Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon & Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman 10/21/25

24:43Now somebody can do it in seconds. It doesn't mean we don't have a lot of very smart young people doing a lot of work. They're just doing different work than they did when I started 40 years ago. And so we continue to get these tools into the hands of our very smart people, and it makes them more productive. It gives them an ability to spend more time with clients, to do more. It scales our footprint, our reach. The more interesting thing we're spending a lot of time on, you might have seen last week, Becky, that we put out a memo where we announced what we're calling One Goldman Sachs 3.0, the evolution of our One Goldman Sachs operating ethos, is we're really looking at six principles throughout the firm to operate the firm more efficiently, serve clients better, where we're looking at processes inside the firm and saying this technology gives us the right and the ability for the first time to reimagine these processes and really do them entirely differently, to automate a bunch of things, to create meaningful efficiency that then can be reinvested in growth in the business.

25:39It's not just taking out cost, it's giving us more capacity to invest in our business and grow. And so we announced that because we're doing a lot of work internally. And, you know, we said that in January, we'll talk more specifically about how this can affect, you know, the business. And, you know, we wanted a framework to be able to really work inside the firm and really drive this forward. But I can't find a CEO that I'm talking to in any industry that is not focused on how they can reimagine and automate processes in their business to create operating efficiency and productivity. And that's a really good thing for economic growth.

26:13Does that mean that this time is different? and that it's not just going to make your employees more efficient, but it's going to reduce your headcount? I don't think it's different. Technology has been having an impact on headcount, the way people work, what workers you have, you know, for decades and decades and decades. And I think one of the things that's happening here that's a little bit different is this is going at a pace that's quicker. And so because the pace is so quick, I think there's a possibility that there's a little bit more volatility or, you know, an unsettled transition, you know, around certain job functions and things like that.

26:52But at the end of the day, we have an incredibly flexible, nimble economy. We have a great ability to adapt and adjust. And yes, there will be job functions that shift and change. You know, if you go back 25 years ago, we didn't have 13 ,000 engineers at Goldman Sachs. We've shifted and changed. My guess is the mix of engineers with this technology will again shift and change. But I'm excited about it. If you take a three to five year view, it's giving us more capacity to invest in our business. And I've, you know, I see lots of opportunities for our business, but I still feel some constraints because we've got to deliver returns as to how much we can invest to grow our business.

27:31And this should free up more capacity to do the things we want to do to serve our clients and grow our business. And that's exciting. What other acquisitions do you want to make? Well, I just it's it's I'm excited about the acquisition we made last week. I know if you if you humor me for a moment to say two words. I'm very happy to. We we bought a company called Industry Ventures, which manages about seven seven billion dollars of kind of early stage venture. It's touched over three hundred twenty five venture firms. Hans Swilden was the founder of the business, an extraordinary guy. We've known this firm from a while.

28:06We had a stake, a 25 % stake in the GP through our XIG business. And Mike Brandmeier and our XIG business knew Hans and was close to Hans. And Hans approached him to say he was getting some interesting offers for the business. And Mike appropriately said, hey, let's bring this business into Goldman Sachs. And so what this allows us to do is really expand an offering to our clients and give more access to our clients to early stage venture. But if you think about our ecosystem, our banking ecosystem, our private wealth ecosystem, getting access to these businesses earlier than we would naturally see them in the life cycle of Goldman Sachs creates great synergy for us.

28:45And so we're quite excited about it. And I think this acquisition represents the kinds of things we're trying to do, things that expand our offering and accelerates the growth trajectory of our asset and wealth management business. And, you know, there are other things like this that we're looking at, some small, some bigger. But we really are trying to broaden and expand what we think is a very powerful asset wealth management offer. If we were all sitting together five years from now, what would Goldman Sachs look like? I think five years from now. And look, there can be ups and downs in the world that can affect it.

29:23But Goldman Sachs will basically have the two principal businesses that it's in now where it's a leader and has a right to win. banking and markets, where I think our position is, you know, without dispute. And then asset and wealth management, where we supervise right now$3.5 trillion of assets. We've talked publicly about the durable revenue in that business growing high single digit. If you look at our last earnings report, it's growing faster than that. And so we can continue to grow that business. I think we can add inorganically to that business to broaden that platform and accelerate it.

29:58And I think that those Those are two businesses that Goldman Sachs has a lot of room to run, a lot of room to win, and a lot of room to create value for shareholders. And so we're, you know, we continue to be excited about the value trajectory that the firm's on. David, I want to thank you for coming in today. We know you have to run, but we appreciate your time. Well, I really appreciate you guys having me. Our next interview on Squawk Pod, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Historically outspoken in politics, he is now making a case to New Yorkers and to New Yorker business owners for November 4th.

30:32All you do is you say to people, this is the most important New York City election we've had in 100 years, okay? And it's not underestimating the facts here. All you need to do is get out of bed in the morning, okay, and show up at the poll, vote. Where Ackman is putting his vote and where he hopes New York business will end up right after this.

30:55Welcome back to Squawk Pod. Up and Becky, Q. You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Election day here in New York City is just two weeks away. It's become a national conversation. Joining us right now is a discussion about the mayoral race, the markets, the economy, and so much more. Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman is here. Good morning to you. Morning. You have been quite outspoken on X and elsewhere about this mayoral race. A lot of folks around the country looking at New York as a proxy for what the Democratic Party even looks like.

31:29You've been calling on Sliwa to get out of the race. You've been calling on all sorts of things to happen. Right now, in terms of where you think things actually are based on what the numbers are, we've been looking at Pali Market and other things, and it seems like Zoran Mandami is the clear favorite, not just the clear favorite, but that almost under any circumstance he's going to win at this point. Remember, Polly Market is probability wins the election based on the facts that exist now. Probably accurate. However, if Slewa were to say, I'm not going to run. Right now the polls are 43, the most recent polls, 44 Mondami, 23, I'm sorry, 33 Cuomo and 19 Slewa.

32:18I've seen polls that say the Sliwa voters are going to vote 65 % for Andrew, 7 % other, and 25 % won't vote, something like this. But if Sliwa voters vote for Andrew, Andrew wins. The key is Sliwa has to be out of the race. And does Sliwa not only have to get out of the race, and we were looking at the front page of the New York Post this morning, which was also calling for that. Does he have to get out of the race and endorse Cuomo? Look, I think the smartest thing he could do for his legacy is to say, look, I love New York. I care about this city. I've put a lot of energy in keeping this city safe.

32:53You know, the polls, the facts just tell me I'm not going to win this time. I'm going to step aside. You know, I'm going to rely on Andrew to take care of the city. I'm going to keep doing my job protecting New Yorkers, and I'm going to run in four years. And then we'll build, like, we'll have a gold statue of him in Times Square. And I know actually a guy offered to pay for a gold statue of him. Let me ask you this. Gold, by the way, has gone up in value a lot. That's expensive. Let me ask you this. We have had Cuomo on the broadcast. We've asked Zoran to come on. He has not come on yet. There's a reason for that.

33:22And there's an invitation that's still standing. By the way, here's what you should do. You should go to the DSA website. It says, the capitalist economic system is the cause of violence, unemployment, and a climate crisis and poses an existential threat to life on Earth. That's the democratic social. That's the DSA, which is Zoran's policy. How can he come on CNBC? So my question to you, though, is when you look at sort of the number one, two, and three issues that you have with him, and I am assuming that your vote for Cuomo is effectively a vote against him. It is. Right. And I like Andrew.

33:55What are the issues for you? Is it about capitalism? Is it about policing in this city? Is it about anti-Semitism? I mean, give me the list, but in the true priority, because I think there's a lot of people who think that maybe you're in this because you don't want your taxes raised. Okay. So number one, I love New York. I love New York City. It's been very good to me. I care about this place. It's one of the greatest cities in the world. But it has issues. Okay, where is Mondami right? He's right that we have an affordability issue here. Okay, why do we have an affordability issue in New York?

34:26Rent is too high, right? Utility costs are too high. Why is that? Right? The answer is because of policies that he wants to make worse, right? Real estate developers would love to build more apartments in New York. There's enormous demand, right? economics if we increase they're not enough supply to meet the demand so what happens is rents go up right why is that because we make it one extremely difficult to build in New York all kinds of regulatory other not in my backyard protests things that drive up costs that make it uneconomic to build new housing then there's rent regulation right if you if you're telling people we're gonna freeze rents well number one you can only freeze rents on a million maybe apartments not the other you know 25 % of the housing stock not the other 75 % of the housing stock.

35:10We've got 50 ,000 apartments that sit vacant because the owners can't economically afford to renovate them because they can't earn a return on the incremental capital they put in. If you look at places like Argentina, which deregulated rent control, rents come down because supply comes back into the market. Some supply comes in immediately, apartments that are being held off, and then developers start building. What you want in New York is you want cranes everywhere building apartments and that's going to drive down that's going to keep rents from growing at a rate in excess of inflation so affordability is a problem why is why are electricity costs so high because of green new deal because of people fighting power lines because of people you know shutting down you know natural gas nuclear power plants and that has caused the cost of and we're gonna have all this we have all this demand from ai of course for for power that's made it more expensive for people so he's right on affordability but his policies are wrong.

36:01So that's an important issue. Another important issue is public safety, right? The mayor actually probably has more impact on public safety. That's probably the most important issue for many, for most New Yorkers. And if he has a hostile relationship with the police department, okay, you already are reading stories about people retiring in advance of Mount Domi being mayor. You know, he's, you know, if you look at what he said prior to the last few months of running for mayor. He was a defund the police. The police are wicked. The police are evil. These are his words, his tweets. It's sort of in the record.

36:38That's not a guy who's going to be able to motivate the police. He's talked about shutting down Rikers. So I would say affordability, safety. His policies are wrong. He's accurate in identifying the problems with the city, but his policies are going to destroy the city. Explain why you think in your mind he is doing as well as he is on track to become the next mayor of this city? He's a very talented politician. He's charming. He's got a nice smile. Now, I would argue if you watched him in the debate, every time he answered a question, he'd finish with his smile. You know, it's a constructed smile.

37:14It makes me not trust the guy. So here we are having this conversation. He now uses you and your name almost as a proxy to suggest why he should win, which is to say, interestingly, when you talk to especially younger people, they say, if the real estate industry, for example, if my boss hates him and doesn't want him to win, I want him to win because I think that he's going to help me. And they're going to come to regret that. I mean, if you 1 % was just a editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning, 1 % of New Yorkers pay 40 % of the taxes in the city. And if you attack that 1%, those are the most mobile 1 % of New Yorkers.

37:53and they can live 183 days outside of the city and I can take their tax revenues elsewhere. You've stayed here. You've been in New York. Yes, I have. Would this be the thing that pushed you out of the city? Look, what I would say is putting me aside, it's a marginal cost decision for everyone who's in New York City. And you weigh the benefits of living here for 183 days of the year versus the costs. One of the costs is taxes and not just personal taxes. Personal income taxes are going to go up. I think the bigger issue is he's talking about taking corporate income taxes for a business located in New York City to 21%.

38:27That's before you get to federal, right? And, you know, a CEO is a fiduciary for the, you know, the shareholders of the company. And if you can locate the business in Miami and eliminate 21 percentage points of corporate tax, he's going to do that, right? So matching New Jersey and forgetting that there's also New York City and New York State taxes here, it's just going to destroy the city. There are national Republicans. They like New York, but they don't live here. And they think Republicans win the midterms if this guy gets elected. The Democrats have a real problem, whether they endorse this guy or whether they accept him, because it's just acknowledging all these things that they know don't work and they're afraid, they're so feckless that they can't say we don't agree with any of that stuff.

39:17You're right, and I think the Republicans are being short-sighted about this because I think there are follow-on implications for the rest of the country. If Mondami is successful in New York, he's going to inspire other candidates. He's successful in winning. Winning. Winning. He's going to inspire other DSA candidates at the state legislature, in other states around the country. We'll know where the Democratic Party actually is right now. So you're right. If we destroy New York, it will set a bad example. It's a sacrificial lamb to out the current state of the Democratic Party and where the geographic center of that is.

39:52It's the current state of the Democratic Party. And by the way, if I were a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party, I would be very concerned about this as well. Because the party is veered far to the left. What happened to your card? What's that? What happened to that card? I never really had. I was always, first of all, I was always a centrist, to be super clear. You were pretty woke. You were pretty woke for a while. Yes. I was never woke. In my view. Now we're like some patico. That's clear. I left the lights on and you came home. Okay. There you go. Thank you. And welcome. Thank you for welcoming.

40:21But in all seriousness, New York City is the most important economic driver for the country. President Trump is concerned about New York City. If he in his own way, that would be an unbelievable foil for him, Mom Donnie. It's terrible for New York. I don't think he wants it. I don't think... Look, you don't think the National Guard is coming here the day after the election? I do. Well, if it turns out... The king's going to send him? If we're shutting down Rikers and there are criminals roaming the streets and people are getting... You know, we've become Chicago. Yeah, we should have the National Guard here.

40:51So let me ask you a different question, which is, to the extent that there's two weeks left and you would like to see Cuomo win, I think you not just have to convince Selig to get out of the election. you effectively have to try to persuade some of the voters that would otherwise vote for Mondominy to vote for Cuomo. Actually, no. All we need to do is get out the vote. Okay, here are a few interesting facts. Typical mayoral election, what percentage of the registered voters vote? It's like 23 or 24 percent. So if all you do is you say to people, this is the most important New York City election we've had in whatever, 100 years.

41:27And it's not underestimating the facts here. And all you need to do is get out of bed in the morning, OK, and show up at the poll. You're already registered. Vote. Vote for safety in the city. Vote for sanity. Vote for a place where businesses want to locate and, you know, keep jobs, bring jobs. New York's actually, you know, people underestimate Adams. He actually did a pretty good job. And the city is economically in a pretty good place. People are actually coming back to the office again after COVID. Why doesn't Adams endorse Cuomo? He should. He should. And you think he will? I don't know if he will.

42:03And does it matter? Again, on the margin, everything matters. But getting people out to vote, that's the most important thing they can do. By the way, every CEO of every company in New York City should say to their employees, I'm giving you, you know, election day. Take, come in, come in after lunch. But vote. Vote for the future of New York City. We don't want a socialist candidate who believes in seizing the means of production. His words, right, on a video, right? This is what he believes. He's kind of modified, he's mollified some of his beliefs. What do you tell the people who say, look, you know what?

42:36The mayor can't do that much anyway. The mayor can do a lot. If you care about safety in New York, the mayor, first of all, he's not committed to keeping Jessica Tisch, who's done an excellent job, right? Why is he not committed to keeping her? Because he knows, he says he's not keeping her, it's going to lose votes, but he's not going to keep her. There's no way. He's going to bring in his own person on crime, and we're going to see more crime. Let me ask you a slightly different question before we get to the markets and everything else. What do you think happened? You know, this city has been the financial center of the universe for a very long time.

43:06Do you think that would shift if he was the mayor? And I ask because Jamie Dimon just opened up a beautiful new headquarters and has invested an enormous amount of money here. And so there is this view, especially among Mondami supporters, who say nobody's going anywhere. Everybody says they're so mobile. But look at what's happened. These buildings are here. They're going to be here for a very long time. Maybe a couple people move here and there. The city is going to be fine. The problem with that analysis, look, I think JP Morgan is going to have a meaningful presence in New York City. But also, look, if you focus on hedge funds for a moment, hedge funds are a very important taxpayer and employees who work for them in New York City.

43:48They're the most mobile businesses in the world. Ken Griffin left Chicago because he was upset about everything from people getting killed on the streets to the way that dysfunction, the way that city was run. And he went to Miami. And Miami is becoming a financial capital. And it's becoming a more desirable place to live. And a lot of the New York City restaurants have opened. Duplicate examples there. The weather is very good most months of the year. And, you know, I don't think JP Morgan is going to leave in the next four years. And, you know, no. Do I think many hedge funds will go? Many financial services businesses?

44:27I mean, what happened post-COVID, post-COVID people figured out that they could actually do a lot by Zoom. And that made it a lot easier to, you know, it used to be you had to be physically in New York so you could go to a meeting and see someone. Zoom, you know, it's still good to see people in person, but a lot of meetings that you used to do in person, you now do by Zoom, which makes other places like Miami much more viable, Palm Beach, etc. You've been asking for a conversation, a meeting on X with the person who may very well become the next mayor unsuccessfully. Do you ask that? I mean, I imagine you're asking it genuinely, but do you believe that he would correspond with you?

45:09Well, look, the guys attacked me personally. So I'm like, OK, let's have a real conversation. Are you afraid to have a discussion with me on X, an open mic discussion where I can ask you about your policies and I can challenge you about your policies? Why not? As opposed to, you know, having, you know, I would say open mic, give me a couple of hours and let's understand who you really are. I'd love to do that. The fact that he's unwilling to do that, he's not responding to that, I think speaks. He's afraid to do so. While we have you here, got to ask you about your take on just where we are in this economy and where we are in the markets.

45:41What do you think? We keep talking about, you know, we say there's a bubble in conversations around a bubble. Yeah, I would say there's a lot of positive. Let me be optimistic for a moment. I'm negative on New York if Andami's elected, but I'm positive on the country. You know, clearly we have the most pro-business president we've had in a very long time. And we also have a lot of, you know, very significant things that have been announced, but the effects have not yet really taken effect. So one infrastructure bill from the past. We have the more recent tax bill, which gives 100 % depreciation for investment.

46:18We have this massive AI infrastructure investment that's like building the railroads of the early part of the 20th century. We have the productivity effects of AI that are only just starting to have a significant effect. In fact, we have interest rates coming down meaningfully. They're 10 years below, you know, 4%. We have a Fed that's accommodative, likely to sort of cut interest rates. You know, so these are all, I would say, very positive for the economy and for markets. Bill, there's a time when I think you wouldn't have called Trump the most pro-business president. And when a lot of people, you were worried about tariffs.

47:01A lot of people were worried about tariffs, obviously, in April. is it that those tariffs never really came, the worst case scenario, obviously, didn't happen and probably at this point most people think they're unlikely to happen. No, actually, I think Trump has been the most pro-business president we've ever had. But you thought the tariffs were going to hurt the markets at one point. I was a little bit concerned about the scale of the tariffs and how quickly they were about to be implemented. My suggestion to the president was to take a 90-day pause. and to his credit, he modified that position.

47:35But he is pro-business, even though people say these tariffs are just... By the way, he doesn't care if the stock market goes down in the short term. He cares in the long term. And I trust the president and I think he's done an excellent job. I think he's also done an excellent job. By the way, the other factors that affect markets are kind of geopolitical risk. And I think geopolitical risk is coming down, right? The whole Middle East. The Middle East has been reset. If he wasn't Donald Trump, I don't know what his approval would be. If he wasn't Donald Trump, Given if you look, if you actually objectively look at his accomplishments, it's been an incredible presidency.

48:05What about the Chinese trade talks that are coming up again? Because we are reaching the end of that kind of extended pause. You can't bet against the president and his ability to negotiate deals. I mean, you can't. And I mean, it's the Middle East, you know, the Israel Gaza situation. You know, a peace dividend from the Middle East could be massive. Right. We have these countries with incredible resources. Only thing holding back the Middle East has been Iran, terrorism, you know, the sort of axis of evil. The axis of evil has taken a major, major blow. And I think that's a great, you know, that brings down risk premium sort of globally.

48:42So, again, I think there are a lot of reasons to be, you know, optimistic about the world. Where are you on the relation with China? I wish we had a better relationship with China. You do? Absolutely. I think it's really unfortunate that two of the most important powers in the world are at loggerheads. And I just think we should make peace with China. I think that would be very, very good. That would be an incredible white swan. Let's put it that way. Let me ask you a slightly different question about maybe capitalism on a different front, which is this administration has been uniquely taking stakes in businesses.

49:18They're interested in switching grants, potentially at universities, to effectively take stakes in patents and all sorts of things. What do you think of that? What I think is that the United States allowed other countries to control, to use a Mondami term, the means of production and make the United States vulnerable, whether it was chip manufacturing or active pharmaceutical ingredients or rare earths, And that created a lot of vulnerability for the country. And I think what the president is doing is trying to solve that problem by, you know, enhancing the competitive position of Intel and sort of anointing these companies.

50:00You know, if Intel failed, and by the way, if you look at a stock price chart of Intel, it was on a very negative trajectory for the business. That's a threat to the country. Not a perfect way to do things, obviously. Picking, I mean, maybe Intel should have failed. I think that would have been a mistake. Right, but you know what I mean. First of all, what the Biden administration did is it gave money to Intel. What Trump said is, you know, I want to get a return on my investment. So picking winners and losers, solar. I mean, picking any, you know, renewables or electric cars, none of that stuff.

50:35Look, I think you should be cautious about the government stepping in and becoming a capitalist force. At the same time, if the government is going to provide some form of subsidy to an industry, getting something back so the taxpayer gets a return on the investment, I think, is a very smart strategy. AI, this AI boom? Yes, it's incredible. Incredible? Incredible for the world. As long as the eye can see? Or, I mean, do you think that there's indiscriminate spending? Do you think that it's... I think it's, again, it's a bit like the railroad. It's a bit like fiber. the worst case scenario is we have excess capacity.

51:11But I think what we've seen is, I mean, intelligence is not something that you're ever going to have excess capacity for. So if and when we achieve AGI, right, this is a Lollapalooza effect for the world. We're going to, you know, enable us to, we're already starting to see impacts on, you know, cancer discovery. And, you know, so imagine a world where we can, you know, address every disease, right? Imagine a world where we can, you know, the power of superintelligence is worth a meaningful investment. Will some of this money, will some companies go bust? For sure. But I wouldn't have bet against, you know.

51:48I'm not laughing at that. The alphabets of the world have the resources to make these investments. I was going to call the Post, New York's paper. I won't do that, obviously. We know about the great lady. But they do say this effect, be an angel and go away, Curtis. And then they say, for the sake of the city you love so deeply, Curtis, please swallow this bitter pill and drop out. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good. I respect the guy. OK, I have nothing against him. I know he cares about the city. He's not going to win. So what's he like? All he is doing right now is handing the city. It's a granddad.

52:21It's a mandami. It's an ego thing. I don't know what he's thinking. OK, by the way, if he were at whatever, 31 percent and more at 19, I'd be supporting him. Slightest chance. But do you understand Perot? I mean, people do this. Look what's happened over the years in the national elections. This is whatever name was. Remember, he's not the first time he's running for office. He lost to Adams. He got 28 percent of the vote against Adams. So he's he's already failed to become mayor in a much less competitive situation. Bill Ackman, I want to thank you for joining us this morning. Really vote. It's great to see you.

52:54Incredibly important election. If you're a CEO, let your workers, let your employees. Early and often. And by the way, yeah, vote early. critically important election. Really important for New York. You don't need an ID. For public safety, for business here, for the country. From New Jersey, I'm going to vote. For the country. For the future of the country. We do not want a socialist leading the most important financial city in the country. We don't. It's one who wants to seize the means of production. Okay? This is bad stuff. Thank you, sir. That's the podcast for today. Thank you for tuning in.

53:26Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Weekday mornings on CNBC starting at 6 a.m. Eastern. To get the smartest takes and analysis from that TV show right into your ears, follow Squawk Pod wherever you're listening now. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. Have a great day. We are clear. Thanks, guys.