Kenneth D. Moelis (born 1958) is an American investment banker and founder of Moelis & Company, an investment banking firm.
You see a wave of populism in the world. There is something wrong. This maybe because of technology. The ability of people to reach their own news sources now, and create different views, is really unbelievable. There is a desire for change. There is a millennial generation that doesn't like what they're seeing, but doesn't quite know what the solution is.
One of the great parts about my job is I travel the world. I was in India right before the [Narenda] Modi election, and I don't think he was the frontrunner until the end.
I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now.
I worked at Drexel Burnham and DLJ, and then I worked at a financial conglomerate that had 60,000 people - there was a difference. But we went to the schools and said it's the same. The experience I had in 1992 is exactly what you're going to get in 2002.
It was phenomenal to see what was going on there. I came away from there so energized about India, and I was pretty sure that [Narenda] Modi was going to win an election that wasn't easy to see.
It is hard to compare over generations. I think a lot of the top talent is choosing other fields. We look pretty hard - we put a lot of time and effort into finding talent.
You get behind some of the numbers, like the underfunded pensions in the US, and I'm not sure people even understand how wrong their situation is.
Not everybody has experience in drilling for oil in the Permian Basin, but the same thing is happening in every industry everywhere in some manner.
I went to Brazil, and you get on the ground and you see it, and you could tell the government was in trouble two years ago. This was just going to sweep the government aside, and it was a force you could feel. Brexit, the same thing.
The investing public understands that you need to do things to position yourself.
The consensus is a very dangerous thing to get complacent about.
That is the brilliant thing about the millennials. They're not obsessing about, "Hey, there is not going to be a job for me" - they're trying to take advantage of how good a life they can have without having to create so much nominal income. Income is there to create quality of life, but you can share your car and get where you want to go, and you can travel the world by couch surfing. I think they're taking advantage of deflationary forces to improve their life while not maybe having to chase the nominal money that was needed to buy a whole car, a whole house, a whole couch.
[Millennials ] are sharing cars. They're sharing apartments. I'm not sure my generation quite knows how to take advantage of it.
Digitization has created opportunities for everybody to accumulate information in a way they were never able to, and analyze it with a speed that just wasn't there.
The challenges, the changes we're talking about often seem to them like unbelievable opportunities to deliver a product quicker, better. If you can improve the quality, lower the cost, and improve the turns - and you can do that because your information systems, your delivery systems, are better because of technology - well, you see that as a wonderful opportunity to gain market share.
I don't want to pick on Deutsche Bank, but I think the world of the regulated financial conglomerate, it is a strange thing. There is nothing in common between writing checks and running branch offices, issuing credit cards - those are good businesses, but they really have zero in common with M&A advice. They're a different customer.
The leverage Wall Street has to change the world is greater than technology. At a very young age, you're in the room with CEOs, making critical decisions. It should be exciting. It is exciting.
In most industries, technological change is happening at a rapid rate. I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now. Digitization has created opportunities for everybody to accumulate information in a way they were never able to, and analyze it with a speed that just wasn't there.
There are some very difficult things to understand that globalization is providing, that people really think are just here but really are a function of some of that. There are some very difficult arguments.
There was a time when people thought that if you piled a bunch of mortgages together, the top of the pile was AAA. There are a lot of things that become consensus.