MiB: John Mack, Morgan Stanley CEO

This week, we converse with the legendary John Mack, former chief govt officer and chairman of the board at Morgan Stanley. He lately revealed a memoir of his life and 34-year tenure at Morgan Stanley, “Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior.”

We talk about how he ended up on Wall Avenue as a result of he wanted a job when an damage ended his school soccer profession and scholarship. From that starting he went to Smith Barney, then Morgan Stanley, the place he moved up the ranks within the fixed-income group, finally working all the bond group. He recalled what the Avenue was like within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s, when the NYSE was closed on Wednesdays to compensate for paperwork. The tradition and total temper of Wall Avenue had been very completely different in these days.

He rose to the function of CEO, the place he constructed out a global enterprise. He acknowledged the agency wanted to broaden into the retail enterprise, which was much less dangerous and had a extra predictable income stream. Ultimately, this led to the Morgan Stanley merger with Dean Witter, then the third largest brokerage agency within the U.S. The deal went effectively, however in the end, Mack was pushed out by Philip J. Purcell, who was working Dean Witter and had turn into the CEO of the mixed entity.

Mack was tapped to show across the faltering Credit score Suisse First Boston, which he efficiently managed. His 3-year contract was not renewed by the Swiss mother or father firm. By that point, the as soon as #1, however newly risk-averse Morgan Stanley was falling far behind its opponents. The board of MS ousted Purcell to convey again Mack to run the agency.

He describes navigating by means of the monetary disaster by partnering with Mitsubishi Financial institution of Japan. Whereas these negotiations had been ongoing, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner had been pushing for Morgan Stanley to merge with one other financial institution. Mack believed the agency was robust sufficient to face by itself, particularly with a money infusion from the Japanese. Whereas ready for that billion-dollar examine to reach, he ended up telling Geithner to “Get f%$ed*.”

An inventory of his favourite books is here; A transcript of our dialog is available here Tuesday.

You’ll be able to stream and obtain our full dialog, together with any podcast extras, on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts in your favourite pod hosts could be found here.

You’ll want to take a look at our Masters in Business subsequent week with Jennifer Grancio, CEO of Engine No. 1, the place she guides the agency’s strategic imaginative and prescient. Earlier than Engine No. 1, Jennifer served as a founding member of BlackRock’s iShares enterprise, the place she led European, US, and international distribution and drove the expansion of the worldwide ETF trade and iShares’ management function inside it.

John Mack Books

Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior by John Mack

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell