Salomon Brothers, E. F. Hutton, Shearson, Lehman, Smith Barney... all these firms disappear, and the Street just rolls on.
If you underperform for your owners, eventually they pick up their bat and ball and go home.
The Brexit vote, the presidential elections in the U.S., a number of the other regional political movements - that's not a flash in the pan.
I think anybody who says they don't care about being liked is lying. I care if my dog waves its tail when I come home. But you're not going to make everybody happy.
Banking's a sexy industry! Creative - it's dynamic, it's global, it's fast-moving, you bring a lot of talented people together!
I think Americans are very verbal and Aussies are more circumspect, and that can come across as being clearer. It can also come across as abrupt and cold. Some people find me to be abrupt and cold. That's just my personal style.
Traditional consumer banking will come under extreme pressure as its central deposit-taking and lending functions are challenged by online savings vehicles, crowdfunding, and loan syndicating by such nontraditional competitors as insurance companies, pension and hedge funds.
I'm not that interested in just being around powerful people for the sake of it.
I certainly have no regret living in the U.S. The quality of life in Australia is good, but it is bloody good here as well.
I have a direct way of speaking. What I do is tend to lay out everything; I tend to tell people what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it and what is success for us and what's not... without being too parochial about it, I think Aussies are more direct.
You can fire your revenues by firing your people.
Bringing world leaders together as human beings rather than political machines is very important.
Markets shouldn't be moving in a straight line.
You will not see, in my career, the kind of returns this industry had in 2005 and 2006 for a very simple reason - the banks were undercapitalized, and returns are a function of earnings and capital.
Look, you deal with the choices you are confronted with.
The threshold question: Will banks continue to exist? The answer is yes, because society will still need the two essential functions they provide: mobilization of capital from providers to users, and facilitation of payments for goods and services.
If you're just interested in the prestige of banking, that's not what's going to sustain you. You have to be interested in what we do: managing and originating capital, helping issuers and investors come together is great, bringing these companies to life.
That is what made America great: that everyone had the opportunity to be a winner. And I think it's still there. I'm certainly a beneficiary of it.
I figured if you live in a country long enough, you want to be a part of the political process, and you sort of owe it to your hosts. They've accepted you. Why wouldn't you accept them?
You can't operate a business running at a loss, and particularly if you're doing it by paying yourselves. It just doesn't fly.
