YouSaid · the spoken record

John Studzinski

lines on the record: 23
first: 2018-09-10
most recent: 2018-09-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And I had a session with those guys last week. And look, I think in my mind, this is an experience-based business. And so I try to always tell young people, join your firm, try to be as broad-minded as you can. You work on a deal, you work on a transaction, you can kind of look at your job very narrow and just kind of do what somebody tells you to do and stay within your lane, or you can kind of look broader, see what the guys in different product areas, different groups, see different geography, different divisions do, and kind of try to as best as you can in the limited time that you have, learn a little bit of what they do as well to get as broad of an experience as you can. So that's usually the advice I give to young people starting out.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have always been intellectually curious about how all these businesses fit together. Got a lot of great businesses at the firm. Our clients have pretty diverse and complex needs. So I kind of like to figure out how to unlock all of this experience, knowledge, thought leadership within the firm to help our clients solve their biggest challenges. And so by moving around between different products, time zones, divisions, it's helped me complete the picture in my mind and allowed me to show the clients the best of Goldman Sachs. So I think that's been a fun 20 plus year career so far. I'm hoping that I can continue to learn more.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you've also had a lot of roles at Goldman before your role running the investment bank with John Waldron and Greg Glemkow. You ran the financing group. You co-headed Global Natural Resources. And you also ran Latin America. As you've moved around the firm, what are some of the things that all those leadership roles have had in common and what's been different?”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Generally, the two markets when I compare the US and Europe are getting more similar than they've probably been ten, fifteen years ago. I think from a competitive perspective, you got the same US banks playing here as we have in the US, but we got a lot of local champions in each of the markets. I think as we've talked about, the capital markets are less developed here. And so I think it requires some more creativity and ingenuity around some of the situations, but that makes it also interesting and fun. I'd say I got here in a great time. I got back here right after the French election. And so a lot of business enthusiasm certainly on the continent and a good bit of increased growth. So it's been very positive environment's been fun to be back.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you grew up in Europe, moved to the US for a big chunk of your career. Now you're back in Europe. What are the differences? What stands out from you in terms of the operating environment as you've seen both markets over the years?”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The capital markets are a big part of it because we have a whole slew of Europeans who've gone to US, raised money there, and have had the entrepreneurial spirit. And so they obviously grew up in Europe and got that entrepreneurial spirit, but they felt the need to come to US market to get capitalized. So I think that's part of it. I think some people talk about kind of a culture of being able to fail. And is it easier to fail in places other than Europe and more K and then you start the next thing and lots of studies around entrepreneurs having failed before they hit the big thing? And so it's a number of factors. There's obviously lots of smart, super well educated people. There's some great universities here. So I think there's a lot of ingredients available. But I think the capital markets definitely play a role in it. And then maybe some other cultural factors.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's generally some regulatory and populist backlash against kind of big tech. And as you said, most of these companies are headquartered in the US. I'd say Europe's become more focused on the kind of data protection issue. And you've seen some of the rules getting implemented earlier this year. But there still continue to be some concern around the size and scale of some of the bigger tech companies and what pressure and market power they have. We've seen it a little bit in a couple of deals where we've seen some delayed regulatory review, but generally speaking we have not really seen it in deal activity. And generally speaking, I'd say the tech world in Europe is actually in a good place where we've seen a number of large globally successful European companies. We've seen the IPO market for tech companies to be wide open, especially this year.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's still critical. I think that one of the biggest strengths of the US economy is the size of the capital market, the deep size of it, the liquidity, the fact that there's lots of early stage capital available, and I think you see it and what has come about in technology and the companies that have grown up in the US. So I think it's a pretty important for the European environment to keep working towards a broader capital market. And I think that's something that I think we've lost a little bit of steam on because of the Brexit discussion. It's taking a little bit of a backseat. I think a couple of the officials that were responsible for that topic in the EU were UK officials. And so tough for them to continue doing that.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's still less liquidity, less size, less transparency in the capital markets in Europe. And I think it's something that has an impact on overall growth and ability of capital, certainly growth capital for young companies. And I think it's something that we're going to have to watch out for during this whole Brexit scenario because that could further deteriorate the size of the capital markets as that was primarily a UK-based phenomenon.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're right. I think the European market is one of the big differences. The U.S. market has historically been super reliant on bank financing. There's obviously a lot of local bank competitors who've been providing that in the capital markets historically have been a much smaller percentage of corporate balance sheet. And I think that's changed since the financial crisis. We have a much deeper capital market now. We have a deeper capital market going on the investment grade side, on the non-investment grade side. I think you're seeing capital structures moving into more balance between bank lending and capital market space lending. But the European market is still behind a good bit. On the US market, I'd say on Tuesday's one is it's still more heavily bank oriented. And I'd say there's not a big deep functioning securitization market. So the banks keep holding all these assets on the balance sheet rather than the US where a lot of stuff gets securitized and broadly distributed into the capital.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where we opened up Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, and so on. And so it's a very similar strategy to have bankers in the regional communities, but also I think even in this digital world, there's still a huge impact of being physically close and being physically able to visit your clients' office and provice. That is a strategy we've been pursuing. We've probably gone a bit too concentrated in London with our coverage strategy, so we're moving that a bit out. And I think in a potential Brexit scenario, I think that'll be helpful, but I think we're doing this to increase the client connectivity.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It hasn't changed how we've run it yet. I think we have a bunch of contingency plans as you would expect us to have in place to think about various scenarios. Very little is actually known about what the impact is really going to be on the financial services industry. And so we're kind of eagerly waiting to see where it actually all finally settles down. But I think we've done some stuff away from Brexit that could potentially help in a Brexit scenario, but we did it not because of Brexit, but more of a general global strategy, which is we've been moving a number of our client coverage people, a number of our capital markets coverage people to the continent. So we've been moving them to Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm. And I think it's really an effort that is consistent with our global strategy to regionalize a bit more, get closer to clients, be much closer to what's happening, be able to be much more responsive to our clients in an ad hoc fashion and be part of the community.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not based in the UK. There's lots of very good companies here. There's a good amount of private equity activity. And you have a very transparent, actionable market here. So we haven't seen it in the deal activity yet, but I think we see our clients working on contingency planning. I think they all very focus on what the final plans are. And it's putting an air of uncertainty around their UK business that they have to handle.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots of details are obviously not known. I think people sink September, October will bring much more details, but hard to judge the ultimate impact. Just to put it in perspective, the UK is the second largest economy in Europe, fifth largest globally. So it's very important. Lots of debate about how this is impacting the UK economy. Has it yet? Will it in the future? I think the one factual fact that people are pointing out is that pre-Brexit the UK was one of the fastest growing economies in Europe now it no longer is. Having said that, when I look at it from our perspective in terms of deal environment, UK M&A deal environment is still quite active and we haven't seen a real noticeable impact so far on M&A environment in the UK in that there's probably lots of reasons for it. There's lots of high quality international business here. You look at the FTSE 100, a big, big portion of the revenues of the FTSE 100 are”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The gross we've had in US, in Europe, in how sustainable is it? What inning are we in on the gross cycle? Are we at peak asset valuation? How late in the cycle are we? So that's top of mind of our clients. Technological disruption, which is a big topic and is an opportunity and a threat. And so I think it's something where the view is the pace of change is very rapid. I think everybody is thinking about new entrants. People are thinking about the Amazon effect. People are thinking about how do I disrupt myself before somebody else does it to myself. Are there opportunities for my business? And so lots and lots of businesses that have looked stable for a long period of time are now susceptible to getting disruptants. I think that is top of mind of every management team. Fourth, cyber threats continue to be at the top of mind. I think something that people don't talk about as much, but I think most companies think about it, especially financial institutions, and it's a great worry. And I'd say on the”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good question. I think at any one of time, I think you can come up with a longer list of concerns than positives. Usually the positives outweighed, but let me give you five concerns that on people's mind. I think the first and foremost over the last few months has really been kind of trade war. And what does it mean? Nobody seems to exactly know what it means. Lots of questions around the presence negotiating tactics. Uncertainty is obviously not helping the market. It's not necessarily helping confidence even so it hasn't had a tremendous impact yet because most people in the corporate world and the vesta side are still assuming that the negotiations ultimately get to the right place, whatever right place is. And so let's hope this will turn out. But trade war continues to be top of mind and top of mind in almost every client meeting and board meeting that we go to. Second, I'd say, and this has been around for most of the year, is the sustainability duration of the current economic cycle. So we talked about”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Funds, pension funds grow in relevance on their own. They used to invest through the general partners of these PE firms, and now we see them in a growing sense doing deals on their own without a general partner involved to the account of the other part of that private capital world that is getting quite active.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'd say there are, I think it's a global phenomena. I think when you look at that whole world, now let me call it private capital for a second, I'll get into what I mean by that. Activity is basically an old-time high. About 20% or so of M&A activity comes from that universe. Now, what do I mean by that? That includes traditional PE firms as you think about it. But then we've seen a lot of crossover buyers that are either infrastructure buyers, some people call Core Fund, some people call them low-risk long-term PE. But what that really gets at is it's a slightly different alternative asset class that looks at way asset heavy, sustainable models, but is willing to take a lower return, especially in this current interest rate environment for perceived lower risk. Now you can debate if it's really low risk or if it's just P at a lower return, but there's a whole asset class around that. And then the third element of it is really we're seeing family office, sovereign wealth.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say it's a couple things. It's a response primarily to investor feedback that investors are trying to understand what are your key businesses, what's your company about, what's at the core of it, and what that looks like from a kind of streamlined perspective. So I think at the core, it's really around valuation, what's been driving valuation. I think the key to valuations has really become organic growth and just growth in general. And so we've kind of gone through a period where no top line grows, but lots of work on the margin worked and EPS went up. We've gone through a period of time where no top line grows but share purchases as a result. EPS accretion worked. I think we're getting more into a world where it's really gross, gross, gross on the revenue side and having organic growth. And I think that really requires companies to look at their portfolio and really think about what part of their portfolio can generate growth and kind of streamline down to that.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With very limited negative stigma attached to a failed kind of aggressive deal. So we've seen more of that activity in Europe, which has been something that we've seen in the US before. And then we have a good amount of uptick in activist activity. That's something, again, that emanated out of the U.S. We've seen it much more frequently in M&A situation in undervalued companies around Europe. And so as a result, lots of companies are working at what-if scenarios are thinking about. What should I do before the activist actually shows up and a lot of that has resulted in corporates looking at simplifying structures, streamlining their business mix, and doing transactions based on that?”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“European M&A activity consistent with global activity is super active, I think in terms of a scale, year-to-date volume exceed a trillion dollars, which is up almost fifty percent from last year, so significant activity. And I'll make a couple points to that. Large transformational deals remain top of mind. So when we look at deals larger than $20 billion, they contribute almost half of the overall volume, so quite significant. 75% of the activities driven by strategic acquirers. So when you look at companies in a pretty good balance sheet health, they've spent the last few years reducing cost, increasing cash flow. So they have a lot of resources to deploy. And so you see CEOs ready to be more aggressive and more quickly if it doesn't work.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, if I were to point out two, I'd kind of point out healthcare and then the telecom media technology cluster. And so you can call that three or one industries. But I'd say in both of these, there's a lot of strategic things going on. With the businesses, lots of different trends going on, which is resulting in a good amount of strategic discussions and then activities as well.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had say CO confidence remains quite strong in light of strong growth in the US, we have recovering growth in Europe, and we have a consumer that feels pretty good across the globe. So as a result, everybody's pretty open-minded to do strategic transactions and think about their businesses.”
2018-09-10 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · From Corporate Simplification to Recovering Growth: Europe's Business Environment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT