A Listener Production.
G'day, it's Luke Darcy.
The idea of self-improvement and leadership both on and off the field
has been a lifelong passion of mine.
With one of my oldest friends, we created a leader collective
and have had the privilege of working with thousands of leaders
in education, sport, industry and the arts
that have helped shift to what we see as the 21st century style of leadership
where everyone has a voice.
In this podcast, we hear stories from these iconic leaders.
Andrew Cohen is the Executive Chairman of J.P. Morgan Global Wealth Management.
He oversees J.P. Morgan's private bank's institutional wealth management practice
and leads the partnership between the firm's investment bank and private bank.
In this role, Andrew focuses on the private bank's largest
and most sophisticated clients globally.
Prior to this, Andrew was the Chief Executive Officer
for J.P. Morgan's International Private Bank
which represents businesses in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa
before relocating to Hong Kong in 2010
as the Chief Executive Officer
for J.P. Morgan's International Private Bank
For the Asia private bank, he was head of the Southern Californian region
based in Los Angeles
and previously worked with ultra-high net worth families
in Northern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean regions
based in London and Geneva, respectively.
Andrew holds a Bachelor of Economics
from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia
and attended the Executive Program of Global Leadership and Public Policy
for the 21st Century at Harvard University
in John F. Kennedy's School of Government.
Outside of his senior leadership position at the world's biggest bank,
Andrew sits on the board.
Andrew is the Director of Directors at the Serpentine Galleries,
the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University
and is an alumni of the Young Global Leaders Forum.
Andy, it is an incredible life of leadership and success
and I really appreciate your time.
I'm really grateful to be joining you here in your London office today.
Absolute pleasure and what an honour to be sitting in front of you, mate.
Now, Andy, I'm reliably told at 20 years of age,
your first job, you went to your first boss
and negotiated your wage down.
Now, is this true? Can you share that story with me?
I did it by accident.
I was moved, I was actually 21, I was moved to Germany
and I thought it was a yearly salary
and then they told me it was weekly but it was actually monthly.
So I actually deluded myself but fortunately I came back.
Well, Andy, I'm told that you're being pretty humble here
and I understand that's a huge part of you
but that you were, you know, a passionate rower,
went on to row for Australia
and that my side of the story that I've been told
is that you really wanted to commit to your rowing and your work
and you didn't want to...
over-negotiate, that you wanted that balance of life.
Now, that's an incredible set of values at a young age.
Is that close to the truth?
Yeah, I think like young athletes, your son and daughter included,
who are superstars in their own right,
you have this passion for sport and you want to go to the top.
You also often have other interests in life,
whether it could be family, it could be philanthropy,
it could be running a small business or it could be banking.
I had an opportunity to get into banking
and I was trying to tussle in my mind between the two.
I was a good rower.
I'm lucky to represent the country but, you know,
to go on to the Olympics, which is every young rower's dream,
was going to be a huge challenge.
Maybe there was a tiny little glimmer but I couldn't do both
and, you know, I took that decision.
It's a tough decision at a young age
because, you know, my life from about 14 was all about the river,
the Yarra River in Melbourne.
I spent, you know, the majority of my life on that river
and that's all I thought about, that's all I dreamt about
but made that decision and, you know,
fortunately the banking worked out
but we've just come off Henley where your daughter was victorious
and, you know, you get a little flutter in the heart
and you think, if only, because rowing is something
that never leaves you, I think, like most sports.
Yeah, fresh from experiencing the Henley Royal Regatta
and I've loved sharing some stories with you
and we're a quite proud moment as a father
to see our daughter and her crew win at Henley
and it's been an amazing time here in London.
As I said, I feel really grateful to spend some time
with you here today in London.
There's another great story that I love about you, Andy.
I get the feeling I'm going to have to prize these out of you
because you're...
Humility's going to be so strong
but I'm told you started at Merrill Lynch in Australia.
You went to take a holiday after working incredibly hard
for several years.
You arrive overseas to think, I'll put a face to the name.
This is, you know, pre-internet and, you know, pre-Zoom, clearly
and as you walk into the office, your colleagues overseas
are saying, bad luck, Andy,
and you're thinking, what the hell's going on?
They've closed the Merrill Lynch Australia office
and you haven't got a job
and so the first you know about it is walking into that office
but you look on the notice board,
there's a role in Germany and you think, I can do that.
So you jump on a plane to Germany,
you get into the German office, it's an internal role
and you sit there first thing in the morning
and you wait the entire day and someone comes out and says,
are you still sitting here?
Is that sort of where your career took off?
Yeah, I know where that came from.
It's kind of true.
Being a fifth generation Melbournian,
I didn't want to leave Melbourne.
I did have a position in Sydney and I thought,
if I'm going to leave home and all of my family and friends,
I'm not going to go to Sydney.
So in New York, when I did find out that Melbourne was going to be shut,
I went to Germany and I don't think I waited the whole day
but I kind of took that great Aussie candour and said,
look, I'm never going to see this boss again if he says no
and if he's going to be my boss, I'll be successful.
So, you know, it also comes from sports.
You know, you're going up in a race for a crew that may be better than you
and you think, I'm never going to have this other chance
so I'm just going to give it all I've got.
I had the RM Williams pair of jeans.
I remember buying a shirt for 28 Deutsche,
which is about $14 a day.
It was probably an expensive shirt for me at that time
and the great blue Aussie blazer with a little bit of beer
and other food on it and somehow, the funny part of the story, Luke,
is that in Germany you do what's called a practicum or an internship
and you have the option to leave and they have the option not to take you on
so three months in they say, right, you're good to go.
So the boss, who was Dutch, who was a great guy,
takes me to lunch and says, congratulations, we want to take you on.
You've passed the practicum.
We want to give you a formal role and I said, okay, that's great.
He said, do you know why we hired you?
And I said, well, you know, did pretty well at school and university.
I did very well in the training program.
I said, I'm very international.
He said, very international?
You're from Australia.
And I said, yeah, my dad's American.
I've travelled, you know, for sport.
He said, sport is not work.
Now, there's one very clear reason we hired you.
Nobody else wants to come to Berlin to work.
We couldn't find anybody for the slot.
So that was the position.
Put you back in your spot.
But I love that, you know, determination
and the front to sit in an office
and I'm assuming you've got basic German
so you're not necessarily going to have the answers to the questions
but is that something you look for now in your leadership position
to see someone with that sort of...
I am and my team knows this.
So I actually didn't speak German then.
I'd done German at school and probably was pretty miserable at it.
I fortunately now speak fluent German.
I had to force myself because Berlin in those days,
East and West Berlin were open.
The wall had just fallen for younger people.
People on the call won't sort of really understand that, right?
That, you know, there was two cities
and nobody in East Germany spoke a word of English
so you had to learn German and all of the foreigners did.
I think I take that huge opportunity I had.
I took some initiative but I had a great opportunity.
So anybody that writes or calls or approaches at any time,
could be verbal, it could be physical or it could be an email,
you respond and you give them their 10 or 15 minutes
and we've hired a lot of great people.
In fact, there's part of our core team here who I met in a jazz bar
late at night in Hong Kong in the middle of the summer,
both in jeans and t-shirts.
He had no idea who I was and he happened to be born in Australia.
So my ears picked up.
He'd gone to a very good school in the US
and the story 12 years later, he's one of our superstars in the bank.
You're in one of the biggest leadership positions
in the global world of finance.
How would you, incredible reflection on you and your story for a start,
but how would you describe your leadership style?
It's very much curated from two things.
One is my father, my late father who passed away two and a half years ago
and was just an incredible man and my best mate.
And secondly, is sport.
And in all sports, particularly team sports,
I can't talk to individual sports, but team sports,
you don't rely on yourself as much as you rely on your teammates.
And if you're not helping somebody who's flailing a little bit,
maybe having an off day, maybe they're ill, maybe they're injured,
whatever it is, then you are going to have a worse performance yourself.
Banking is no different.
Banking is no different.
So I think to have a really solid team and have the rapport is, you know,
this is a tough job and it's demanding intellectually,
it's demanding emotionally, it's demanding physically.
And when you notice that somebody's a little bit off,
rather than giving them a hard time, pull them aside, say what's going on,
often they'll open up, often they won't.
And it's when they don't that you have them pivot and do other things.
But I think if you build that, the second thing that happens in this is that,
you know, for us older guys, life goes like that.
And in five years' time, they're more senior.
And in 10 years' time, they're probably very senior.
And in 15 years' time, they're at the same level as you.
So you want to keep those people in the team, right?
And it's important.
I think there's different styles, but at J.P. Morgan, we're very,
very focused on our younger people because they're going
to be the future leaders of tomorrow.
Yeah, it's what we, and I'm really passionate about,
is seeing that style of leadership now is really becoming what we would describe
as 21st century style leadership, where you have care in general,
genuine empathy for those around you, and in doing that and collaborating
together, and that the old model of, you know, the big corner office and hierarchy
and command and control is bankrupt, and that the next generation really aren't
interested in that style.
And I mean, we're seeing sporting coaches that are so much more collaborative and
open and caring and empathetic.
You know, does that come naturally to you, or did you just learn that with the culture
that you were involved in?
Yeah, I go back to sports, but my dad, I grew up in a big household of four kids,
and he treated everybody fairly.
We were different genders, we were different ages, and we had different skill sets,
but he just treated us for our entire lives as his four kids.
My mother, of course, as well, but it was my dad that sort of inspired us,
that everybody you meet, a bellhop, a waiter, a guy at the gas station,
is as important as, you know, I remember my first day of work, he said,
everybody you meet in that bank is going to be important, and make sure you show it.
So, you know, the security guard when you pass the front desk, and then the secretaries,
and the receptionists, so I was lucky I had that as a backbone.
But then you get trained and curated in a certain way.
Now, there are times when you have to show seniority and leadership.
We're right now in a global economic crisis, I think it's my fourth, right?
So, obviously, I have that backstory that can be really valuable to the team, whereas
people that started in this business in 2017 or 2018 haven't really looked, so they may
be nervous, they may be fearful, you know, you can watch any array of news, either socially
or on the, you know, the terrestrial networks, and think, oh, my God, the world's falling
Yeah, it's a very difficult time, and we are going to go through a lot of volatility.
It's one of the worst periods we've had, but we've had bad periods before, and we have
So, that's when you use the seniority to give that maturity and leadership, and mentorship
is anecdotal in my view of what happened before, and how you can partake that, give it to the
next generation so that, because I had that benefit, you know, a long time ago when I
was starting off.
Andy, we're sitting here in the magnificent office overlooking the world.
We're looking at the Thames, and it's a business that's got, from what I read, over 270,000
It is a huge, huge machine, revenues of $120 billion per annum in JP Morgan, but the culture
and the championing and diversity is really synonymous with you and with the group that
How do you achieve that with such scale?
Yeah, it's a great question, and we are privileged to work for this company and this bank, but
when I started, there was 14,000 employees.
We're now, you know, multiples of that, and we've merged pretty significantly twice, and
then some other companies we've acquired, but we've also grown organically, but one
thing that we've kept, particularly since Jamie Dimon, our current chairman and CEO,
has been on board, he's kept the old values of the firm that's a couple of centuries old,
and that is that when you put on, you know, go back to the sporting metaphor, when you
put on the jersey, right, doesn't matter which jersey you put on, as long as you're playing
So, you may have somebody coming from another industry, another business.
Another industry, another bank, or another firm, or another part of the firm, and you're
just going to make sure you curate them, and the great thing about diversity is that the
one metric you look for is the intellectual capital to be able to do this job and service
the bank's clients, right?
That's the one metric.
Color of your skin, your religion, your race, your gender identity, your sexual identity,
any disability you may have, is just irrelevant, right?
What's relevant is the intellectual capacity, so if we have a young person who says, I'm
desperate to go and work in Paris because I love Paris, and they're from Melbourne.
Say, well, how's your French?
Now, I gave a bad example because what I was doing in Berlin required English, right?
So, it had been a regular German banking job.
I wouldn't have got the job, but what I was doing was something different.
But that person wants to go to Paris.
If they don't speak French, they're not going to go, or if they want to go to Shanghai,
they better speak Mandarin because the business is conducted in that language.
Outside of that, all bets are on, and you can do whatever you need, whatever you want.
Going back to the diversity, though, I had a funny occurrence on Friday night.
I was running to a meeting in Mayfair, not far from here.
And two gentlemen were approaching, and one had a cane.
And the other gentleman had his arm, holding his arm, and I went for the hug.
And the other guy, the guy on the left, pushed his hand out like a shirt front to stop me.
He said, he's blind.
And I said, I know.
And the gentleman, his name is Ashish, he's a dear friend of mine, hugged me, right?
And the guy was looking and said, oh, you know each other.
He is so talented, this guy.
He could just from one word or two words, I know, recognize.
He was our number one FX trader here in the bank.
He's now gone on to a hedge fund, blind, completely blind, but he could see until he was 14.
And he got a disease, got blind, ended up going to university in Delhi, and then went
And then JP Morgan hired him, and he was so good.
He could hear more quickly the text being translated than you or I could read.
I just give that as an example, right?
We aspire to have people of that individual self-capacity.
He did a fantastic job for the firm's clients, so much so that he thought he could do better
But we lost him, but we've remained great friends.
Andy, we hear organizations now, you put diversity out there as a box tick, and it's something
that organizations now are really shamed into in some ways.
You mentioned Jamie Dimon's got an international reputation as a leader.
Everything starts at the top, I suppose.
You work closely in that executive team.
As you just said in that beautiful example, you actually get the best skills and you get
the best opportunity by opening up the world to everyone.
Regardless of your color, your sexual identity.
Is that where that is driven from?
Is it performance?
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things.
It's diversity of people that makes for a better team environment because you actually
get to learn and understand obviously different cultures and different religions and different
places that you grew up in.
But also diversity of identity is incredibly important.
And we are very, very focused on obviously gender diversity, which we'll come to in a
The LGBT community.
It's fantastic in London to see the 50th anniversary of Gay Pride here in London.
It was just a carnival atmosphere for the whole weekend, as you probably saw when you're
coming back and forth to London.
Apart from the traffic was completely fucked up, but no one cared because it was fun.
People of color in the US, Asian Americans and Latino Americans.
But then also the things like disabilities, right?
I mean, you've got to make sure businesses have wheelchair access.
It's just the common human dignity to do that.
And you've got to make sure that the younger generation, particularly what we've been through
for the last few years, the mental health issues, right?
The fact of having work-life balance and of having wellness as a genuine objective of
the firm, to be fit, to be healthy, to take a walk, to take a run, to do whatever type
of sport is really key.
But on gender, it's really interesting.
Half of Jamie's operating committee is female and 44% of our board.
And we're really proud of that because we get a different diversity.
But what it means at the end of the day, when we face across a table like we're sitting
at against the client, if you're five men, you're not sitting at the same table as five
You're sitting across from five white men.
You normally have sitting with women or people from somewhere else around the world.
And you've just got to be ready for that.
So I think we're intrinsically focused that the world has changed so much.
We don't just do it as a tick the box.
We do it because we have better outcomes.
And all the data suggests that diverse organizations, whether they're political, whether they're
business, whether they're sports, are going to be better off by having a level of diversity
that is a reflection of the global world we live in.
And Andy, in your own life, you live it every day.
As a Jewish Australian based here in London, but married to a Lebanese Muslim, and congratulations,
one and a half year old child, I think today, you told me just before we started.
Tell me about that in your personal life.
You're bringing together families from different backgrounds.
What's that been like, bringing that world together from the extended family point of
Yeah, to get personal for a minute, my wife and I met on an island in a holiday setting,
which a lot of people meet that way, and sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't.
Our resumes couldn't have been more different.
There's a relatively large age gap, not enormous, but a relatively large age gap.
She lived in Dubai.
I lived in Hong Kong.
She'd grown up in Beirut in a very secular Muslim family.
I'd grown up in Melbourne in a very secular Jewish family.
But what we realized after a few days was we had exactly the same set of values.
Everything about us is around our families.
Our families come first.
And secondly, both of our fathers and mothers absolutely said education is a must.
Doesn't matter what else you do.
I happen to have a passion for sport, but that didn't matter as much as getting educated
and taking advantage of the opportunities that befell themselves.
She was exactly the same.
And now I'm very fortunate to have such an amazing wife.
I can see through her eyes what we're doing with our son.
He's already learning French and Arabic and having an experience of Lebanese cooking,
which is, as much as I love Australia, it's a way better cuisine.
And those things.
So we make it work.
And hopefully, that's what we do.
Hopefully, that's a beacon for others, because we're both very passionate about the regions
that we come from.
I'm very passionately Australian, even though I've been away a long time.
She's very passionately Lebanese, and we bring that together and try and make it a better
And you donate a lot of your time to philanthropy and an incredible reputation in that space.
You're on the board of the Tel Aviv University.
I think you're on the board of the Los Angeles Police Department in your time in LA.
Can you talk us through where you drive that inspiration from?
For example, the Tel Aviv University.
What's the motivation there for you?
So much to what I just said before, Lebanon's the neighbor of Israel, and they're not officially
That being said, I have a passion for the region, and again, going back, tying in education.
Think about it from this standpoint.
The more educated people get, the more they're going to be able to have a consensual debate
and understand each other.
Tel Aviv University is a phenomenal institution that has a larger percentage of Israeli-Arabian,
Israeli-Arabian people.
It has more Arab undergraduates than the general population, and it also has an incredible
faculty of Israeli-Arabs.
And that was something that I felt was just wonderful.
I didn't know about it until I joined the board, the board of governors.
But the educational side of it, to me, is what's so important, and there's a lot of
scholarships for people from all over the world.
And same with the Hebrew University, the other big university.
But I balance that because I'm also on the American Turkish Society board, and Turkey's
another country that I'm incredibly passionate about.
I'm incredibly passionate about Turkey and its history.
Like a lot of Australians, I unfortunately lost family members in 1915 in Gallipoli,
and I always had an interest in Turkey.
And once I started going there, I realized that they also lost people fighting Australians,
which they had no qualm with us, and we had no qualm with them.
So I got more and more involved through business, and now was very lucky to be asked to join
And you take those two things together, and you learn a lot about business, education,
philanthropy coming together, just to try and have a better dialogue.
You had the great privilege, Andy, on the centenary of Anzac, being there, that dawn
service, as the sun rose over that beautiful peninsula, and the history and understanding.
And you couldn't help but be emotional and moved by the stories you'd heard growing up.
And then you look up at that cliff face, and you think, my God, the 15 and 16-year-old
young boys, as they were in some cases.
And then you learn about it, the history of Ataturk, and the respect between the Turkish
And to keep that going in the future seems like such a worthwhile thing.
Well, I was going to raise Ataturk.
I mean, when you think about maybe the leadership issues that we're currently facing around
the world, a lot of people comment on great leadership.
This is a way more complex world.
But he was really, truly one of the great leaders of the world.
He did a number of things after Turkey lost the first war, and then managed to hold onto
what we call the tongue of Turkey.
But he took away the fez, this sort of sultanic red hat that the people wore, because he wanted
people to look Western.
He changed the language overnight from Sanskrit to Latin.
And there's a great book about this, where his advisors came and said, it'll take 10
to 12 years for the population to change.
And he said, you've got 24 hours.
And they talked about printing the newspaper in both typefaces.
He said, no, just put it in Latin, that if they're going to learn European languages,
they need to learn the Latin letters.
He also emancipated women to a great extent, and had a lot of female input in a very traditional
part of the world.
And he did other things that were just remarkable.
And one of the most important is he wrote a letter to the Australian mothers, where
he said, here in Turkey lay the bones and souls of your Australian boys, intertwined
with the souls and bones of the Turkish boys, and the bosom of Turkey will take good care
I just think, what a beautiful moment for those young mothers in Australia in 1915,
1916, that lost an 18 or 19-year-old boy, and they received that poem.
So one of the great men of history.
Incredible leadership story.
And you articulate it so brilliantly.
Absolutely, Andy.
And as you said, it's education, isn't it?
When we understand more history, it allows us to be more compassionate, more empathetic.
And it comes back to the qualities that you can clearly see in your leadership.
I wanted to ask you, as someone who's worked in an industry where you've dealt with the
highest net worth people around the world, is there a level of success and happiness
that financial security brings?
How much is enough?
A hard question to answer.
It's a hard question to answer, but you're probably uniquely placed to answer it.
It's a great question, and we have a real privilege, the client base that J.P. Morgan
entertains and works with across the spectrum globally, Luke, but I would say it like this.
Just like any person with any level of wealth, there are happy and unhappy people.
That may be due to the wealth or not.
What it does do is allow you to provide outcomes, and I think one of the great things is what
Gates and Buffett have done around the Giving Pledge, and this is a US-focused idea, but
many global people are doing it.
Where you say at a certain age, 40 or 50 or 60, I'm giving 50% of my net worth, and you
actually sign a document and say, I'm going to do this, that inspires others to do likewise.
You've always had wealthy people that are great philanthropists.
You probably need more, because you're right, there is a certain level of wealth that you
can't buy more boats, planes, art, or whatever, but you can make change.
That could be change for people less well-off than yourself or who have great needs, but
also it could be the environment, which is obviously a huge impact on the life of our
children and future generations.
It could be mental health.
It could be just civil service.
We've just hired somebody here who spent 25 years basically in finance here in the city
of London, a competitive firm, and then he spent two years working for the government
to fix the problems of Brexit and fix the problems of COVID for a tiny salary, but he
says the best two years he ever spent working, because he actually could provide change.
So if you take that, that's not one of our clients, that's one of our employees, but
imagine him talking to a client who says, I don't know what to do with all this money.
We don't have enough to offer, so we should give him a lot.
That is definitely theืื girl.
Go on, and we'll do it together one day.
But he said they were going to tell us how to work with our manager on an uncomfortable
state for a few years.
So yeah, and think about why they should put on
I can doctor my whole life.
This is what I do.
and families, maybe not what's right to do, but definitely what's wrong to do.
Andy, I had the privilege of interviewing Peter Singer on this Empowering Leaders podcast,
who the effective altruism movement is one of Australia's great philosophers and has been
really influential with the Giving Pledge behind Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and high net wealth
people, you know, effectively, as you said, signing that pledge. I love one of the quotes
of Buffett, I'm going to give my children enough so that they could do anything, but not too much
that they can do nothing. I mean, does that ring true to you in terms of that sort of sense of,
you know? Yeah, there are two schools here. Some people, particularly if an individual man or woman
has made the money themselves, or maybe collectively as a partnership, there's probably
more of a reluctance to give a lot because, well, I got educated and I did it so they can do it. And
we know that's incredibly hard to do in the second. And then the other spectrum is I'm going
to give everything and hopefully they'll keep the corpus and make it grow somewhat. Somewhere in the
middle is probably correct. I sat with a client last week for lunch.
Who has 67 different foundations around the world. He comes from an area of the world that's
in conflict. He's been incredibly successful. And he said, I'm buying a house for each of my
three children. I'm giving them the best education that they can attain, whatever school they get
into. And that's it. They're not getting a cash stipend. They have to pay for the house costs of
running a house themselves, but they'll have the backbone. So that's a pretty aggressive tactic.
And he aims in his lifetime to give away the very, very substantial wealth he's made. So you have a
difference. The other part of that, though, is he really provides for great family unity. And
another great Australian, for those listening, if they don't know him, read up on Jim Wolfensohn.
He was just a remarkable Australian. He was an immigrant to Australia, fought in the Olympics
doing fencing, was a concert celloist at Carnegie Hall, and then probably became in the 70s and 80s,
went to Harvard Business School. In the 70s and 80s, the greatest investment banker,
the Wolfensohn & Associates was his company, sold to Bankers Trust, which became Deutsche Bank.
He was inspired by philanthropy so much that he became the head of the World Bank when he retired
from banking. But their family unit is very focused on collectively figuring out issues that
they want to solve and doing it as a family. And I've always thought about that when others have
asked me, it doesn't matter if they're 15, get the kids involved. Because the young woman from
Sweden, Greta, she's incredible, 16. And she had 80-year-olds listening to her intently. It doesn't
matter what age you are, you just don't have the tools yet. She happened to have a voice box.
But as a family unit, that's a really important thing.
Yeah, and they're great messages to tell and great stories to tell, Andy. I appreciate you
being so open about all of that. We are identifying, Andy, that the next generation
of leaders have these common traits that are sort of cues and dimensions of what we think
great leadership looks like. So I was going to ask you around these dimensions of leadership,
and please expand as much or as little as you like. But we think great leaders start with a
sense of self-leadership. Andy, when I ask you about your sense of self-leadership,
what do you think of?
Um, I try and be incredibly focused on the individual, whether it's a client or one of the
team. You know, I noticed when I was younger that, you know, somebody's doing something else when
you're talking to them. And now we have, you know, everybody has a smartphone, you know, put it away.
You may have 10 minutes to change the direction of a colleague's life. They may be having a bad
day, you don't know it. But if you're doing this, and I'm looking down and typing, you know,
the attention span, and there's all the data.
So I'm going to suggest that you, particularly us guys, right, we can't do two things at once,
right? So we're not listening. I think the other gender may be better served at that,
but I'm being serious. Show the intention, look in the eyes, and be empathetic. And empathy
is everything. It's just like the story of the bellhop at a hotel or a waiter. I mean,
we've all sat with people, the waiters come, put the food down, and the person's kept talking,
and you look at them and say, well, what about thank you? Well, how does a waiter feel? You
know, they may be studying at MIT and are going to be one of the great physicists or entrepreneurs
And, you know, they're not going to come back to do that. So in our firm, we spend an
inordinate amount of time from 22 years old, all the way up to people we have in their
80s, in being one-on-one. And it's really interesting, actually. So the highlight of
my year, every year, is talking to our new inbound analysts. They're people that have
just graduated college, university, all over the world. They're between 21 and 22. And
they sit in a room in Brooklyn, where we have something called the Metro Tech. And this
year, it'll be 412. Now, you can, the sky's quite blue out there.
Yeah. Out today, out of this London window, you can tell them the sky's red, and they're
going to believe you, because it's their first, you know, first weeks on the job. But what's
amazing is you have your small opportunity to empathetically shape them about the values
of the firm, whether it's diversity, whether it's about doing the right thing, and the
culture of making a mistake, and how do you deal with a mistake? Because we may, I mean,
I make more mistakes than probably anybody in the bank. But you put your hand up, and
you ask for help. And that's a core quality of being a great business person, is accepting
that you made a mistake.
If you try and hide the mistake, it will go wrong. If you put your hand up, somebody else
is there to say, no problem, got the answer, we can fix it. Right? So those two things to
me. Now, at the other end of the spectrum, we've got an array of people that have been
great servants of this firm, some of them 20, 30, 40, 50, one person for 68 years has
worked at this company. I spoke to him last night, because we did a favor for him and
his family. He took the time to write a beautiful note and say, you did a great job, and I'm
sure you don't, he's in his 90s. He said, you don't realize what you've done for my
family. It was nothing large, right? But because you invest in these people on both ends, you
actually come to better outcomes.
Yeah. I love your, you know, put the hand up and own the mistakes. It's a trait we love
sharing. My mind, you know, changes direction and thinks of the great Shane Warne, who we
lost recently, who owned everything that he did as, and we loved him for it. And it was
a superpower. I always felt when you're around him, you know, he was legendary and
He was successful, but never, ever shied away from any of the things that went wrong.
It leads really nicely, Andy, to sort of positively impacting people around. I can tell that just
oozes out of you. I think you're a godfather to more than a dozen young people. Is it 14
17. I mean, that is an extraordinary impact for one to have so many families around the
world that you're, you know, impacting their children going forward. How do you consciously
think about that? We see leaders are really conscious now about how they positively impact
Well, on the godchildren, I think I could be a better godfather. There's a lot to spread,
but I think people also didn't get married till later in life. So people thought, oh,
he's never getting married. So he'll be the good guy to look after them with their teenagers
and whatever. But I try and do whatever. And in fact, just this weekend, one of them graduated
from Cambridge here in London and, you know, couldn't be happier for the success. Another
one graduated from Yale a few weeks before that. So it's great to see, you know, see
the success of the next generation. But it's a people issue and not all people want to,
you know, not all people.
People want to engage with you and not all individuals want to be, you know, so socially
available, right? I think coming from a big family and having always an open door, my
parents always literally had an open door on Friday nights. People could walk in. We've
continued that tradition, my wife and I, we love entertaining and having people over and
you carry that through to work. It goes back to this point of somebody emails, somebody
calls, you can't give them an hour because if you do that, then you're going to get nothing
else done for the day.
I'll tell you this. I'll go back to Jamie again. Jamie returns every single email,
every single day. It's not a pool of people behind him doing it. It's Jamie, right? Now,
a lot of people won't email Jamie Diamond because there's some intimidation involved
with that. But if you do, you get a response, maybe one word or maybe one line, it may be
longer. But I also watch Jamie closely at our client events, how he engages people,
but more so his team. He's passionate about this bank. So when it comes from the top,
Luke, it's really powerful.
in New York, which is being reconstructed at the moment to be the most sustainable building in the
United States, one of the most sustainable in the world, so we're proud of that, is on Park Avenue.
And for those that don't know Park Avenue, it's this double thoroughfare, a bit like St. Kilda
Road, massive tall skyscrapers everywhere. And around seven o'clock, most people are leaving.
And I'd often be waiting for a car there to go somewhere to a dinner or whatever. Jamie would
walk out at the same time. And he wasn't talking to the senior people like myself. He's talking to
the security guards. And there's two things to that. One is, as the CEO of 270,000 people,
his first concern is the health and safety of J.P. Morgan employees, right? I mean, there is
always those concerns for any CEO in any company. But secondly, how big does that security guard
feel? That the CEO of J.P. Morgan is saying, how's your day? What's going on? Is there anything we
should be worried about? And it's just a powerful thing that if you notice that and see it,
hopefully you're going to do likewise. It's a great line that I may not get right. Judge people
on how they treat others that can have no influence around them. And it's not a bad way,
is it? You can't mention...
They can't fake that, can you? That genuine care when you interact with people that really
can't do you any probably thing in return. It's a small thing, isn't it? But you can impact people
so positively. We see leaders like you with this incredible sense of clarity around creating and
sharing their vision. How have you gone about doing that in your context, creating and sharing
your vision? Yeah, well, we were given a gift a couple of years ago. I came back from Hong Kong
to London to take on this global executive chairman role of building out a university.
And that was a game changer in terms of your 30-year career because it was a blank sheet of paper.
There's no 100-page manuscript. That's how you go and build a new business. So we built a new
business within the walls of J.P. Morgan and could shape it in our own way. So it was shaped on
two key principles. People had to be intellectually committed to the project, right? So they had to
have the skill set. So that is a certain set of skills. But secondly, the type of character had
to be involved where, to your point, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old,
the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old, the 22-year-old,
the 22-year-olds, and the one person who's in their 70s, right, are equally important. And
every single time we have a team meeting, we try and stress that. Of course, the juniors aren't
going to talk as much as the seniors, but we encourage them to. The second thing is just be
open to everything. So the digital world that is facing everything we do, whether it's education
or sports, you know, I understand, I hope I'm right in this, AFL is the most digitalized watched
sport in the world in terms of the components of the great game of AFL. Take that into a business
context. We are rapidly digitalizing. We're one of the biggest spenders in the world. We're one of
the biggest spenders on technology. This business unit is completely digital, right? And we're
trying to be ahead of the curve, but it's not coming from old guys like me. It's coming from
our juniors who are two or three years out of school who say, well, did you look at this? And
yeah, here's Python programming, and here's how we can do things. And I'm inspired by that because
the, you know, the technology is much closer to them than us that left university in the 90s.
You don't achieve that, Andy, unless you give a voice to that next generation. You just make
them feel as though they can put their hand up in a meeting. And then, you know, the genius flows
from there. We see leaders, another dimension is that curiosity is a word that comes up all the
time, Andy. Leaders are really curious. And through that, they approach their own sense
of learning and development. I think you just articulated that with the voice of the young
generation. I mean, how do you feel about curiosity? It's a fabulous word. One of my
dearest friends in the world is somebody here in London, incredibly successful multi-generational
business in every aspect you can imagine, industrial, technology, real estate, transportation.
But he's the most curious person I know. And he's fascinated about, you know, people's different
backgrounds, different businesses, and he will grill them. And you feel he doesn't need to do
that. His wealth is set up. He has all the attributes of a very successful person, but he is
intensely focused. And so I learned from him, right? And then he learns, and then he'll pick up
some innocuous piece of information, go and buy a book and read it. And then you say, how did you
know that? Well, I read the book. And so he's very open. He also has six children, and those six
children have been inspired, I think, by the way he's been taught. And so he's very open. And so
curiosity and doing likewise. What a great story. Communicating with clarity,
we see is a really common dimension of great leadership. And you can see that you're clearly
a great communicator. And in your role, you know, getting that communication right is pretty
paramount in the industry that you're in. How have you gone about that? Yeah, again, it comes through
mentorship and learning. And, you know, I've been privileged to work at this firm for three decades,
and you get a lot of guidance when you're younger. There are very difficult times in this business.
And it can get scary. It can get frightening. And it can get very, very difficult because the
markets, the capital markets are incredibly volatile, particularly at the moment. So you
learn things about communication. One is obviously being transparent and clear, right? As soon as you
lack transparency, clients know it, and that builds a problem. So if I'm going to deliver
you look bad news, I'm going to make that the first call of the day, because every other call
is going to be easier. Obviously, that's one of the first things you learn. But secondly,
even though you may be very disappointed with the clarity, you're going to be very disappointed with
my message, you're actually hopefully going to sit back, digest that and say, well, at least he
called, right? At least he showed up to say, this is bad. Now, it's very easy to deliver good news.
We all love doing that. It's really hard. But when you have a team around you, I'll give you a great
example. In the middle of the last crisis, the big crisis, 08, 09, one of our most senior people,
who's probably the best and most articulate knowledge maker of markets, he's basically
our chairman of strategy, and a wonderful speaker, and has a following that goes back four
decades. He had committed to come to Los Angeles to talk to 150 of our largest clients. And we
didn't have all the answers. We were talking to clients every day, but we thought this would be
a great thing that we could give some clarity. This is probably a month after Lehman Brothers,
so we're talking October of 2008. And it was on the Tuesday, 150 people responded for lunch,
Beverly Hills Hotel. And he rings me on the Sunday night in LA and says,
I got bad news. The bank is asking me to go to Washington. I've got to talk to the Fed,
and I have to cancel your meeting. And I went into a panic. I can't give the presentation
because they talk to me all the time. They wanted something different. My boss,
I called her straight away. I've been under her for three decades. She said, what time is the lunch?
I said, 12. She said, where is it? Beverly Hills Hotel. Okay, I'm getting back to you. The next
thing I got was an email of the flight times. So she was taking the flight out first thing in the
morning, made the lunch. I think she got there at 11.15.
LAX, did the lunch, went straight back to New York. That's not communicating verbally. That's
communicating by actions. So as busy as she was with all of this crisis going, she realized that
there was no fault here. The other individual had to go on and do something else. You learn from
that, and you realize that prioritization is communicating. Yeah, beautifully said, Andy.
So much wisdom and knowledge in that story. Final dimension I want to ask you about,
we see leaders now value collaboration more than they ever have done in any,
in any year and seek it and go after it. Does collaboration form a big part of your leadership
style? Oh, absolutely. We have teams all over the world and thousands of people, even in our
division that work, I wouldn't say for us, but with us, right? They're partners. And again,
it goes back to this learning curve of the different ages, but more importantly,
the different experiences people have. So to understand current conflict in Russia and
Ukraine, we have hundreds of Ukrainian employees. We also have hundreds of Russian employees.
The firm has done everything we possibly can to make sure they, they're part of the team. They're
wearing the jersey, right? Same as when something happens in the Middle East or what's going on in
Asia and think about our Asia business. I spent nine beautiful years in Hong Kong. We can't go
to Hong Kong and they can't come here. It's only just opening now. But there are people we work
with every day. There are people we've grown up with, there are people we've hired, trained and
developed. So I think that, that, that idea of collaboration, thank God for technology. If you
go back to March of 20,
I think, you know, lockdown in London happened about March 12th was when we first realised this
was going to happen. We didn't even have, very senior people used a different type of video
transmitter. We didn't have Zoom then. We overnight moved to 150,000 people onto Zoom
within about a week. We can't imagine life without that now. So one, you've got to pivot
and two, you've got to understand the necessity. That being said, as good as Zoom is, there's
nothing like sitting in front of the great Luke Darcy, because if we were doing this by Zoom,
it would be a different conversation.
And that, that transpires itself or transcends itself, I should say, to our internal meetings,
but more importantly, our external meetings. So we've been pushing people, talk about
collaboration. Doesn't matter, you know, as long as you're safe to travel, fit to travel,
get out and see our clients in person. And we tried to get there as quickly as we could
all over the world. And sometimes I couldn't make the meeting, so somebody else would go,
or they couldn't make the meeting, I went instead. So this idea of collaboration is
absolutely critical to making sure this business works.
Any final two questions? Very great.
Again, for your precious time, but asking these two questions of a range of leaders,
who has been the greatest leader in your life?
My father, definitely my father. And he wasn't a big international businessman. He ran a business
in Australia and did very well, but just his concepts, his ideals, maybe in a different
generation. He was an immigrant kid to the US. His parents were immigrants actually,
and he grew up in a different environment.
Well-educated and came to Australia, met my mother. That's one. The other is both my current
boss and the boss before who retired, passionate about doing the right thing, passionate about
youth, passionate about diversity and inclusion, but mostly passionate about, you know, we're in
a very privileged position, enjoy it, digest it, and then make sure you carry that on. And,
you know, like great athletes in relay races, make sure you pass the baton in the relay in a,
you know, better shape than you've received it.
Do you know what I love, Andy? Those that mention a parent, they don't hesitate. You know, it's a,
you know, that instantly comes to your mind when you know the gift of how lucky you were. I had the
same experience with my dad. It's just, you know, my beautiful mum turned 70 just before I came to
London, but yeah, you know, so lucky on both fronts. But when you know that you had that gift
of someone who was incredible in your life from a parent point of view, it comes out, you know,
instantaneous. I could see that. In the final question,
in the sense of collaboration, you've got a diverse range of interests and friends
all around the globe. And clearly what you've done here for 30 years is an incredible story.
But if you could collaborate with anyone on any part of your life, is there someone that
springs to mind? Yeah, there's a gentleman that you and I both know who's down in Melbourne. He's
actually in Europe at the moment. Very special individual. And, you know, we're childhood
friends like a lot of you have. And I'm still very close friends with all the guys I went to
high school with and university and rowing. But this is a different relationship because
he started sending me cassette tapes when I first moved to Berlin. And you got to understand for
those that are younger listening in 1991, when I moved to Berlin, there was no internet. There was
no cell phone that you could use. No one had a cell phone and it was expensive to dial from Germany
back home. And so we either communicated by fax, postcards or letters, but he would send me weekly
a tape and he put in a cassette recorder tape for those that don't know is a plastic little box with
a tape on it. Then it's gone. Why don't we have to explain a cassette recorder now. A voice on the
other side. And, and, and he'd do things.
Like the tram in Melbourne, just making sure you know where your roots are, mate, or the footy,
right? With the roar of the MCG or the pub, whatever it was. And my heart melted because
I felt like I was home and I had something we've continued that for 30 years. And it's called the
Friday call. It could be 30 seconds. It could be six minutes. And that is something. And we
pretty much, we probably do 90% of Fridays. I'll be in a cab. He'll be walking into a dinner Friday
call, bang, bang, bang, everywhere, everywhere. That, that type of,
um, um, relationship gives you confidence and strength that you can go out and do other things,
knowing that you've got these solid foundations. And I would carry that on to many other friends
I grew up with and obviously family. But, um, if there's, if there's one thing that I think about,
that's very special. Yeah. And I'm going to name Andrew Sutherland, who you're talking about,
because, uh, I feel the same way. I feel so privileged to, uh, and those listening will,
will know when he's in your corner and you get a call from him. It's like you have your whole life,
your battery. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And you're on fire and he's so kind and generous and kind enough to, uh, to connect me with you
here today, along with so many other people. Selfless and just so giving. Yeah. Incredible
to learn from. And, uh, and Andy, I feel, you know, you feel like his twin brother in some ways,
you know, sitting across and, uh, he said, mate, give Andy a hug. Um, you know, you'll,
you'll love the experience. I've loved every bit of it, Andy. I've got four hours more questions,
but I know that's not possible. So thanks for, uh, for your time today. It's been a great pleasure.
Terrific being part of it and amazing. Yeah. I, uh, for those listening, I'm,
I am out of the country for a long time, but massive AFL fan, not your team, unfortunately,
but, uh, got you a couple of weeks back. Uh, watch, uh, my wife knows, uh, there's a two and
a half hour period every single week, depending on where the game is, win or lose, watch every
single minute. And, uh, we'll be back one day, but it is fabulous to sit next to such an AFL
legend. Thanks Andy. Really appreciate it. Empowering leaders was presented by me, Luke
Darcy produced by Matt Dwyer with audio production by Darcy Thompson. Start your leadership journey.
I encourage you to get started.
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