David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Lets talk about your career at bank of america, and how you rose up and actually became the ceo, because i think it is quite interesting. To go to your background, you are from ohio. Your father was a chemist . Brian my father was a chemist, yeah. David for dupont . Brian yeah. David you were sixth of eight children. And eight children i guess you share a lot. Brian you have to be aggressive with stuff, at least getting your share. Lets say that. David ok. So you went to brown university. And you were the cocaptain of the rugby team. Brian right. David rugby is a tough sport. I assume that is not as tough as banking. Or is banking tougher than rugby . Brian there is nothing more powerful to see one of those scrums push, but i was never in there because i was not big enough to direct that, which is one of the goals i played on the team. It is a fantastic teamwork game. You want the game where all 15 players participate fully. It is a different kind of game. David ever break any bones . Brian i got knocked out once by my own teammate, which irritated me, because i was about to score. The guy kicked me in the head on the way to the goal. David ok. So you graduated and went to law school at notre dame. Brian correct. I played rugby there. David you played rugby there too. Were you more of a star at notre dame or at brown . Brian i dont know, but we had fun at notre dame. David you went to rhode island to practice law. You were a corporate lawyer . Brian corporate securities, m a, private equity deals. David the highest calling of mankind, private equity. [laughter] brian it is interesting, because one of the reasons why i quit being a lawyer was i had worked with our private equity firm, the Company Called fleet equity. I structured deals with them. That is what led to the ceo at the time saying come work with us and quit being a lawyer, and i went to work with them. David and fleet was an inquisitive bank, and did a merger with bank boston. Acquisitive bank, and did a merger with bank boston. You stayed with the combined company. Then when the ceo of bank boston took over, chad gifford, took over, he decided the combined bank wasnt big enough, so he ultimately discussed selling it to a number of other people. And ultimately it was bought by bank of america. Is that right . Brian right. That goes to the scale of banking and what you can achieve. It was ultimately the First Nationwide bank, and that is something that we have that no one else has right now. David when bank of america came in, what was your job in the new bank company . Brian the Wealth Management businesses, so columbia asset management, private business. David for a while, you became the general counsel of bank of america . Brian for 40 days. David 40 days. Brian december of 2008 to january of 2009. 40 days david 40 days and 40 nights, was there any flooding or anything . [laughter] brian there was a transaction and a few other things in the second round of tarp and a few other gems. David by that time, the u. S. Was in the middle of a financial crisis. All banks were in trouble. I think that is fair to say. Bank of america was doing a favor, i guess, for the United States government when it was told it should buy merrill lynch, is that right . Brian there was a scramble to try to stabilize the firms that were less stable, jp morgan, bear stearns, ourselves, and we couldnt stabilize, lehman we even looked at it as a company. David at one point, the ceo of bank of america was leaving, and they needed a new ceo. How did they pick you . You were the general counsel. Brian at that time, i wasnt. So i was general counsel for a short period of time. After that, i had a run in the commercial banking business and Investment Banking business. But i couldnt keep a job, lets just say that. I had probably five jobs in one year. Largely, we were doing deals and things were shifting around and it was a little interesting. The late summer, early fall of 2009, the ceo told the board he wanted to leave at year end. They went through a search process. It was something i told our board i will never leave you in the position to have to do. So i owe them a successor at all times, not only now but sometime in the future. It was a relatively difficult process for all involved. In middecember, they finally concluded i would be ceo, and i have been ceo since. David since you have been running it for almost 10 years, market capitalization is up 54 , stock price is up about 76 . So what did you do that made these events happen and make bank of america Largest Consumer bank in the United States . Brian it was a fairly straightforward thing, and there were some additives stuff that made it more interesting, but basically, to pare the company back to what made it great. What makes it great is the lines of business and the simplicity between that. We got rid of 40 different units we didnt need. We got out of businesses like outside of the United StatesWealth Management businesses, which we did not make any money on. What made it more interesting is that the defaults and mortgages kept building. And so, taking care of that issue was unique. The question was you had to take that stuff and get it away. The vision was to have everything a customer, company, or Institutional Investor needs, but keep it to that. And not get into stray business. We had 70 billion of funded private Equity Investments when i took over, and now we have less than 1 billion. David you cant have too many funded private equities. Brian that is your business. Our job is to help you do it, not to be competitive. Those were major changes. David before you were the ceo, the bank made an investment in countrywide, and then they made an acquisition of countrywide, and ultimately, it turned out to cost the bank maybe 50 billion or Something Like that. So maybe one of the worst acquisitions in the Financial Services world for quite some time. So they got in trouble, countrywide, because of subprime mortgages. Are you making a lot of subprime mortgages today . Is the bank doing that . Brian what we were, we were 20 of the mortgage market, and 15 was done through other people. Brokers and correspondents. We dont do that anymore. The only way a person gets a Mortgage Loan at bank of america is by sitting with a teammate or digitally, directly from us. We dont buy mortgages from other people. That has left us with 5 of the market. So it is a much more stable environment. David today, the banks future looks very strong. But at pastimes it wasnt so wonderful and at one point during the crisis, the bank needed more money and you had to go call a man named warren buffett. Was that easy to make that call . Did he say anything you want, any terms you want is fine . How did that work . Brian warren called us. David oh, he did . Brian this story i have heard from warren. But he called and got into the call centers and asked to speak to me. And of course, they dont transfer anybody to the ceo that call into a call center. So he found an investment banker. They worked with the cfo and they called and i talked to him. He basically said, brian, i want to make an investment in the company. I said we dont need the capital. He said i know, that is why i am calling. You need stability, and the capital will do you good. That was in 2011 when the world was kind of interesting. Remember, the government was almost going to default. You had real uncertainty about the litigation risk around the mortgage industry. And he put the money in. From that day forward, he put company with back to work the nest day, saying the smartest investment in the world, 5 billion overnight in the company. He literally called me and i talked to him the first time on monday at 11 00, and we had the agreement signed on tuesday and the money by thursday. And so he does that. So, we took the interesting thing is you if are a common shareholder that day, you would have had fared as strong as he did. You had to have the courage. He had 5 billion at a time when others didnt have it. David he bought the stock was less than half of where it was now. I assume. Brian yeah, his Conversion Price was like 15 to 20 . David if i had some extra money today and wanted to buy stock in the bank, should i buy your bank stock and at bank of america and would i do well . Brian you would do well. You would do well. We have the best franchise across all the businesses and Financial Services and the largest economy in the world. We have two or three franchises dealing daily with global companies. What more do you want as investors . David do you think doddfrank legislation is working or would you modify it a bit . Brian capital liquidity, stress tests, those regimes are critical. The reason why the u. S. Bank is strong and active and growing. David during the Great Recession, you spent a lot of time in washington, more than you probably wanted to. And, you very often testified and so forth. Do you think that attitude today in washington towards banks is more favorable than it was when the Great Recession was going on . Brian i think the attitude towards banks in general is more favorable because the economy is growing, unemployment is low. That is a better backdrop than severe delinquency in homes in housings and foreclosures going on and the unemployment at 10 . Our brand is at an alltime high. Our Customer Service scores are at an alltime high. Our growth is exceeding the industry. So those are all very good things for our company. But that was built through a lot of tactics we took. But the general atmosphere is better, largely because people see we are out there trying to help. David i think it is fair to say that the banks were beaten up by the regulators and congress and ultimately, the doddfrank legislation was passed. Do you think the doddfrank legislation is working, or would you modify it a bit . Brian the Banking Industry selfinsures itself. If you are an insured depositary institution with insured deposits, it is a cooperative. When the bank fails, we paid 15 of it. We have a high interest in a safe industry. What happens at times, you see the activities leak outside the industry. That is what the problem was. So most of the major issues were companies that werent covered by the core regulatory umbrella. Doddfrank changed that. That was a very good thing, because now they have purview over the whole industry. Now, we still struggle. Half the Mortgage Business is not in the Banking System today. When it wasnt before, that gave rise to countrywide and others. Overall, doddfrank has corrected a lot of the issues. The question is, underneath it, there are pieces like the volcker rule, which people talk about, that swung in a direction where you say i dont think that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to get them more rational. But the capital, liquidity, stress tests, those regimes are critical. And the reason why u. S. Banking system is strong and active and growing and supporting the economy, and other Banking Systems are not, is because we got to it. David today, there are four big main banks in the United States, citicorp, jp morgan, wells fargo, and bank of america. Do you think thats a good thing to have only four big banks that are based in the United States, where you think it is working ok . Brian i think it works well. A large amount of the industry is in the hands of 5000 banks and community banks, so you have much more varied financial industry. One thing that makes our industry strong is the variety. The variety of participants. We have the largest market share along with those colleagues. But if you actually look at us as a percentage of gdp, relative to other countries, this is completely unconsolidated business. We have the largest retail share, about 15 . If we were cocacola or pepsi, we would think that is not very good market share. So there is a lot of room to go to grow here still. David what percentage of profits or revenues are from outside the United States . Is it a large percentage . Brian about 15 to 20 . David are you reasonably happy with that . Do you think that is where expansion can come . Brian we are expanding outside the United States, so we have a business which is in all the Major Trading venues which is doing Capital Markets and trading for the big Asset Managers and big firms, and then we have a company that does corporate and commercial banking and Investment Banking and Treasury Services around the world. We are investing tremendously in those by adding people. It doesnt mean acquisitions, just adding more and more people with opportunities in asia, latin america, middle east, europe, etc. We can grow, because, basically, the connectivity of the Largest Companies and midsized u. S. Companies, which we are the largest provider of services to around the world and the supply chains and everything, it needs people like us, and we are happy to do it to help them transact, engage in trade, import, export, and all of that stuff. It is a great business. David in the old days, 20 years ago or so, if i wanted cash i would take out my checkbook, go to a bank, write out a check, and they would probably cash it , if they could make sure i have enough money in the account. Do you really need banks, physical banks these days . How many people walk in and cash checks that way . Brian the numbers are surprising. David how many facilities do you have . Brian we have 4300 branches today. David 4300. Brian at the highest point, we were probably 6100. Today, you have to be high touch and hightech. In those branches over the next 24 hours, about 800,000 people come in and transact. But during the course of the last quarter, second quarter, i think we had 1. 4 billion consumer actions and 1. 3 billion of them were digital. David people my age and my color hair, are they the ones going into the banking branches, and are the people doing Online Banking mostly younger, by a lot . Brian i would say a decade ago, the cohort wouldve been age determinant. Now it is not. Now, we had a 100yearold person sign up for mobile banking, which is optimistic. David do you get a discount if youre 100 years old . Brian its free. Its hard to give it away. But i think if you look, we do a great job with millennials. We open accounts at twice the rate of the millennial population, so we are getting share of millennials, but on the other hand we also hold a lot of money and transact with people our age. David the most common dollar currency you use, the 100 bill . Is that the most frequent . Brian the 20 bill. 20s . Ok. What about cryptocurrencies . Are you a believer that they will replace u. S. Dollar currencies or supplement them . Brian if you separate the two different thought processes, one is the moving money digitally. 55 of all the payments by consumers at 3 trillion moves digitally today. The u. S. Is still a cash society. What youre trying to do is move paper and move current currency out. An anonymous currency is a separate question. That doesnt work so well, but the idea of digitizing cash. We spent about 5 billion in cash, coin, and currency around the company. There is no one more highly interested in that. We are driving that now. It is just americans dont use it. David i read that another bank in the United States, jp morgan, you have heard of them . Brian yep. David they were thinking of having their own cryptocurrency. Is that true . And are you doing something similar . Brian blockchain is the connection between them. I think we have 45 patents on blockchain already, another 45 in the process. We believe in the technology as a way to move money and uses of it around trade. We use a lot of information and money at the same time and documents. Those are good uses for right. For it. I dont know if i would call that a cryptocurrency. It is still u. S. Dollars from a fiat currency distributed electronically. That is going to happen. David if i am a College Student watching this discussion and im getting ready for a bank of america interview, what should i do . I should dress appropriately, right . Brian make sure you demonstrate curiosity and make sure that you demonstrate that you really want to help people. David i dont think the people watching this show are generally bank robbers, but for those bank robbers that might have tuned in, is it easy to go to a bank today and put up a gun, and get some cash out and escape or is that harder than ever . Brian it is harder than ever. David because . [laughter] brian because it is not a very fruitful exercise. David are people still doing that . Brian it doesnt happen often. It still happens. You catch the people. Thats the deterrent. Our teammates, once i went we have cameras that work all around the firm. And the branches record things. I went to go see it. They were going to show me what a bank robbery looked like and there actually was a robbery at that time. Alive robbery. There is nothing worse than seeing someone pull out a gun and point it at one of your teammates. We do everything we can to make ourselves less attractive to that activity. And the teams do a good job. David you have used the word teammate a few times. So a teammate like an employee, a colleague . Why do you use the word teammate . Brian because we are in knock the crap out of everyone else, and that is what teammates do. David how is the diversity among your teammates . Brian we are half men, half women. David minorities . Brian representative of population levels and ethnic breakdowns. Weve got work to do in terms of seniority and some of the traditional Financial Advisor work, in terms of women. Theres areas weve got to work on. We know them. We are driving at them, but we measure it carefully. Six Board Members are women and half my manager team is women. So from top to bottom david half of your Management Team is women . Brian yes. David are they better than men . Brian i think you would have to ask them. David today, if i wanted to graduate from college and get a good job, why should i want to go to a bank . Is a bank a good career . Do you think young people are coming in in greater numbers or lesser numbers to banks . Brian we bring in, you know, into the core training program, we have 1400 for the summer, and we hire about 1000 per year, just in the core training program, markets, Investment Banking, commercial banking. As you go more broadly in the company, we hire 4500 recent College Graduates a year in the branch system. There is no doubt people want to come work for us. And it is a great career. It is a chance to help people you know, people come to work for our company because they want to help. David you have three children. Do you recommend Banking Services to your own children . Brian two of them work in finance. And they like it. One has been in for five years, the other, three. They work at competitors because they cant work for our company. And they like it. David if i am a College Student watching this discussion and im getting ready for a bank of america interview, what should i do . I should dress appropriately, right . And cut my hair maybe . Brian in my mind, it is the same thing. Make sure you demonstrate curiosity, and make sure you demonstrate that you really want to help people. David bank of america has a very large charitable undertaking and effort, and you have a goodsized team doing it. What are your areas of focus and how important is that to bank of america . Brian there is the p or charity work we have. Charity work we have. It is at 250 million a year of giving. There is community development, low and moderate Income Development work which is about 4. 5 billion for low to moderate Income Housing and development. Then, there is a volunteer, which is 2 million hours on top of that. Then there is Employee Giving on top of that. So you are working all these things. So the areas we work are largely around Economic Development environmental work. We have a commitment we just renewed. We have done 125 billion so far. David some people say ceos because of their prominence, should take more public positions on issues of Public Policy. Do you agree with that or do you try to stay out of Public Policy or public controversy . Brian i think there are two parts to that question. We firmly believe that we have to both produce great profits and returns for shareholders and we have to deliver what society needs. Because as a bank, we are only going to be successful if society is successful. Our decision about guns and things like that, which we made two years ago now, a year and a half ago, whatever it was, was driven by the fact that we had well over 100 people in the venues where these horrible tragedies were taking place, inside the pulse nightclub, las vegas. So the teammates are saying you we need to do something here. David what are the leadership secrets . Is it hard work, intelligence, luck, persistence . What is it that you would say enabled you to rise to the top and what would you say to somebody who is looking at you as a role model to say this is what i did to get where i am . Brian i think it is all those things. Ill let the intelligence be decided by other people. It is all those things. You have to work hard. You have to find out what is important to the company. You have to be successful in the areas that have impact. But the number one thing when i talk to young teammates is be curious and keep learning. David you have been the ceo of bank of america, roughly, almost 10 years now. At some point would you like to come to washington and be the secretary of the treasury, chairman of the federal reserve, member of congress or some other position in government . Brian i think i have had the honor of having one of the best jobs you can have. So i am completely happy, and i plan to do this as long as the board will have me. David if the president called you someday and said, the country needs you to be secretary, chairman of the fed, you would say . Brian call mr. Rubenstein. [laughter] david i think that call is unlikely to happen. Everyone uses their phone differently. Thats why Xfinity Mobile lets you design your own data. You can share 1, 3, or 10 gigs of data between lines, mix in lines of unlimited, and switch it up at any time. All with millions of secure wifi hotspots and the best lte everywhere else. Its a different kind of wireless network, designed to save you money. Switch and save up to 400 a year on your wireless bill. And save even more when you say bring my own phone into your voice remote. Thats simple, easy, awesome. Click, call or visit a store today. As a child he grew up doing mathematics and was perplexed by anomalies that did not make sense to him, even the rules for scrabble and monopoly. So he changed the rules. He could not make mathematics work for him away he would lie have liked best way he would have liked so he turned economics. Richard thaler got his phd at the university of rochester where he went into the faculty until he discovered the work of Danny Kahneman and made his way to stanford to study with him. This led him to new ways of using economics to explain the way people actually