Recognize me of my tie was fixed. Just leave it this way. I do not consider myself a journalist. I begin to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a how do youity firm define leadership. What is it that makes somebody tick . Talk about your career at bank of america and how you became the ceo because i think it is interesting. To go back to your background, you are from ohio and your father was a chemist . Brian my father was a chemist. David you are the sixth of eight children. When you have eight children you share a lot. Brian you have to be very aggressive of always getting your share, lets say that. David you went to Brown University and you are the cocaptains of the rugby team. Rugby is a top sport. Tough asit is not as banking. Brian nothing more powerful to see one of those scrubs. I was never in there, because i was not big enough. It is a fantastic teamwork game. That is consistent. The teamwork, all players participate consistently. David you graduated you went to law school. Brian i played rugby there too. David where were you more of a star . Notre dame or brown . Brian you went back to work david you went back to rhode island and practiced law. The highest calling of mankind, private equity. Brian one of the reasons i quit being a lawyers i had worked with our private equity firm, the private equity firm and i structured deals. That is what led the ceo to say come work with us and quit being a lawyer. It was an inquisitive bank and did a bank merger with the bank of boston. You state with the company. When the ceo of bank boston took over, he decided the combined bank was not big enough and so we ultimately discussed selling it to a number of other people. Ultimately it was bought by bank of america. Is that right . Brian that goes to the scale of banking and what you can achieve. It was the First Nationwide bank and that is something we can achieve and something nobody else could achieve. David and for a while you became the general counsel of the entire bank of america. From december 2008 to 2009. David 40 days and 40 nights. Was there a slaughter . Brian there was the merrill transaction and a few other things. By that time the United States was in the middle of a financial crisis. Bank of america was doing a favor for the United States government when it was told it should by merrill lynch, is that right . A scramble toas try to stabilize the firms that were less stable, jp morgan, bear stearns, ourselves, merrill lynch, we cannot stabilize lehman brothers. David at one point the ceo bank of america was leaving, and they had to get a new ceo. You are the general counsel. Brian i was. I was the general counsel for a short into of time. I cannot keep a job for a while. Year because we late summer or lewis,all of 2009 ken 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 but at some time in the future. It was a difficult process for all involved. They finally concluded i would be ceo and i have been ceo january since january 1, 2010. David since you have been running it for 10 years, market capitalization is up 54 , stock price is up about 76 . What did you do that made these events happen and make bank of america the happen and make bank that made these events happen and made bank of america Largest Consumer bank in the u. S. . Brian it was straightforward and there was some additive 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. We got rid of 40 different units we didnt need. We got out of business like outside the United StatesWealth Management businesses which we did not make any money on. The issue that got in the middle and made it more interesting was that the defaults and mortgages kept building. The issue that was building was unique. The question was, he had to take it and get it away. The vision was to have everything a customer, company, or Institutional Investor needs, but keep it to that. 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 a competitor. Those are major changes. David before you are the ceo, the bank made an investment in countrywide, then made an acquisition. It turned out to cost the bank 50 billion or Something Like that. Maybe one of the worst acquisitions in the Financial Services world for quite some time. They got in trouble because of subprime mortgages, among other problems. Are you making a lot of subprime mortgages today . Is the bank doing that . Brian we are 20 of the mortgage market, and 15 was done through other people. We dont do that anymore. The only way a person gets a Mortgage Loan at bank of america is to have a bank of america teammate or digitally directly from us. We do not by mortgages from other people. That has left us with 5 of the market. It is a much more stable environment. David the future of the bank looks strong, but at one point during the crisis, the bank needed more money and you had to call a man named Warren Buffett. Was that easy to make that call . Did you say any terms you want is fine . How did that work . Brian Warren Buffett called us. David he did . Brian he called and got into the call centers and asked to speak to me. They dont transfer anybody to the ceo, so he found an investment banker. They worked with the cfo and they called and i talked to him. He basically said 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 needs stability, 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 rest around the mortgage industry. He put the money in. From that day forward, my teammates went back to work the next day saying he was 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. He does that. If you are a common shareholder and you bought that day you would have fared as well as he did. You had to have the courage. He had 5 billion at a time others didnt have it. David he bought stock at a time the stock was less than half of where it is now. Brian 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 would i do well . Brian you would do well. You would do well. We have the best franchise across all the businesses and financials in the largest economy in the world. We have two or three franchises doing with global companies. What more do you want as investors . David do you think doddfrank legislation is working or would you modify it . Brian capital liquidity, stress tests, those resumes 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 probably you wanted to. Use very often testified and so forth. Do you think that attitude today in washington towards banks is more favorable than the Great Recession . Brian the attitude in general is more favorable because the economy is growing, unemployment is low. That is a better backdrop then 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 is at an alltime high. Our growth is exceeding the industry. Those are all very good things for our company. That was built through a lot of tactics we took, but the general atmosphere is better, largely because people see we are trying to help. David i think it is fair to say that the banks were beaten up by the regulators and congress and the doddfrank legislation was passed. Do you think doddfrank is working or would you modify it . Brian the Banking Industry selfinsures itself. If you are an insured 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 is you see activity leak outside the industry. That is what the problem was. Most of the major issues were companies that werent covered by the core regulatory umbrella. Doddfrank changed that. That was a good thing. They now have purview over the whole industry. 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 when it wasnt. Overall, doddfrank has corrected a lot of the issues. Underneath it, there are pieces like the volcker rule 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. The capital liquidity, stress tests, those regimes are critical. The reason the 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. Are four bigthere 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 or is it working . Brian i think it works well. A large amount of the industry, 5000 banks, so you have much more varied financial industry. One thing that makes our industry strong is the variety of participants. We have the largest market share along with those colleagues. If you look at us as a percentage of gdp relative to other countries, it is a completely unconsolidated business. We have the largest retail share, about 15 . If we were cocacola or pepsi, we think that is not good market share. So there is a lot of room to grow. David what percentage of profits or revenues are from outside the u. S. . A large percentage . Brian 15 to 20 . David are you reasonably happy with that . Is that where expansion can come . Brian we are expanding outside the United States, and so we have a business and all of the made trading venues that we do in capital markets, trading for asset managers. We have a company that does corporate and Investment Banking and Treasury Services around the world. We are investing dramatically in those by adding people. It does not mean acquisitions, you are just adding more people and opportunities whether in asia, latin america, the middle east, europe, etc. We can grow because basically connectivity of the 2000 or 3000 Largest Companies and the connectivity of midsized u. S. Companies, which are the largest provider of services around the world, it needs people like us, and we are happy to do it to help them transact, engage in trade, import, export, all of that. It is a great business. David in the old days, if i wanted to get some cash, i would take out my checkbook and go to a bank and write out a cash and they would catch it if they could make sure i had enough money in the account. You need physical accounts and how many people actually walk in and cashed checks that way . Brian the numbers are surprising. We have 4300 branches today. At the highest point, 6100. Today, you have to be high touch and hightech. In those branches, and the next 24 hours, about 800,000 people come in and transact. Course of last quarter, second quarter, we had 1. 4 billion consumer actions and and 1. 3 billion would be 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 determined. Now it is not. We had a 100yearold person sign up for mobile banking. David do you get a discount if youre 100 years old . Brian its free. Its hard to give it away. We do a great job with millennials. We open accounts at twice the rate of the millennial population, so we are getting a share of millennials. But 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. David what about cryptocurrencies, do you believe they will replace u. S. Dollar currencies or just supplement them . Brian if you separate the two different thought processes, one is moving money digitally. 55 of payments by consumers moves digitally today. The u. S. Is still a cash society. Youre trying to move paper and currency out. An anonymous currency is a separate question. That doesnt work so well, but the idea of digitizing cash, we in cash,ut 5 billion chlorine, and currency. There was 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 . Are you going to do something similar . Brian blockchain is the connection between that. We have 45 patents on blockchain, another 45 in the process. We believe the idea of distribute in technology and finding ways to move money and the uses around trade. We have to use a lot of information and money at the same time and documents. Those are good uses for it. I do not know whether i would call that a cryptocurrency. It is still u. S. Dollars, it is still a fiat currency distributor 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 . Dress appropriately, right . Brian make sure you demonstrate curiosity and make sure that you demonstrate you really want to help people. David i dont think the people watching the show are generally bank robbers, but for those bank robbers who might have tuned in, is it easy to go to a bank today put up a gun and get some cash out and escape or is it harder than ever . Brian it is harder than ever. David because . Brian because it is not very fruitful exercise. David are people doing that anymore . Brian it doesnt happen often. It still happens. You catch the people. That is the deterrent. Once i went we have cameras that work all around the firm. The branches record things. I went to see it. They were going to show me what a bank robbery look like and there actually was a live robbery at that time. 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. A teammate is an employee, a colleague . Why do you use the word teammate . Brian we are in competition to beat everyone else, and that is what teammates do. David how is the diversity . Brian we are half men, half women. David minorities . Brian representative of population levels for the various demographics and ethnic breakdowns. We have work to do in terms of like the traditional Financial Advisor work, in terms of women. We have areas we need to work on. We know those. We are driving at them but we measure it carefully. Six Board Members are women. Half of my Management 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 to the core training program. We bring in 1000 plus kids. We have 1400 for the summer, hiring 1000 this year. Just in the commercial and as and in corporate banking. You get more broadly in the company, we hire 4500 recent College Graduates a year in the branch system. There is no doubt people want to work for us. It is a great career. It is a chance to help people people work for a company because they want to help. David you have three children. Do you recommend Financial Services jerome children . Brian two of them work in finance. And they like it. One has been added for five years. They work at competitors because they cant work for our company. They like it. David if i am a College Student watching this discussion and getting ready for a bank of america interview, what should i do . I should dress appropriately, right . Cut my hair maybe . Brian in my mind, it is the same thing. Make sure you demonstrate curiosity and make sure you demonstrate you really want to help people. David bank of america has a large charitable undertaking, 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 charity we have and 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 dollars for low and moderate income housing. Then there is a volunteer, which is 2 million hours a year on top of that. 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 300 environmental 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 there are two parts to that question. We firmly believe that we have produced great profits and returns for our shareholders and we have to deliver what society needs. As a bank, we are only going to be successful if society is. Our decision about guns and things like that that we made two years ago, a year and a half ago. It was driven by the fact that a time we had well over 100 people in the venues where these horrible tragedies had taken place, inside the pulse vegas, so the teammates are saying you 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 someone looking at you as a role model should look at you and say this is what i did to get where i am . Brian it is all those things. Ill let the intelligence be decided by other people. You have to work hard. You have to find out what is important to the company. You have to be successful in areas that have impact. The number one thing is be curious, keep learning. David you have been the ceo of bank of america almost 10 years now. At some point would you like to come to washington and the come to washington and be secretary of the treasury, chairman of the federal reserve, member of congress or some other position in government . Brian i had the honor of having one of the best jobs you can have. I am completely happy and i am happy to do it as long as the board will have me. David if the president called you someday and said, the country needs you to be secretary of the treasury or chairman of the fed, you would say . Brian call mr. Rubenstein. [laughter] david that call is unlikely to happen. Because you cant get to the theater, were bringing the theater home to you, with xfinity movie premiere. Theres a world full of other trolls. How different can they be . Our brandnew service that lets you watch all the latest movie releases from the comfort of home. Trolls world tour available now. I will protect you no matter what, pinky promise. Just say xfinity movie premiere into your voice remote to bring the theater to you. David wended the brilliant idea come to you to set up a Brokerage Firm . We wanted to build on how Companies Make money and not how customers wanted to do business. David your ads have featured your face. The director of advertising said what it we use your picture . I said are you kidding me . We tried one and the results were up tenfold. David you have any stock tips . Charles how about an index fund . Would you fix your tie . David people would not re