at that time. And what I've learned since then has been learned mostly by trial and error, the hard way.
I hope I can make your journeys a little easier with lessons about many new challenges where you're going to need fresh advice.
I want you to use this book as a plum pudding of ideas that may have never occurred to you. Reach in, pluck out a goodie, and tuck it away for your future.
PART I
BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL
CHAPTER 1
TAKE THE PRO TO LUNCH
I work in a big office, more than 200 people on two floors in the financial district of my city. The rookies sit in the boardroom, sometimes 15 to 20 of them, almost all late twenties to early thirties, all out in life, and all anxious. Occasionally, as I wander around the office to blow off steam, I'll stop, sit on a desk facing them, and talk to the young people informally, off-the-cuff, about how the money management business has changed over the years, what they should be paying attention to, and how to plan their future in the business. No one tells them these things. They hear nothing about institutional memory, what makes markets move beyond daily news bytes and how to really build a successful business and future.
Recently, one of the rookies came to see me in my office. “Can I come to work for you?” he asked.
“I'm flattered,” I said. “But my team is complete for now. But I will come by occasionally and speak to you all.”
“We don't get this stuff from anyone.”
“What did you major in, in college?”
“Economics.”
“That's too bad,” I said. “I try to hire people who majored in the classics. Or in history, or English. I want to surround myself with young people who know something about the past. Because knowledge about the past will help you so much with your future.”
I would suggest that all of you, no matter what jobs you have or jobs you want, seek out the oldest people in your present company, or the people who have worked there the longest. If they're still employed after long service, they must have something special to offer. So you should invite them to lunch, to buy them lunch. They'll be happy to do it and will tell you tales that will give you a different appreciation and insight into your business and the industry it's in. It will be much more valuable to you than most of the orientation and the too-often colorless meetings you attend regularly. These older people will be generous and important to your growth, because no one ever asks them to share their experiences, their histories. Often they might appear to be curmudgeons or seem intimidating. Set that aside and approach them graciously. They need the interchange as well, and will be very glad you asked them out.
It is important as you build a career to develop friends, both older and younger than you. The older ones can shape your development. The younger ones can keep you thinking young.
CHAPTER 2
BEWARE OF EXPERTS
By now you're getting the picture that street smarts trump all in the advice department. None of you probably, at your stage of life, is going to have intimate conversations with the chief executive officers of the Fortune 500 companies – unless you are related to them. So you will have to get your life wisdom from the seasoned professionals with whom you work, particularly the ones who can talk as mentors and teachers, not those who preach from on high. Most of my investment ideas come from my smart clients and friends around the world, not from Wall Street analysts or research departments.
One of my clients, Peter Clark, ran a think tank in Pittsburgh, mostly concentrating on the defense sectors. I spoke to him perhaps 20 years ago and asked whether he had seen a certain article in the Wall Street Journal.
“I haven't read a newspaper in 15 years,” he told me, and this was the preference in news dissemination, because virtually every American read the papers.
“How can you not read newspapers?” I asked, surprised by his answer.
“Because 15 years ago I knew all about two subjects,” he said. “And every time I read about those two subjects in the papers they always got it wrong, so I said to myself, ‘If they’re wrong about what I know, what about the stuff I don't know?' And I figured if I don't read the press, I'll save over an hour a day of wasted time!” Apply this to your own wanderings through the media, and don't accept anything just because it's in print or on your screen, in blogs or tweets.
For an even more personal brush with alleged brilliance, I was at a business dinner months before the meltdown of our financial system, sometime early in 2007. My parent company, Citibank, was coming to Boston in a big way, planning to open 30 new branches, and attacking the city for business in all the areas Citi wanted to dominate, including loans and wealth management.
Citi invited key local employees to a dinner and asked us to bring guests who might become major clients of the bank. We were to hear a dog and pony show from two Citi directors; one of them who had been secretary of the Treasury and was now a door opener for Citi business all over the world. His pay was in the millions of dollars for relatively small-time commitment. The two directors acted as if they were doing us all a huge favor by stooping to speak to us colonists in Boston. The words superior attitude did spring to mind. But the dinner and wine were free, and, on business evenings, I did, and do believe, that good accidents do happen sometimes. But you have to be there for the good accidents to happen.
I brought two guests, one man who ran a high-yield mutual fund, another who was a local commercial real estate developer, both lifelong Bostonians, not easily seduced by out of towners.
The two Citi directors did a Fric and Frac commentary about the wonders of the bank, speaking as if the Holy Grail were available for us if we came on board. This is fine, of course, their wanting us to drink the Kool-Aid. But the tone implied, “We know better than all of you about almost everything. Listen to us; watch us, the models for so much that is good and smart, and worthy.”
One of my guests slipped me a folded piece of paper while the show rolled on. It said, “Neither of these two guys would know a real working American if they fell over one.” Citibank stock during the financial crunch of 2007–2009 fell from approximately $55 a share to less than one dollar. Whenever you listen to someone who is billed as someone you could never be, take it with several grains of salt.
CHAPTER 3
IF YOUR COMPANY IS BOUGHT BY ANOTHER
I have been through dozens of mergers over 50 years, many of them shotgun marriages, with a lot of the companies we acquired done at bargain prices because the sellers were in desperate straits. One of these companies was quite famous in the investment world: E. F. Hutton. It had a campaign with the tagline for all the ads, “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen.” It was going broke. Right after the merger, my wife and I were going on a company trip. It was a relatively cheap junket, by Wall Street standards, to a resort in Florida in June, when all the tourist prices were slashed. On a chartered bus we sat with a bunch of former Hutton employees, all bitching and moaning about the stingy new owners. “Remember that great trip to Paris?” they would say. “No, Rome was much better, and also London: every night Michelin-starred restaurants.”
My wife said to me, “Rome, London, Paris? We never went anywhere like that.”
“They
