From Deal Making to Policy Making: Wilbur Ross, King of Bankruptcy & Former U.S Sec. of Commerce

hello there m& advisor Community this is Roger aginaldo and welcome back to the m&a advisor podcast since 1998 the m&a advisor's mission is to recognize achievement provide thought leadership and connect Professionals in mergers and Acquisitions for the purpose of improving your deal making craft and accelerating your deal flow whether you're an aspiring dealmaker a seasoned professional or just curious about the world emergers and Acquisitions you'll find something valuable and relevant in our podcast and now for today's podcast hello m&a advisor Community welcome to the m&a advisor podcast I'm Roger aginaldo the Creator and CEO of the m&a advisor the MMA advisor is the pre-eminent organization that recognizes Excellence honors achievement presents thought leadership and facilitates connections among the world's leading mergers and Acquisitions restructuring and deal making professionals join me as I talk to the best of the best in the m&a distressed investing restructuring and finance industry hold on to your seats because you are in for a treat today on our show we are very honored to welcome our special guest a longtime friend of the mmaa advisor and uh Lifetime Achievement Award recipient member of our Hall of Fame Wilbur Lewis Ross Jr hi Wilbur how are you okay okay for those of you who don't know Wilbur Ross I'm G to tell you give you a little bit of his bio Wilbur served as the Secretary of Commerce in the Trump Administration following 55 years of experience in Investment Banking and private equity and in this capacity he advised president Donald Trump on Commercial and economic affairs and helped American entrepreneurs and businesses create jobs and Economic Opportunity Wilbur's a native of North ber in New Jersey where he spent a significant portion of his business career at Rothschild Inc Wilbur negotiate on behalf of creditors in some of the highest profile bankruptcy proceedings in history including those involving PanAm remember PanAm uh tww Texico and drexo Burnham remember Shel Burnham after founding his own private Equity Firm in 2000 WL Ross and Company Wilbur purchased and restored many companies to profitability including those in steel coal textile and the banking Industries and over the course of his career Wilbur restructured more than $400 billion doll in assets earning him a distinguished reputation on Wall Street 2011 Bloomberg markets named him one of the 50 most influential people in global Finance m&a advisor has recognized Wilbur with a Lifetime Achievement Award he's been inducted into the m& advisor Hall of Fame and outside of business Wilbur has philanthropic work which has included significant support for the Japan Society The Brookings institution the blindheim foundation and numerous entities devoted to the Fine Arts including the Renee Margaret Museum in Brussels he's also an Advisory Board member of the Yale University School of Management Wilbur is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Business School and he and his wife Hillary Gary Ross have four children and may I add on that he also graduated from Xavier High School in New York City uh a nice private Jesuit High School in which actually my son attended as well I think I read in your upcoming Memoir to Will silur you were on the rifle team right you were on the rifle team over at Xavier so just to set the stage here and we're GNA we're going to talk a lot about Wilbur's early career how he got into uh Finance why he got into Finance why he chose that as a career fast forward through his numerous achievements in Deal making and then of course from 2017 to 2020 2021 um his time as uh Commerce secretary under the Trump Administration and then back to deal making but back in 2000 just a personal story to share and maybe Wilbur knows this or maybe he doesn't you were on the cover of business week and you were hailed the king of bankruptcy and we were just starting our conferences and events and I think I said here's a list of 2030 people that we would love to have as a keynote and I called all of them and your name was on it and then after that was an exhausting two or three days just leaving voic back in the day people didn't answer emails every everything was on the phone you had a call it was smile and dial right Wilbur everything was smile and dial and I love a message on your voicemail to hey we have a m&a uh conference that's in New York in October we'd love to have you speak and then crazy enough you called back left a voicemail now for those of you who are too young to know people left voicemails back in the day rather than texting or emailing Wilbur left a wonderful voicemail saying hey I'd love to be one of your Keynotes love to speak at your conference in merges and Acquisitions tell me some of the details and I'm in and and that's basically it and that was I think more than 22 two years ago Wilbur so thank you for certainly answering the call uh returning the call and then certainly speaking at our events and he spoke numerous times he has hosted Us in his home down in Palm Beach for a distressed in investing in turnaround Awards events and has advised myself and the MMA advisor over these last now we're over we're in our 26th year Wilbur thank you for joining our podcast thank thank you for answering the call 20 plus years ago and being a great supporter of the m&a advisor so we're just going to jump right into it early in your career you're at Xavier High School you go to I guess you go to Yale and then you decide Finance on W and Wall Street or did you what did you do what did you do before then and why did you decide to go into finance and if you weren't doing Finance or Wall Street what what else could you be doing or would you be doing well that's a whole lot of questions Roger I'll try to deal with well they're gonna have to buy your Memoir right where you're gonna have to read the whole right that's for the real inside information now my first real summer job was a very bad introduction to Capital I was a car Parker at Mammoth Park Jockey Club in Oceanport New Jersey the first day Louie the lot boss got all the kids together and said here's what's going to be happening there'll be a lot of car accidents because you're in a rush to get people their cars back and if they notice the accident before they leave the track the track will have to pay the insurance and you will be sat down for a week so he then described in great detail how to describe how to distract the car owner from the fact that his car was bashed up was the first time I'd worked for more or less a real company and I thought holy smoke gu's advising us how to J his customers so was not a good introduction I I later came to learn that this is quite an unusual thing and American honesty and integrity and business probably far better than that of almost any country in the entire world that was a weird introduction anyhow then I'm at Yale yeah IPS did you make good tips though yeah we worked for tips but he also said you want to supplement your tips you can buy a concession from me put a concession in a parking lot what on Earth could that possibly be well what it was was special places to park the cars this had nothing to do with the track authorities this fellow invented these conceptions on his own and so one would be parking the car into the tree under trees you would be amazed but how many people leave little children Andor pets locked in the car with six or eight hours while they're at the track on a boiling out summer day so that whole experience was a little bit otherworldly so then I'm off at B and one day I got a call from The Faculty advisor to the fraternity of which I was the president and he said what are you going to do this summer I said I go back to being a car Parker just like I had been before and he said no un leaving the University's endowment I'm going to a investment Boutique in New York and you're going to come with me as my clerk so you don't waste your time parking cars but you get to something that could live a future so I showed up there and it was a total contract the main partner was a man called Pete Buckner very religious man and the only bad thing about the job was I had to get up at 6:30 every morning leave my parents house come over to New York City and listen to Mr Buckner read from the Bible for a little bit and then we would meditate before we went on to the day's work but it was a total cont from before turned out they were mainly turnaround investors and so that was how I got a little bit of a start but they were passive investors they were portfolio people they didn't actually make the turnaround but they certainly benefited from it so that was a taste that you could really make money in all these troubled securities later I finished Yale and between Yale and Harvard Business School worked at JP Morgan and the first in their trust department and the first assignment they gave me on my own was to go to a closing at the famous William zond dorf's office he was a well-known real estate Speculator and what I was there to do was to gather up a 13th mortgage that one of the bank client uh was getting back for some transaction he'd had with uh Z morgage you mean the the 13th in line mortgage or the 13th yeah 13th in standing oh wow okay at the time I couldn't even in visualize the fifth mortgage let alone the 13 right right but while I I got there very early and while I was waiting for Mr zindorf up came this big bear of a man carrying a little chour dog and he put his arm around my shoulder and he said well young fellow you look a little troubled what's the matter and I said oh nothing sir it's just I've never seen a totally circular office before it was a very round space 360° review of New York and he said well let me tell you if you had been backed into an effing Corner as often as I have you would have a round office too so a year or so later he went bankrupt but by then I was back at school so I wasn't able to get involved so graduate from the business school so then you went you went to so after that experience the the company went bankrupt and you said well might as well go to Harvard Business School down so um I got a job with a go go money manager a fellow called Emy Dev and uh when I was just about to leave the Army and join the serm he died and on his death bed sold the firm to one of his clients Robert winr from the master etts family so now I had changed jobs without even getting a paycheck just the man died and he had a successor a few weeks later Jack Dorrance who was the controlling shareholder of Campbell st came in along with his pension fund people and they were trying to check out the new owner of the firm so they said at one point Bob why do we have so many sh of Lucky Friday Silver Mines in our portfolio Mr win turned to me and said willber do I have those shares too and I yes sir all of our accounts have the same percentage participation in it explained why uh Darren then said well thank you I understand it the following day he pulled all the accounts out because it was clear that this was not the same kind of manager that he had had so Mr Wier then decided he didn't like this business so well and he merged the firm with wood strub managed the money management invest yeah yeah he liked better like better being a client than uh being a proprietor so he merged with wood strs and it became wood strs in wiri they were a very conservative firm and they didn't like the Venture Capital business that we had so they took me as the most Expendable person and gave it to me to work it out run off the portfolio then they gave me two years to do it said I would get a very good bonus at the end if there was no litigation and no new money had to be put in by them so it worked out very well and then went big was this portfol remember how big the portfolio was at the time yeah and there were all kinds of things in it some were very good we sold them for a big price uh some were just things that never should have been invested but it taught me how to do workouts with the bank because we had about 40 names in it all together together then I went to work for a conventional research firm faulon Dawkins and Sullivan doing Airlines and that worked out very well and we were a very prosperous firm but then Along Came negotiated Commissions in the mid 70s and we went from having a 40% gross net profit margin and making 100% on Equity to a very modest rate of return so that's when I left and joined Rothchild they had been clients at clner and there brand the Investment Bank in New York and concluded as we watched what was happening in the junk bond Mark that the Advent of deliberate junk bonds had to mean one main thing and that was that there would be a lot more workouts of them so started to develop a practice of organizing the creditors to unite and present a concerted front to mostly Drexel Drexel in those days had must been a 90% market share and once we broke the ice and created a situation where the bond holders were unified the fees all got paid by the Target company so for Bond holders it was a great deal cost them nothing to get professional advice so that built the business very very well and we Diversified it from just doing creditor work to doing work representing companies going the whole nine yards in the process and ultimately strangely enough when Drexel went bust we represented the unsecured creditors in the Drexel of bankruptcy and that was that was quite a challenge yeah kind full full circle there right because you were working with Drexel and milkin and all those folks right yeah yeah yeah so PanAm tww Texico all of those workouts and bankruptcies you also did you represent the the creditors on those bankruptcies as well in the case of Texico we represented the equity committee okay Texico is a very unique bankruptcy in that it was a very profitable business with a very good balance sheet but there had been a company called penso that had made an agreement to acquire another Oil Company Texico interfered with that and got the deal away from them they brought litigation and they won in the Texas court and texaco's lawyers unlike most damaged cases did not put in expert opinion as to what would be the damages if they were found guilty of the charge which was tortous interference that proved to be a very big mistake because the Texas Court found against Tech and now the only testimony that was in the record was the testimony of pen oils advisor which said it was billions of dollars that had cost penoil so Texico appealed to the Texas Supreme Court lost there and now filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court yep very famous case and to protect themselves while that was pending they filed for chapter 11 because in a chapter 11 any pending litigation is stayed until the bankruptcy is resolved so by then with a crude interest the Judgment had gotten to be around 10 billion dollar which would have been highly deluded to the technico shareholders so the Texico Equity committee the largest of which members was Carl icon Carl was a very big stockholder in it and we tried to get Texico to agree to settle it because Supreme Court takes relatively few cases then half the time upholds the decision anyway so we tried to convince them they wouldn't do it so I arranged for to go see penoil and we as the equity committee worked out the deal with penoil to paid them a little over three billion dollars and that was the most that Texico could afford to pay without deluding the equity so it was a very important number to our committee this made the Tex too team very angry because they wanted vindication and they were convinced that this was a very unfair decision that had been lodged against them anyhow it got settled and uh the bankruptcy court approved the settlement shareholders approved that Carl tripled his money so everybody was happy and that's one of the things that people should carry away from bankruptcy not every case is as unique as Texico but every case is unique and there's some aspect of bankruptcy law that addressed properly can be used to your advantage in that oneoff uh situation so that's one of the things that people need to realize the other thing they need to realize is really can't let emotion get in the way of the settlement I understand why the texco management was upset they really felt they done nothing wrong but it was a question of potentially losing 10 billion dollar in getting diluted to death or just paying three billion odd and having no delution we felt that was a fairly easy arithmetic call in its own way that was unique Drexel was unique and another Regard in that there they had been in the early days the most profitable firm on Wall Street they were earning over $500 million a year n then as the and that was in the 80s so this was a heck of a lot of money yes oh that was real money back then right now that's like a month worth of debt on the interest but anyhow so then when the junk bond market collapsed DX had to file and because they were so leveraged and in many of the Securities that were in their portfolio they were the main Market maker so their demise collapsed the Securities to a very bad price well what that meant was it would likely have to be a liquidating chapter 11 rather than the normal chapter 11 where you convert some debt to equity get rid of some claims and you recapitalize the company and it reemerges well here it wasn't going to be able to reemerge but in order to preserve reputation with its reputation so bad mil and went to prison all everybody everybody was for the exits right yeah so what we had to do was get the court to agree that we would create a new company with a new management it would hold the bulk of the portfolio and hopefully work it out over a period of years and it did was a unique thing in that Drexel never reemerged itself all all that reemerged was a special purpose holding company having the assets and they eventually got 70 plus% recovery so it turned out to be good but again the idea was each case is unique each case has some unique aspect of bankruptcy law that's particularly relevant to so I want to go over how you go from an advisor at rild into your own private Equity Firm but did you during that time period you also represented the creditors in some of the Trump casinos right you represented and did is was this the first time you met Donald Trump back in the 80s yeah it was the first time I met him commercially I knew him slightly from New York Social Circles and that too was a unique case in that the casino financed its Inception from Grand zero both with Trade Credit and with an $800 million First Mortgage Le it never paid one coupon on the mortgage as you pay a coupon every six months this didn't make one single payment so naturally the creditors were furious with myth case they were mostly insurance companies who were buying subprime so we had a very public during the underwriting couldn't they see the cash flow I mean again most of our L listeners understand all this stuff right the cash flow all of that so it something must have went wrong in the underwriting process well there was no cash flow because it was still constructing the casino so they it was literally it was the first mortgage financing of the St they didn't sell any Equity Trump had all the equity and said they sold 800 million of morgage fund now how they got people to buy them who knows Trump's Trump is a tremendous promoter right so he's yeah yes so anyhow we had a very public very acrimonious uh bankruptcy and strangely enough Carl ion was also the big Bond holder in the Trump Taj Mahal we had worked together before in the Texico and so we knew each other pretty well and eventually we got to a solution with Trump where we got the old interest the unpaid interest we got full principal amount and we got a minor minority of the so the holders came out pretty well but it was a very strange bankruptcy because it went bankrupt before it ever really had a b a business just as it had financed before once again the thesis everyone well then then that's how they the equity through converting the debt into Equity I get it sounds no we didn't we got the equity as a kicker we got the full principal amount of the mortgages we wiped out the unsecured creditors and got 40 odd per of the equity and that was another principle of bankruptcy figuring out what your adversary really needs as a bottom line to have a consensual deal and this case the key was Trump wanted to keep majority ownership of the company so we put some independent directors on put some limits on what he could do but he ended up in control of the equity and he got out from under any personal liability remember it was a partnership that had issued the bond so he was person Ally liable he was personally yeah so as well conceivably there was another layer between him and the public but he was at RI a possible individual liability but he was certainly at risk of losing control losing all of his but we had concluded that because his Persona was so well defined with the public who are his gamblers we felt that the casino would be worth more with him remaining in control than it would if we knocked him out of the picture so that took a lot of convincing of the bound hold because they're getting appreciate how embarrassing it is you're some big insurance company and you bought a big bunch of bonds and never got one coupon so there there was some or Carl ion you can't roll over Carl icon so pretty tough too so no no no no so that that as a thing again it had unique characteristics as a bank well that fascinating that those are just fascinating uh stories let's transition now I mean we I think we just went over about 35 years of life in 101 15 minutes but this is even a probably your if you will the second part of your career if you will which is UN Finance Wall Street but into private Equity right right yeah well the way that came about was this we had a very good advisory market share and our fees had gotten to be quite big per month so that meant that smaller companies could not afford to hire us because there wasn't enough value in the whole system to justify those fees so we decided to start a private Equity Fund called Rothchild Recovery Fund and its purpose in life would be mainly to buy into bankrupt businesses that we were not in a position to advise either because we lost the competition although that wasn't too often or more often because they were too small to afford the fees so we now had two ways of participating in the bankruptcy process same team ran both now obviously you couldn't be an investor in the company you were advisor to so they were separate in that sense but it gave us a broader scope right right the conflict and bankruptcy intern yeah bankruptcy doesn't allow you to laws right there can't be another interest hold so it gave us another whole mechanism for participating then we we did that for a couple of years and then there was some management changes in the Rothchild group and the incoming CEO and I were quite incompatible so we worked it out that I would buy the business that I had created namely the invested business from them I would agree not to continue in The Advisory business just to do the investing and so at age 61 I became literally an entrepreneur kind of a late gloomer in that sense and naturally we couldn't remember a press release if I remember a press release from 20 plus years ago I think it said you you began it or announced it on your birthday which I believe is April 1st is that am I right with that no it wasn't my birthday yeah no what what it was I felt that for a 61y old to give up a very high-paying very secure job in favor of being a Speculator in what was then a fairly small private Equity Fund that first one only had 300 and some odd million in it so I felt April Fool's Day was the right time to to do it would have been real happen s but with the birthday as well so we then that was technically a change in control and so we had to solicit the investors because they had the right to redeem every single one stayed my entire Ste team stayed even the the guy who ran the mail room and then we went off on our own and then years later when we had gotten quite a bit bigger investco made an acquisition bid to us and that was an unusual transaction in itself in that Invesco is a trillion dooll investment manager mostly relatively open market paper especially at that time and they wanted to try a little bit of alternative investing so we worked at De and and they acquired it and worked fine they made some money out of it we made some money and when I went into government obviously had to sell that hold so that ended it and meanwhile I had been gradually transitioning the control over I was be I had become Justice chief strategy officer not the CEO so that was a very nice transition into government yeah and then you and then also you were doing a number of Fairly large Financial Services deals tell us about that transaction I think that was a pretty good one for you yeah well the first one we did was Bank United which was the very the biggest bank in Florida biggest independent this was during the subprime mortgage crisis and they had a portfolio that was really terrible they were their specialty was 95 to 100% loan to value ratio loans to nonresident Latin American borrowers buying a vacation property in Miami you can imagine IM in what a toxic portfolio that was so we and Toronto Dominion were literally the only biders in the bankruptcy but it was a quite large transaction and so I joined forces with black Jone and Carlile we each went oneir oneir 13 and 18 months later 18 months later when public in the biggest bank IPO in the history of the country so it was a very quick workout and then we did Bank of Ireland we did Northern Rock in the UK with Richard Branson virgin money we did a bank in Greece Euro bank we did the Bank of Cyprus we did some banks in the midwest we did some banks in the PA Civic North was so we during that period of the sort of 2008 to 20101 much of our activity was Financial we also had bought the third largest subprime Mortgage Services we had concluded that well the origination business obviously had gone by the boards because the defaults were so high but the servicing was still a good business so we bought the servicing part of a bankrupt mortgage originator so we were doing a lot of financial services you were quite right and that's the other thing about bankruptcy at least bankruptcy investing just as in the Normal public markets things go into favor they go out of favor in distressed investing Industries tend to go bad as an industry think about it at one point it was all the retailers at another point it was all the airlines then it was a lot of financial institutions so you have to be a little bit Advil and notice that it's changing notice that where the demand for bankrupt the advice is coming from is changing and you've got to staff up with specialized knowledge particularly with highly regulated industry like the banking industry is so there are a lot of lesson to learn but the idea look for the uniqueness look for yes we're going to transition sort of into into politics and government in your sort of part three or chapter three of your career but for those who are listening we're sort of more m&a dealmaker audience here what industries are which or are you looking at would you be looking at what are the things that you're seeing out there right now right well right now I don't have a fund and I don't have an advisory firm so you do have you are you working with the spa right now though right or you yes but a whole different thing I I think right now the big glamorous thing in the public market is high-tech for the moment it's artificial intelligence two three years ago it was biotech biotech now is way out of favor there are lots of stocks that went public at 1012 a share now trading 60 80 cents a dollar some of them at least for at a point when I was buying some of them which rating fill less than their net cash so you were getting the whole science component for free and getting more cash with no debt because these very young companies really don't have meaningful debt I I think there will be further opportunities in Hightech you see like in crypto blockchain any of those types of things do you run well I I'm a big believer in blockchain blockchain is already kind of transforming uh a lot of financial services it's very real I I've always been skeptical of crypto and that cost me a lot of money because I never bought one coin or one share of the crypto promoter so I don't know if I'll ever be right that it isn't real but I I just don't like to invest in things that I can't quite understand and I don't quite understand what the charm is from we're a long way from the gold standard so let's transition I just this is just a a great conversation th thus far and I'm appreciate your time we're on with Wilbur Ross let's go right into sort of chapter three of your career which is politics now you've always been you've always been a contributor to politics you've been you're married a former lieutenant governor I mean you so you've been you know in and around politics you've raised money for both Democrats and Republicans I think you supported George right uh or maybe yeah yeah I think you did right and then of governor of New York and then of course you supported Trump and then Trump made you selected you as a Commerce Secretary I have one sort of basic question regarding uh Secretary of Commerce and look I'm a I think I'm a a pretty educated guy and all of those types of things what does a secretary of Commerce actually do let's just like what let's go to those Basics and what are you supposed to do and and to expand that role when you were working with Trump sure the Commerce department is one of the most complicated departments we have everything from uh big responsibility for trade policy export controls tariffs we're the ones who originated the steel and aluminum tariffs to the weather bureau to the National Institute of Science and Technology oh I didn't know that oh to operating to operating 17 satellites to the census um to the minority development agency need not go on goes on and on and on yeah is the SBA under that are you under are you SBA under no no no that's SE yeah that's on under treasury but we have the minority development we're also the Telecom advisors to the president so it's got an extreme when we were responsible for commercializing space so it had a very wide portfolio and what was especially intriguing was that the 2020 census would be coming up during the Trump presidency that meant we had to go from a little bit under 50,000 employee which is quite a few themselves to hiring another 400,000 temporary part-time workers wow to take the census that in of itself is it was an enormous management Challenge and it became even more so because you take the census as of April 1st this April 1 keeps recurring in my life so as a it and 2020 right pandemic yes in 2020 so that's right when Co hit so now we had to hire the 400,000 odd people in the face of Co get them personal protective equipment convince them that it would be safe for them to go around door too taking down the information so it became an incredible Challenge and then it became a big litigation because I wanted to put the citizenship question back on the Cent it had always been on got taken couple of presidents before us and that became very litigious so that was it on did it go on no it did not did not oh it did not R Court ultimately said we couldn't do it in a sense that was a disappointment but we did enumerate 99 plus% of the houses despite all all the problems of covid litigation and everything else so I think that was a major achievement yeah yeah and the census is used a lot a lot of it is used for government funding oh uh arations uh lots of different redistricting yeah yeah right there Al also do some rist using utilizing that as well now yeah 40% of all the factual information that put out to the public by the federal government comes from census yeah yeah wow that's that's amazing so let let me focus on one one of the things that I think Trump talks about even today which is sort of the the tariffs they put on the Imports a lot of people see that as protectionist and an isolation for America to be doing that it's really leveling the playing field let's see what it's really all about I think that's a very big accomplishment from you and the administration and look maybe a 100 years ago it's protectionist and isolationist but with the internet and with air travel we're never going to be we're always going to be a global you know country right it's just really leveling the playing field on on and services that that we import the idea of the tariffs wasn't to be isolationist but it was to deal with things that countries were doing that they shouldn't have done the really is no such thing as free trade in today's world and every country has trade barriers both tariff barriers and non-tariff trade barriers so this was merely meant to offset those and to protect our Industries it was protectionist in that sense but I don't think protectionism should be a pajor of term what better Duty does government have than to protect its citizens what better Duty and commercially than to protect its business what better Duty terms of Labor Market than to avoid his companies being inap appropriately put out of business yeah so well it became a very negative term it really shouldn't have been I think Trump taking that case I think I think his vice presidential pick is going to make that has is going to make that case as well to protect not only American interests but American workers so I think I think they're making that case I think it's a rational case and I think they hopefully succeed in that two two questions regarding Trump and then we'll go over and go into your Memoir which is gonna which I've read it it's a fascinating read a lot of great stories in it a lot of dealmakers listening to this podcast when the American public says we want to vote for a businessman we want to vote for someone who runs most people I guess the common people who think businessman they're just looking at profit and loss and all that but sort of businessman entrepreneur he like they're dealmakers they're negotiators Trump makes the case that look I'll go over to Putin I'll go over to I'll go over to North Korea I'll talk to anybody just to sit down and negotiate and talk to people describe Trump as a dealmaker negotiator describe your experience of him with that well it's interesting that even though both Carl Aon and I first really got to know him under very adverse circumstances namely his company's bankruptcy we both came away supporting him for the presidency that tells you a lot because when you encounter someone under very very bad times you get to know what they're made of and we both concluded that what he was made of was something that's important and useful and good think about it this way whatever else people may think about how he ran the Taj Mahal or anything else he is the only person in the history of the world to make himself a personal brand name in real estate that's Global his name on a building whether it's in South Korea or it's in France or it's in us or it's anywhere sells the building for a higher price than it would have that Inn of itself if he had accomplished nothing else that in of itself would be a Monumental achievement it's got plenty of weather achievements as well and I think in terms of his presidency the biggest single achievements were the economy was humming unemployment was very low there were the biggest problem businessmen would come to see me about was they couldn't find workers but we didn't have inflation out of control the way it got to be later well that was one set of accomplish the other one if you notice there were no real shooting wars during Trump's whole four years because people were a little bit afraid of him they felt he was a little unpredictable he might really smack out at them and nobody really wants to be the most mortal enemy of of the US so he played that brilliantly you'll contrast that with what has followed we have Wars all over the place and we're being extended on many different fronts so I think those were the signature achievements of the Trump Administration and the Border he had the border under control so there was a huge Fe change from what had come before and certainly a big CA change from what came sub yeah yeah so what would the next Trump Administration assuming that he gets enough votes this time or gets to the Electoral College this time what would the next Trump Administration look like and will you Wilbur be participating are you're going to be you know doing anything within the administration well as to the second question let's just get him elected it's little early to divide up the spoil uh in terms of what it will be like I think it will be mainly restoring the country to where it had been getting the border under control getting the inflation truly under control because a lot of the inflationary problem comes from the administration's anti hydrocarbon policy and while the Federal Reserve doesn't like to count the price of fuel or the price of food when they're calculating inflation I can promise you the average American citizen count both because they are big part of his pocketbook so I think the first order of business for the administration is to get us back where we were under Trump that will be a huge achievement in and of itself now fortunately a lot of the damage that was done under uh Biden was done by executive order and that's good in this regard whatever was done by executive order can get undone so I would guess in the early weeks of the Trump presidency you're going to have whole Forest of trees mowed down with new executive orders uh Trump had put in a rule for the cabinet department if you want to propose any new regulation you must couple it with elimination of at least two of comparable size so you could not put in net more regulation our our department actually cancelled eight for everyone that we put in and so did many other departments and I think when history finally has the distance of time I think they will recognize that even more important than the tax cuts were the deregulation and that that will clearly come back in you guys did an amazing job just in the four years that you were there a number of people like oh it doesn't matter who you vote for who don't I mean just look at the past three and a half years it does make a difference who the president is makes a huge makes a huge huge difference so look crossing fingers where I know where you stand on things but uh you know we're all for you in that so now let's get to your Memoir listen if you've been following the m&a advis you may already know that one of our missions is to provide thought leadership to m&a restructuring and deal making professionals Wilbur Ross is exactly that icon in the m&a industry and a thought leader to be locked up to you're coming out with a memoir this fall risk and returns creating success in business and in life and in our September event we're going to be uh recognizing emerging leaders these are leaders under the age of 40 in the deal making space we can scores of professionals and individuals who are in their early parts of their careers or before the age of 40 so I I think this Memoir could be maybe your road map to success of where you've come in what are some of the lessons learned that you can share with them and I I think that's why you wrote This Book Is Right to share these yes well part of the reason for writing the book was young people and I'm very gratified Yale schol of management is Distributing the book to every single student Harvard has an undergraduate course in entrepreneurship they're using it in that and Ed Alman the famous bankruptcy professor at NYU is using it in the bankruptcy courses at NYU that to me is what it's not a textbook as it's written more like a novel although it's quite factual not fiction and if you come to any of our Summits in the fall Wilber will have your books at our Summits as well to the guest to a registered guests at our event and you'll sign them too yes yes and but the usefulness of the book I think is not just young people I think a lot of our population has become very anti- work in fact I encountered a Reddit with six million subscribers that is just anti-work and you see pathetic things on it people not just kids but 40 year olds and what should be their Prime of light saying I just can't force myself to go to work anymore so the notion that hard work is something strange it's something weird something to be avoided at all cost that's the worst thing from the point of view of what used to be the American dream the other thing about it that's probably quite related is that people have gotten very risk adverse on a personal basis you say something that upset them and they go run to a safe room I don't know how people who think like that are ever going to run businesses or especially how they going to run the country so this is meant to say the only thing that can really hold you back is you yourself if you're willing to face up to the challenges that we all face and deal with them and recognize that sometimes you won't win sometimes you'll have a big setback and you just have to learn from that and go on you also have to take some career risk like I did at 861 going out on my own with a fairly big payroll that I had to cover as opposed to being a partner in a very wellestablished business you got to take a little bit of risk with without risk you limit your opportunity now can't be nutsy risk can't be betting on horses or something you say don't be afraid to take rational risks right right right see seize the wrapped within the challenges never assume anything verify everything adapt to circumstances evaluate and tolerate risk and summon fact informed courage yeah in fact one of our mantras when we were doing the distress investing was we wanted to take perceived RIS as opposed to actual RIS because perceived risk the market will pay you for by discounting the value of the paper but you don't necessarily get paid any more for taking actual risk than you do for taking what people somewhat misperceive as too much risk yeah so listen we're we're really overtime which is great we're going to obviously I wanted to leave with our young leaders if there's any other lessons you think they should be looking into and continuing the career CU a number of them in their 30s right they just may decide to to leave the career right so any to for them to continue and and you know what do you think they should be doing well they should go on Amazon and buy my book RIS and rewards it's the best $32 they'll ever spend and if they do that and if they take some of the lessons in it seriously I think they'll make thousands of percent return on that investment and it might be a good start into taking a small risk that can very well turn into a big game well even better they can come to a an m&a advisor leadership and dealmaking Summit on September 23rd and 24th and you'll be speaking you'll be one of the Fe featured speakers at our leadership event and then we're going to probably talk about leadership mostly leadership and your book there you'll also Grace Your Presence at our November event and then down in Palm Beach for the distressed investing and turnarounds in which your book will be available you can't wait we're going to put a link right into this podcast where you can where you can get Wilbur's Wilbur's book and that comes out in the fall in September yeah September September 10th okay terrific Wilbur is there I know we spoke about a lot of things this has been an amazing podcast probably one of the best thus far that we've done this year to have you is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to talk about or perhaps share something what one of the things you're working on right now for the future besides your book I mean your book is going to be I'm sure is going to be a bestseller no I thank you for hosting it I enjoyed chatting with you we used to chat in the old days a lot more frequently than we have recently you've been bus running been helping run the country the last several years well listen even some of the Department of commerce's initiatives I I don't think uh Biden or his administration cancel any of those tariffs maybe a few but I don't no they didn't they really didn't they didn't change any of that I think a a lot of that policy is still in place but that you and Trump put together and if he didn't screw around too much with all the regulations I think all a lot of those things are still in place right yeah yeah yeah well good well listen that concludes our insightful conversation with L Ross offering us a deep dive into Commerce and Industry and his career we we'll put a link on here extend our sincere thanks for sharing your insights into your new book risks and return discussing your illustrious career and imparting your expertise and vision with us today well thank you Roger for the opportunity I'm Roger aginaldo until next time keep thriving keep learning and keep making deals that matter happy dealing we hope you enjoyed this episode and learned something new from it if you have any questions or comments for us or any of our guests please feel free to leave them in the podcast platform of your choice or send us an email at editor advisor.com we would love to hear from you and get your feedback and if you haven't done so already please follow us on Spotify Apple podcast YouTube And subscribe to our m&a alerts newsletter at the links in the description or on our website at www.ma advisor.com this is Roger arinaldo the Creator and founder of of the m&a advisor thank you for tuning in and being part of our m&a advisor Community until next time stay safe and happy dealing