going to deal with that not till after the elections uh people ask about what's going to happen in China this is a country that grew at 9 10% a year uh for a very long period of Time how is it going to grow what growth rate and can
they manage that there are uh regular issues obviously there are issues surrounding Banks but there are regulatory issues around the world and on top of that there are political issues you know this is a year uh which uh in in which there are going to be 32 significant elections around the world and 10 to 12 of them in really major
countries and these elections uh by the way are uh influenced by the fact that the world's really not at full employment today not even close uh if the world needed to get to full employment today you'd need about 200 million jobs and by the way just to put that in context over the next 10 years if the world needed to and the world does need to and could employ everybody
who would be employable the world would need another 400 million job so you're looking at a political environment that is rightly influenced by the fact that the number one job around the world is create meaningful employment and work for people uh and we've got a lot of work to do on that so we put it all together you're looking at a time of
tremendous uncertainty not only that uh you know you you live in a in a time where you get realtime results for what you're doing you know the bond markets every morning wake up and uh they tell every country what they think about their debt I mean they they tell every company you know how safe they are the stock market does exactly the same thing
talks about growth and I don't need particularly this group tell you about Twitter and everything else and you know every morning we know exactly what people think about us uh and uh so the real-time feedback is a different mechanism so whether we like it or not we're living in a time of volatility it's going to be with us for a while until we figure some of these things out
um and uh and we're all dealing with it and we're learning to deal with it and and frankly it's not that we're going to have any near-term answers to some of these uncertainties we've talked about so that's the environment we've got to learn to live with let me just say one more thing I was out um at had a major Industrial company in uh in Poria
Illinois uh last Wednesday great company it's it's the soul of America they manufacture uh tractors excavators Etc I won't say the name you can figure it out um and uh this is a company that put uh a lot of money to work almost four billion of Investments and I was talking to the management team and I say you know some days we wake up and feel really great that's exactly what we
ought to be doing you know May and possibly we haven't invested enough let's keep going and at the same time uh uh one of the senior managers said but there are days when I wake up in a cold sweat did I do exactly the right thing you know what does this mean where's the world going to but that's the kind of environment we're still are in and what
that means we may have stability we may be going the the right direction but this a lot more work to do if we want to get back to our main goal which ought to be to create the kind of jobs and the kind of opportunities for young people and people who need work and it's going to take some time so as you think about 5 10 years from now you talked about how
today there's just tremendous uncertainty tremendous volatility what will it take to get us to a place where there is that stability where there will be jobs for for all of us well look I mean I think uh uh the dean and I were talking about some of these things earlier when when he U he didn't know you were going to ask that question
question by the way but he asked me that question in a different way uh but there are some shortterm things we need to get through I we've have to get through Europe we really do and it is a it is 25% of the world economy it's significant the issue with Europe is it's not like they may grow slowly but so much of the financial system around
the world and so much of the world economy is integrally tied up with Europe that if something goes wrong Europe is too big to fail in many ways and so uh so the problem uh that you deal with is a problem where you cannot necessarily count on what this currency is going to look like so if you're a bank and and Italian company wants you to make a 10-year loan you know usually
you would say let's figure out what you're going to use the money for let's go ahead and do it uh but there is a moment of thought that goes through your mind that says how do I know I'm going to get paid back in Euro and if it's not the Euro what is it going to be could be the L and and once you start thinking about the fact that there is so
much writing on a currency Union without a fiscal Union you start thinking about boy I really need to be safe I really need to pull back I really need to be careful as to how I interact with Europe and that kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so uh whether we like it or not that's front and center and the markets are saying that it has to be addressed there are
economic solutions to what needs to be done a lot of them require a lot of political strength and it's tough given the fact there's an election in France uh you know there's going to be election in Germany next year there are lots of other elections going on and so we're going to have to watch this one but on a longer term basis I think there are two
things that are really interesting uh to me the first uh you all may or may not know know this but but I think we've made a significant dent in energy and energy availability and I know that all of us want to look at Alternatives and we do by the way we finance a lot of sustainable development alternative energy companies uh as they move forward in their Journey towards
creating different kind of energy cleaner energy safer energy but the biggest development in the world is that in the last couple of years the world collectively has found about 2.4 trillion barrels equivalent of energy new energy that's huge the world consumes about 33 billion dollars 33 billion barrels of oil every year you're talking
about 2.4 trillion new on there's a lot in America as a matter of fact if we get everything right America can become a net exporter of energy over the next 10 years there's about 200 billion barrels of that in China talk about supporting growth so you know when you look out 10 years if we can get through the European situation put it in the right place for
now you're looking at an environment where you may have the kind of availability of energy and the kind of cost structure around that that could actually spur a new cycle of growth very very important keep in mind in addition to that you add to that the emerging market growth and if we can get some of the regulatory things in the finance
area Etc ironed out there is a new cycle of infrastructure investment that needs to be made here in the US and certainly a lot in Africa and Asia and Latin America by the way Brazil needs about a trillion and a half dollars of infrastructure investment over the next 10 years that's a huge cycle you get that right that can create a lot of jobs
as well as create the kind of growth the world needs so I'd look to a newly found positive perspective on energy I'd look to the world getting together trying to figure out how to finance its infrastructure over the next 10 years I'd look to emerging market growth and the consumer there growing very well and I'd look to trade and Global Capital
flows as the four big drivers ultimately the solution out of this uncertainty has to be be growth there's no way no other way to create those jobs other than creating this growth and so I think things are coming together it's going to take a lot of political will we're going to have to get through these 32 elections find out what these uh governments and philosophies are going
to be like but there is a real possibility we could get this right on um coming together and solving these problems it's interesting to use that phrase especially during this time it it seems like especially with the banks there's a lot of criticism right the narrative is essentially Banks caused the crisis and government bailed out the bank so how do you respond to this
narrative that's almost develop becoming part of US history now that how do you respond to this criticism look I think uh um the first place to do is you got to start by acknowledging that the financial system has lost trust and credibility with people out there and there's you know it's it's it's it's as plain as night and day and that uh and
that a lot of that uh was because the financial system and it's not only banks by the way there's a huge Shadow banking system there there are lots of different aspects of Finance uh but the banking system uh uh somehow uh swerved to some extent away from serving clients and serving the real economy which is what the intent is toward serving
itself and uh and uh and you know uh it has caused a lot of hardships for a lot of people as we witness from what's Happening Here here in the US but also what from witness what's happening in in uh in Europe and I think that's an important part of the narrative and it starts with acknowledging that that's really what happened you take a look at
a company like ours well what are we doing well when I came in uh to the uh to this position and and and the Deans made it really extremely clear I do not get any award for Market timing uh for sure but as I came in um you know I had to start looking at everything so are we in the right businesses why are we doing what we're doing and what should we be
and it became very clear that we needed to return to the basics of banking as a bank and we decided to sell 40% of the companies and 40% of the assets that we held and and we're actually the only large bank that has shrunk in size as a result of that we're three4 of the way through that we got another 10% to go but our core decision as a bank was
Return to the basics of banking figure out what you're good at we're in 160 countries we Finance global trade Global Capital flows serve IBM serve Exxon serve Google serve Apple serve everybody around the world because they have offices around the world and not only that there are imports and exports going on focus on what you're good at get back
to the basics of what you're good at and get out of those things that are peripheral and not important to the business that was a critical critical decision in addition to that we set out some very clear criteria and principles for for what we do and how we do it and the and other than the obvious which should be we we're here to serve the real economy we're here to serve clients
I call it common purpose we have the same Purpose with our clients we have same Purpose with each other the most important pillar of that to me is practicing responsible finance and I tell all my people uh in the company before you engage with a client before you do a transaction ask yourself three questions ask yourself whether it's right for your client ask yourself
whether it adds any economic value and ask yourself if it is right for the system or responsible to the system as a whole and the answer on all three must be yes and only then you should proceed that's what banking's been about and that's what we've been about for 200 years I mean we got founded in 1812 as a bank uh in when a bunch of merchants
came together in New York they needed to finish New York Liverpool trade there's no other place they could get that that kind of financing and and and since then uh some of you might have seen some of the ads were running but we've been literally connecting the world financing some of the most transformative projects in the world the Panama Canal the
Transatlantic cable you know the the the jumbo jet I mean you know the list goes on and on that's what we're supposed to be doing and if you get back to doing what you're supposed to be doing and you practice responsible Finance you get to restoring trust and credibility it's not going to happen through ads it's going to happen by doing the right thing the
world's going to look back and say this is the financial system that truly serves us and it's truly serving the real economy what one more comment that's important I do know that we're big as a bank and there are other banks that have gotten big the most important thing in business is and you all are going to know this you you you need to
be sized appropriately for the TX at hand we're only as big as our clients need to be and that was a big part of our redesign as a company now unfortunately part of that meant we had to go from 375,000 people to 260,000 people as a company we're completely focused on those businesses that are really important to our clients but that's the narrative and I think that's
the narrative that's really going to be important for the financial system to be on you seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about finance and um and I like to switch gears talk about your background and your career in finance you've been a professor a finance Professor an investment banker a Trader you started a hedge fund and now you're
CEO of a Wall Street firm so I get the sense you like Finance well you know it's I can't hold a job what can I tell you I mean it's it's uh you know that's not where I started I mean I um growing up uh you know culture has a lot to do with it and what you are expected to do is sometimes dri driven by by what people think you ought to be and so when I was growing up
in India you know you either had to be a doctor or an engineer so I said okay fine I'll be an engineer and I started there and and U and that was good I mean I enjoyed it never any good at it um I thought uh so I said well you know maybe I'll be a good Banker what do you know right so uh uh but I I went from engineering and I went into business
school I really enjoyed that I really enjoyed economics um but um uh and and you're right I mean I really enjoy the subject of markets and how decisions get made how it's real time uh public policy Economic Policy these are all exciting yet you know Finding exactly what to do with that um you know was not easy I um I um you know started off believing and thinking I
would like being an an academics a researcher a teacher I like that but I WR I like real world problems more and uh and um you know it all came together when when when I wound up going to Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley back then was about 2500 people I mean it was it was the size of some of the smaller private Equity Funds today in some ways
it was a different era it's almost 30 years ago and that was really enjoyable because um I had a lot of ability to do things I wanted to do and uh and uh and I grew up through that and and I've never really thought back as to how I got from here to here to here there lots of uh of um interesting incidents that happen along the way that that that
guide you but I do enjoy uh the topic and you got to do that I mean if you're not passionate about learning if you're not passionate about what you're doing you don't like the subject matter you know might as well go do something else and that's that's a critical aspect of what makes one successful you just mentioned that there were a lot of
incidents that made you you know make different decisions could you share with us as all of us in this room are trying to figure out what to do when we grow up how did you go about making those decisions what are some key inflection points yeah first of all don't try to grow up too soon and too fast I I'll tell you that um you know don't don't uh
don't uh underestimate the the benefit of Youth and what you got and uh and the the opportunities that that gives you you know I really never tried to manage my career I never thought about um uh the future in that way I mean if you if you you you couldn't write a novel collecting the connecting the D of my career and say here's something that
could have been planned ever so it never happened that way to me the most important thing I learned was from um one of my teachers when I'm a professor said look there are very simple rules just figure out what you're really passionate about and follow that just do that secondly you know if you happen to be passionate about something that's a growth industry that's great by the way
that's that's what you should really try and see if you can get passionate about that and uh and lastly uh you know you know if you are going to go out and do something make sure you do it with a company or people that have the right values and that you really like working with it and that's it and and uh and I thought I did that I mean that's how I picked the
places I went and who I worked with and who I I worked for as well um and never really managed my career along the way you know one thing led to the other let to the other let to the other when I uh left Academia to go to Morgan Stanley that was a point in time that uh there were a number of people who are Finance professors or economics professors who
left Academia to go into uh into business you know I'm I'm not saying that I compare anywhere close to him but fiser black left at that point MIT to go into business uh Steven Keel hoofer I me there whole host of people who had left Academia and and so it seemed just right because the real world problems were there and in corporate finance in
capital markets uh there were no real Futures markets back then the options markets were new derivatives was a uh was a concept in textbooks I mean these were all sort of interesting times and that's that's how I got there and the industry grew I grew with it and uh and uh you know I think the most uh important benefit to me was that I found myself at a place which was a real
meritocracy I mean you're talking about uh Investment Banking back in 1982 83 um you know uh how shall I say it was not exactly the Bastion of diversity uh back then uh and to find a a somebody who who was born in India grow up become an engineer get a PhD of all the things wind up at Morgan Stanley and then wind up becoming president it it says a lot
more about the company I was at than it says about me right that that was the environment that allowed it to happen and to me uh it really was about having an environment of true meritocracy where learning was rewarded performance was rewarded and that if you did better you got ahead better and that's really what happened the the most important decision
I had to make in my career the most important decision I had to make was to go from an being an individual producer somebody who was really good at something and really enjoyed doing it to somebody who decided that actually you know what I could enjoy becoming a manager it's very different to be good at what you're doing it's completely different
thing to say now I'm going to get my enjoyment by watching others succeed now that transition is a very very difficult transition to make and uh and you know it it's one of those things where you have to teach yourself that you go from being the valid dictorian to somebody who manages valedictorians and there are plenty of them here I know uh and uh how you manage that Talent how
you nurture that Talent how you grow it was a very big shift and that's probably the single biggest shift that got me from what I was a finance professional somebody who really enjoyed that uh to where I am today I um that reminded me of something I'd read in your background um I'd read an interview with your father in September of 08 and he said
the day you're appoint he didn't know that was going to be public by the way my dad is uh now let me see my dad is 89 years old and he still um well forget about him I don't understand Twitter so you know can anyway go ahead sorry he um he said the day you're appointed CEO of City the first thing you did when you got home was to call him in move by to share the
good news with him and um and in that interview he talked about how he was so proud of your humility given all of these career you know just accomplishments you had made had reached over the last 10 years and and that he was also proud of the confidence you as you stay down the abyss and the crow and so I it made me very curious about your
upbringing when you think about sort of the 16 years in India and growing up in New York sort of what what in your background prepared you for the crisis well you know I uh uh I I didn't I'm not so sure I called him to share the good news at least I called him to get a lot of support I know that and he's always been supportive um and uh look I mean
it's it's very hard to piece all of this together every bit of everything that I've done has been a learning experience um along the way uh and you know you you sort of you learn a few things um uh once you become a manager or you you try to become a manager leader it becomes very obvious you know you're not a leader unless you got followers right if
people are not willing to follow you it doesn't matter um what else uh what else you learn or think about and so um the the simple the simple sort of truths that like and somebody said that in your video that you showed earlier is true I think it's John dur you know it's it's uh trust and integrity are the number one things and so if you have the values
that go with always making sure you're trusted as somebody's honest and says the right things does the right thing that's a critical thing and that's the number one uh attribute of a good leader the the second attribute is a leader who understands uh that the team well the team needs to feel the leader is looking after the team and thinking about what's
best for the team well that's part of the community that's how we grew up uh in India it's part of being part of the family it's really important you know you need functional skills of course you do you got to be good at what you do uh you need to be able to know how to make um uh decisions and a lot of experience helps with that by the way the more experience
you have the better decision maker you are it's as simple as that you don't grow up you don't you're not necessarily born with that you can learn it and you grow with it I think that becomes uh a very critical part uh of uh of uh what you do because that really drives judgment in in many ways and judgment sort of accumulation of all the skills
you learned um over the years I think uh uh the the the ability to communicate is critical I mean you cannot underestimate the need people have have to know what's going on and why you're doing what you're doing why are you going in a particular direction and as much as you think communication is important think again it's probably the most important
thing you can do as a leader and I think the last part um is uh uh and you know you talked about that you talked about what my dad said um um the line that always stuck with me was the line that John F Kennedy used which is that civility is not a sign of weakness and so humility is a big part of what you learn and believe me when you trade you
learn humility when you run a hedge fund you learn humility and and and so to to lead with humility is is really what makes for uh people rallying around uh what you want to get done so I can't tell you exactly what happened where where where I learned some of these things or some of these things that that were part of my upbringing but uh but ultimately it's sort of the
the the culmination and the cumulated aspects of everything I've gotten done over the years that brought me here thank you for sharing with us your values um that fast forward into sort of this point in time one question that every GSP student in this room has had to answer is what matters most to you and why it's a question in our application and so we spend dozens of
hours thinking about it and wrestling over it and so I know you have about 15 seconds to think about it but what matters most most to you and why well uh so um uh God that's a tough question we know we all know send me some of your answers I'll keep them for uh future reference uh well look I you know I I I come at everything I do with a sense of
responsibility uh and I have a responsibility for to my two kids making sure they get the right kind of education the right kind of background I keep I I get the same sense for city which I'm running I I feel a sense of responsibility for the 260,000 people that are with the city I feel a respon sense of responsibility for uh for the uh the clients of the company I feel
responsibility for for Columbia University I'm On The Board of Trustees sorry about that but it's it is a responsibility I I have so what matters most to me is that uh is that I not only take those responsibilities I have seriously and I do the best I can but that the world looks at what I've done and say you know what he tried to do the best he can to
fulfill those responsibilities to the best of his capabilities that really matters to me um you just touched on your two kids and I have one final questions before we open up to the audience but um but as you think of the World your children will grow up and they're a few years younger than I think most of us in this room and as you think about the future
world that they will lead and as you sort of look at this room of future entrepreneurs and future Business Leaders and folks who lead nonprofits what um are some of the two three four five key life lessons you want to impart to the next generation of Business Leaders well look I think uh to me the most important thing is you cannot succeed unless you're doing something
you're passionate about that is the key lesson to me I mean it's it is absolutely critical your success your uh your greatness comes from that and so I tell my two kids you got to find your passion I they're young you know one of them just started University the other one's still in high school and uh and they're searching and it's okay I mean
you got to keep searching I it took me a while to to get to what I thought I liked so that's the most important thing figure out what it is you really like and I don't really mind what it is I mean frankly it's not my thing it's their thing they got to figure out what they like and follow that I think that's really important the second thing I I I
uh would impart to them is make sure you appreciate understand the importance of your Social relationships and the trust that is really implied in those and what it means to uh to be part of those social relationships and yeah some people think about this as citizenship yeah you can talk about it that way but really is about uh about you live in a community
right and you live with your friends and what does that mean how should you behave I think that's that's that's to me the second uh most important thing it's it's really uh important uh and then uh you know I think I stop right there in terms of those two things I think are absolutely critical uh to me I hope we've done everything we we can to
impart them the best values um I know uh that if they're passionate enough and they have the right social relationship the right uh sort of Human Relationships they can carry on they can be successful that they want to be I think they're fortunate lucky to be uh second generation Americans we're first generation Americans having come here I
mean there's no other country that I know of uh that can provide young people with the kind of Entrepreneurship capabilities that this country can not one not anywhere for the 160 countries that I've been to there is something so unique about what's happening in America and what America is all about that I'm absolutely sure that if they just uh
stick to Passion stick to uh minding their relationships and and and human interactions and the last Parts really important is nobody got anywhere without a lot of hard work and so if they do that they're going to be fine thank you very much now we'd like to open up um to questions from the audience there's going to be a few folks walking around
with mic so please raise your hand and um somebody will come and find you yeah one up here hi my name is sahil I'm a master student in the management science department so as a leader how did you go about streamlining your company from 3,7 370,000 people employees to 260 uh without disturbing the employee motivation and Company culture such that it does not affect city group's future
progress yeah and I think that's a great question it's very important question so um to me uh streamlining comes in a variety of different forms and let me tell you how we did it the first thing uh is as I said we decided what business are we in what should we be in and those other businesses uh that that we didn't think we should be in or I didn't think
we should be in were businesses that we really nurtured as well we made sure that people understood very clearly that that these were important businesses uh we created the right incentive structures for our people in there and the point was if CI not the home that doesn't mean there aren't other great homes for a business of this sort and
that actually worked very well and a good part of our 375 going to 260 came from that those actions where we did sell business in a very steady methodical way to other people some of them we took public and some of them were uh were sold to to other people in the financial services businesses and the other part of this is we also went
inside the organization and we started looking at okay are there actions or things that we're doing we shouldn't be doing for ourselves and so we found a lot of uh things we're doing on the processing side and we put them all together and say okay let's create a company around this let's create a company around these activities actually we're not that great at doing these
These are good activities we took some of those and we actually sold them to other people or we passed on those activities so we sold some to whro to Tata consultancies Etc companies of that sort who took uh big areas of what we did and took them with them and uh and that also accounted for a lot of What U what uh uh we used to do the third part
of what we had to do is have some very strong thoughtful uh outplacement programs and they anything you you had to do you had to do on the basis of merits who was good whether we needed them or not um and we went through that in a very methodical way including providing people help to find jobs somewhere else we were helped by the fact that we were really early on in our
restructuring when I came in uh while the crisis was was beginning starting uh you know you didn't have the crescendo so to say so we started early on and that really helped a lot of the activities that we did along that time the the most um difficult thing culturally um is to come out publicly and say 40% of your business is non-core okay I mean that is a
incredibly difficult step to take and we had to weigh a lot of different ways of going so are we going to say nothing and just sell something here something there some here some there and then the markets will start saying hey wait a minute where are you going where are you going to stop and if we did that that could destabilize everybody inside the
organization so the big decision we made was saying 60% of the company was core and that Core Business had a certain culture we wanted a certain direction the company had to take certain businesses we were in and certain types of clients we were going to serve and certain principles we were going to follow that became on the other side a ring cry for everybody else to
say hey this is the future this this is where we're going and of course we had to do exactly what you said manage the other 40% and I've talked about that yeah um hi Mr Panda thank you for being here with us today I'm a Felix berstein uh first year MBA student quick question for you you know you mentioned um that you're now back to the basics
and focusing on the core business and I guess I'm curious to know what systems are you putting in place as the pendulum swings and um you know you don't try to uh dance as the music sort of begins to play thank you well I don't dance so that's a that's a good thing music or not uh wouldn't make a difference uh but the most important point is the point
you're making so what is the big difference uh at city um the big difference uh let me talk a little bit about the trends we see okay going on around the world one we think there are going to be 150 cities around the world that are going to be 50% of the GDP of the world in the next two two and a half three decades um and we're today in about 120
of those cities now what's interesting about those cities and I've talked to Publishers and people of that sort the 18yearold in those cities like 18yar old in sou Paulo has a lot more in common with the 18-year-old in Moscow than they may have with their parents in those cities so the interconnectedness the mode of thinking and how the 150 cities think is a
incredible shift that's ahead of us it's in addition to urbanization it's sort of homogenization in in in intellectual uh Direction and so we've got to start thinking about countries in our business we need to start thinking about those 150 cities they could all be in the US or they could be around the world and so big change for us is looking at our
consumer business and not having the systems being one for us one for UK one for Russia one for Brazil but we're going completely Global it's the same consumer banking system around the world which means that you can be a customer anywhere in the world you walk into any City Bank anywhere else in the world you'll be recognized people know who you
are what what you have what you need not only that related to that you know where the world's going it's going to have to be banking anywhere anyhow any device any mode and so the big shift systems wise at city is we're going completely Global un IED systems around the world to serve the consumer the other big trend is global trade Global Capital
flows and as much as we think that it's all about the developed markets trading with Emerging Markets the big shift is Brazil to India India to China Africa to Brazil South South flows connecting those pipes to make sure we can intermediate money that flows around the world and trade that gets financed around the world that's also the same
institutional system around the world so that's another system that's the those are the rails on which we move money every day by the way we're up to about on average $3 trillion of cash we move around the world every day and just about everything the US government does around the world is done through our pipes the US Embassy banking system those kind of things uh so th that's
sort of the integration aspect of the systems we're designing it's one company just happens to be in 150 locations the last point I'll stop there is data I don't need to tell this group what data means you all know exactly the power of data we have more data than almost any other private company in the world because we're in 160 countries we know
consumer data we need institutional data we know flow data we need trade we know trading data it's incredible the amount of information we have and so the biggest thing we're doing in my view is uh redoing our data management architecture to take these multiple pedabytes of data we have and translate that into information and content for our clients to help them make better
decisions so the as we look forward and as we look to the trends around the world you know our business hangs on a technological chassis and that technological chassis is one chassis around the world it's not only based on hardware systems and other architecture it's based on the same customer facing architecture around the world and the same data architecture
around the world that's a lot of work and a lot of money and for City that's taking a company that used to be this way siloed around the world to shifting it horizontally completely and of course you can imagine we are therefore a dream client of just about anybody in this Valley at this point um I'm a recent Alum and I want to
know what your uh response to uh dealing or coping with failure would be my response to dealing cing with failure uh well um uh it's it's so so I can I can look back and think about what did I do right I nobody ever has gone up or done what they've done in a straight line it's always been on on the basis of a number of uh setbacks and and we and I have had
uh many in the process um you know I think the uh the there is obviously the emotional aspect of failure and then there's a rational aspect of failure you know you've got to cope through the emotional aspect of failure I can't tell you how I mean it's uh it's related to families it's related to your support system it's related to your friends it's
related to finding strength somewhere to get through it uh and I think it's important I mean do not ever minimize that aspect doesn't matter how rational you are you're not going to be able to cope with uh with failure unless you get over the emotional side because what you got to do there is you need to get yourself fortified to say I really want
to figure out what went wrong and to figure out what went wrong to learn learn from it to say okay I'm going to go try again I'm going to try somewhere else I'm going to go to a different place but what can I learn from what I did where can I get help how do I get myself those skills to allow me to succeed I mean I think that's that's sort of the natural step and and uh in
my own way uh the second stage takes time the first stage is the stage you need to get over and um and uh uh and believe me I mean we we we get a lot of positive and negative feedback every day but but coping with the uh coping with the um with the uh the scope of failure um is something that has to be done emotionally first hi we have time for one more
question I think hi my name is Andy and I'm a second year here at Stanford um you mentioned that city is taking like a large stake in uh sustainable energy and kind of green energy and I was curious what do you see as like the most viable in the next 10 years in the next 15 years um the most viable kind of energy that you guys investing in and going
along with that with uh Rising gas prices and kind of more green Vehicles what do you see as the future of electric automobiles in not only the us but internationally yeah I mean I think I think those are uh those are all important questions and it's a it's those are questions for which uh we're all going to need answers um not in the context of what each each
one of us thinks individually but also uh in the context a lot of these relate to Collective decision- making because uh because you need systems set up you know you got gas pums pumps everywhere around the country well what's going to be the alternative so there's a lot of work that needs to be done there um so look I mean I think I think there are
there are a couple of very interesting things that are happening one is natural gas now I understand it's a fossil fuel right I mean it comes from down there very clearly but it is clean energy and we're running at $2 a cubic feet uh foot right now which is incredible I mean it is a vastly different price point than everything else and we've got a lot of
that in the US as a matter of fact enough not only here by the way there's a lot in Israel there's a lot in the Mediterranean Ocean there's a lot in China Etc so I would I would look to having uh looking at Natural Gas having a major role to play in terms of the next decade a couple of decades in in in the energy future including by the way
having the freight Fleet in the US go to natural gas as a powering Source versus gasoline and Diesel which is what they're using right now the people I talk to companies I talk to are investing very few of them are going to diesel very few of them are going to oil very few of them are going to gasoline they're almost all going towards natural
gas that's a sign significant significant um shift in my view clean because of the source of the energy but an important one I think the second big shift is uh this debate over you know what are cars going to get powered by and um and uh you know I think that there's still a debate going on there are lots of models in terms of where Vehicles go now the electric car sounds
extremely appealing because you can shift from high hro electric to gas to oil to Coal or whatever you want to the back end solar energy as long as there's electricity you don't need to change the infrastructure if it's electric so it's a very very appealing concept and our guys have done a lot of work on it as a matter of fact uh not only us but uh
obviously the othero companies have and Ed Morse who who does a lot of writing for us has put out a wonderful report I think it was last week a couple of weeks ago and all this stuff um but there are lots of differences even in models in electric car some of them are you plug and you get charged up and you travel and there are other models there's a
company called a better place and it's an Israeli company and what they do is they say that we're in the business of having you shift out your battery into a new one in 45 seconds if you want a new source of energy it's a different model what it says is you don't necess you have to only plug in your car to charge but your new gas stations are battery
changing stations you go in there and the same time as it takes you to fill up a gas tank you take the battery out and replace it you're on your way again but that requires a grid it requires changing stations it requires a lot of uh uh infrastructure to it so I think the the changes in Battery Technology which uh uh which is actually accelerating a pretty good phase
together with economic models like the better place model could actually create a real future for electric cars so you may find a bifurcated Market you may find Freight running on natural gas you could find commuting happening on electric cars I mean that's a real possibility for the future but it's in play I mean this is happening now and you know the you guys are too young to
know this but beta versus VHS you know you could have a better product versus inferior product but one is adopted or the typewriter example of how cty becomes the uh becomes the the the scale so we're at that stage where it would be helpful to have a lot more thinking on a national basis of where should we be going but some of these standards may be
set for us going forward but I'm actually very very excited and very encouraged by the entire energy area it's one of those areas of good fortune that we haven't been counting on I'm not so sure the markets have completely discounted this yet either but it's going to be one thing that may turn out to be a positive for all of us over the
next 10 years looks like we're out of time I wanted to thank you very much for being just so open and sharing your Insight um you've not only encouraged me to really identify my passions but also to um to buy some more City shares thank you that's great [Applause] good change lives change lives change organizations change organizations change the world