 Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being with us. We have a fabulous discussion on hand, and it could not be more timely given what we've seen over the past 12 months when it comes to the valuations of unicorns, both on the good side and as you'd imagine on the bad side, and it's a privilege for me to be here with three of really the leading experts on this very topic, and I hope we will have a debate about some of it as well. Stacy Conningham is here. She runs the New York Stock Exchange, where so many of these unicorns have very well been listed. Bill Ford. William Ford is here. He's the chief executive officer of General Atlantic Partners. One of the leading, if not the leading investors in this space right now, and then of course all the way at the end, but last but not least is David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Just to put some context on this conversation, 2019 was the year of the IPO. The notable names, as you so very well know, Uber, Lyft, Slack, Zoom, Beyond Meat, all went public. Some were more successful than others, as I mentioned. Slack took the direct listings route. We'll talk about that a little bit as well, and then of course there was WeWork, the IPO, that did not happen, and there's been a bit of debate about that. So I want to start, if I could, with Mr. Solomon all the way at the end to try to help us understand what you think happened, what you think changed over the course of this year, because something very well did, and dare I say, and I hope I don't put it in the negative, but I will, how everybody got it so wrong. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you. Thank you for having me, and Andrew, I'm delighted to be here with you, and also with Stacey Bill. Not anymore. Your premise is a very forward premise. I'm not sure that we got it so wrong. There are things that were right, and there were things that were wrong. You're talking about IPOs broadly. If you bought a package of all the IPOs that came to market in 2019, I think you returned 34%. You outperformed the broad market by a little bit. So I don't think we got it wrong. There are deals that did not perform well. There are companies that didn't meet the expectations that were set in an environment where the expectations for certain companies have been set very aggressively. But I don't think we got it wrong. If you're looking for what may have changed during 2019, one of the things I've worried about, and I've talked publicly about quite a bit over the course of the last couple of years, is in an environment where for a long sustainable period of time, interest rates have been zero, and money has basically been free, it pushes people out the risk curve. And one of the consequences of that is people chase growth, and people start to overvalue growth and undervalue the future value of earnings that a company may provide. And in the long run, I'm a big believer that companies over time will be worth the future value of the earnings that they provide. Now, there are all sorts of windows and timing in the middle of that, but I think we've seen a little bit of a rebalancing where the need to really think about a path to profitability is coming more sharply into focus than it might have been 18 months ago. Okay, let me just follow up then on this. And I do think I'm thinking about the lifts of the world and the ubers of the world. And frankly, we work, which didn't go public. So you could argue there was maybe some discipline in the market, but at the same time, the banks, including Goldman and others, were valuing them at a significantly higher number than they ultimately are today. What do you think happened there? Well, there are a whole bunch of things in that. And if you want to point to that one specific example, one of the things that I think that I've said publicly, so I'm not saying something I haven't said publicly before, is the process actually worked around we work. And this commentary that the banks were valuing, the banks weren't valuing the way the process of an IPO works. When you're a bank, as you're invited in by a company, it's private company, their numbers aren't public, they give you a model. You say to the company, well, if you can prove to us that the model actually does what this does, then it's possible this company could be worth this in the public markets. Depending on how the company works, that information starts filtering out into the world. But ultimately, then there's a diligence process is a proving out process. There at times are meetings with investors beforehand. And that process grounds to reality. And ultimately, reality then gets executed on one way or another. And so I think that's a great example of the process working. And it might not have been as pretty as everybody would like it to be. You might, everybody might like it if that all happens behind the scenes. And it's not as visible, but in the world we live in today, that's the way the world is. Okay, final, final follow up on this particular issue. Do you believe that any of these companies, including WeWork, ever misrepresented either their numbers or their model to you? I'm not going to answer that in the context of the way you expressed it, but I do think there's an issue that you're touching on that I assume that the three of us will get to, which is if you go back, when you think about IPOs and capital formation and venture capital, and Bill could wax on about this for a long time, venture capital years ago really was a very, very narrow slice of the capital markets. Very wealthy individuals gave monies to stewards of that capital to start businesses, because in starting business, that was a very, very risky thing. And so the theory was those people could afford to take a lot of risk and lose and maybe a cross portfolio theory they'd make money. And when a company needed capital to grow, once it got past that initial funding stage, the only place where it could go get capital was in the public markets. So companies had to go to the public markets in a much earlier, smaller stage and therefore go through the process of discipline around their statements, their information, et cetera, in an earlier stage. As the capital markets have allowed for more private capital formation, much more broadly, that shifted. And so you now have companies that have thousands of investors are raising billions of dollars of capital and they are not held to the same standard around producing information on their performance. They're not held to the same standard around statements that they make about how their business is or is not doing. And that's an issue. And it's an issue because whether investors do or don't rely on it, employees rely on it when they join and part of their compensation is in the form of stock. They're relying on some of those representations. So that's an issue that probably deserves a little more attention. Well, let me ask Stacy then to speak to that very issue, because one of the things that the New York Stock Exchange NASDAQ and so many others, frankly, have pushed for several years was to make it easier for companies to go public. And as part of going public in that regard, to actually make disclosure less transparent, not more. Because it was a view that more transparency was actually encumbering startup companies from making the leap to being public. Okay. I'm just going to start with one, I'm also thankful to be here. And two, I had a hard time not cheering, David, when you were running through all of those things, because I really do think the public markets do introduce discipline and governance that are so critical. And disclosures are a big part of that. And that transparency is really important. Where you've seen us push back on some of the restrictions are when they're not about investor confidence, investor protections. So I think financial protections are really important. And then we just want to strike that balance between investor protections, investor access to information and issuer flexibility. Because if customers ultimately end up staying private, then investors don't have access to those opportunities at all. And so we don't want to skew the market too much that way. That's what we're seeing. A lot of these large companies are larger because they're twice as big when they're coming public as they were before. And now if you have a founder, CEO, and a company that potentially didn't have good habits in the private market space, those habits have grown with them. And now we're starting to get into real governance issues. And you do have a lot of fear of missing out. If you look back and trying to tap into that growth, investors were ignoring what was happening because they didn't want to miss the opportunity, they didn't want to miss the next big thing. And so in many ways, they were investing even when perhaps they should have been asking some of the tough questions that they are now asking. And so I do think that we are in a different norm now where investors are starting to ask a little bit more questions about profitability. And the IPO market did do well in 2019. There are a handful of companies that didn't. And you can look and you can see what the differences were. And when companies weren't rewarded by the public markets, it was when they didn't have the clear story about how they were going to be profitable. Bill, has it benefited these companies to stay private as long as they have? Or has that actually underlying this one of the big issues? Well, I think yes and no. I think there's a lot of things you can do as a company while you're private. And I agree exactly what David said, is that companies now have that opportunity because scale capital is available. When I started in the early 90s, you had to go very quickly to the IPO market to raise any kind of meaningful capital, $100 million plus. But now growth capital is available at scale. And there are some things you can do, perfecting your business model, strengthen your management team, allocating management's full attention to developing the business instead of the 20 percent that's required once it goes public. So it's a lot of good to being private. And it's why there's 8,000 private equity-backed companies today. On the other hand, I think David and states you're right, we lost our way a bit last year and the last few years around some key disciplines. I mean, disciplines around business model, about capital utilization, about governance. And these are all, you know, a place that got out of whack. And actually something I've been saying is that usually it was the private market that governed an overvalued public market. This time it was the public market governing an overvalued private market for the first time and saying this is just not acceptable to us as a public investor. And I think it was actually a very healthy process and puts us in a much better place for both private capital as well as public capital. I imagine you're not going to want to play the blame game, but let me throw out an idea. One of the things that took place over the last three years that may have made this as unhealthy, some of the issues that you just talked about, is the introduction of SoftBank and MasaSun to these businesses and the idea of growth to some degree at all costs. What do you make of that idea and what his personal involvement in the growth of this space has meant to all of your businesses? Well, I'll start and Stacy jump in, but, you know, if you look at private equity capital raising, there's 1.5 trillion of uninvested private equity, but the fastest growing segment has been growth equity and there's been $500 billion raised in the last five years for growth companies. So that money was looking to get to work, as Stacy said before. And I think that's a big, was a very, very big factor in the market losing its discipline. SoftBank would just be one example, I think, of other places that really did pursue growth at all costs. And one of the things that we really objected to in terms of some places where we were invested together was they were really pushing companies to globalize so quickly even before they perfected their business model in one geography, let's say. And we were saying let's get the model right, let's get the path to profitability, let's get the unit economics working and then we can think about expansion and growth. But instead it was no, we've got to go to China now and we've got the capital to do it. And I think that's helped, I think that caused the market to lose its way. I don't think you can look at the valuations in the private markets that are based on one investor and then use that as a proxy for hey, this is how this company is valued because it's really one opinion and you don't get real valuation until you have many buyers and sellers coming together, which is what the public markets deliver. And I think it is a very concerning trend, especially if you have a very high profile investor who is valuing companies differently than the broader market would because it is becoming a reference point for the market. And now we do have retail investment in the private space through large institutional investors without the disclosures in transparency and actual valuations. So I think when you look at the fact that companies are staying private longer because they have access to private capital, traditionally it was the need for capital that drove companies to the public markets much earlier in their life cycle. Now it's very different reasons that are driving them to the public markets because you usually then get money. So time though Andrew, time perspective matters. And so square, I think the last private round was at $6 billion. The company went public at $3 billion. The investors who invested at $6 billion, if they really believed in the company and they were long-term investors, have crushed it because the company is worth $30 billion. What this is supposed to be about is picking good companies with good business models that make sense that can grow and scale and get capital allocated to them and then being a long-term investor. Unfortunately I think a lot of the dialogue gets sidetracked around that with a much, much shorter perspective. Let me ask you a policy question then. One of the things that has happened to Stacy just referenced, so many of these companies are raising big money in the private markets. You're helping them raise some of that money oftentimes from your own clients. And the question is from a policy perspective, A, is that a good thing? B, I had a conversation with Jay Clayton last fall, the chairman of the SEC who suggested that as a result of that it makes it much harder to get those type of gains in the public market. And he even talked about the idea that the public almost gets left holding the bag. Is that a fair or unfair way to think about it? I think there's, the others should comment too, I think there's, I think there's some fairness and I think there's some unfairness. Look, one of the big sources of private capital that has participated in this has been mutual fund money and so mutual fund money certainly has significant, you know, retail investor participation. Which I get concerned about because you don't have the disclosure and the discipline and it is retail money going into companies that aren't being valued the way the public markets do value. I think the bigger issue, depth of liquidity in capital markets I believe is a good thing. So I think it's better for the markets, it's better for capital formation, it's better for economic growth that we have a vibrant private market and also a vibrant public market. I think the policy question you have to ask is more about should the standards around information, disclosure, discipline, governance, etc, be different? And what's the threshold? Because there's no question the process of taking a company public raises the bar on disclosure, governance, a whole bunch of things that I think are really important. And we've kind of morphed into two different standards for what is a broad integrated capital market. And I think that's a policy issue that probably requires more debate. Yeah, just to add to David's point, when private equity needs to get back to and private companies get back to is company building, it was getting companies ready to go public and face the rigors of the public market. And as David and Stacey both said, it's about good governance, getting the right independent board in place, making sure there's enough management depth to take on being a public company, making sure they can handle quarterly reporting, which is not something all can do right away, making sure they have a real path to profitability if they're going to go out before they're profitable. And that's our job and is to discipline those companies to have them ready. And so when they go, they can be successful, they can deliver value to investors in the public market. Your comment about, and Stacey commented this, on removing the burdens for smaller companies that don't have the resources to access capital is an important point. But when companies get to the place where they're raising billions of dollars and they have thousands and thousands of investors, they can certainly afford what it costs to have the right standards of disclosure, governance, etc. Yeah, they choose not to, right? They're choosing not to because, I mean, I talk to CEOs of pre-IPO companies or private companies and they say, I just want to wait as long as I possibly can, because I just don't have to deal with that. And why should I bother, even though they can afford to? So we're sitting here in Davos, right? We've talked a lot about stakeholders over the past couple years. One of the stakeholders is society. So I do think from a policy perspective, if you're not letting the public share in success, you're going to get people challenging the system and saying, why should I support free enterprise? Why should I support capitalism? Okay. Is it the role, though, of all three of you then, to be pushing the management of these companies to pursue better disclosure programs in advance? I certainly think it's, I certainly think it's our job to be engaged on these policy issues in the broadest context with companies, with regulators and government officials, with investors, and we are. So I, I mean, that's like mom and apple pie. To me, it's more about governance standards. It's having independent boards, it's having independent auditors, it's having accurate financial reporting. That, I think, we should demand private companies as well. They should be living up to that. Okay, let me ask you then a different way. I just wanted to touch on that real quick, because I think that's the difference, right? If we're putting standards on public companies that we aren't putting on private companies, we shouldn't be surprised if companies want to stay private. Okay, let me ask you a question about governance, because all three of you have mentioned that word now several times, and one of the things that has become almost the standard when it comes to startups going public these days is a dual class share program, in which case, frankly, the independent board member may ultimately be irrelevant, because the company is controlled by one or two or three people. Is this a good thing? Well, I challenge that it's the standard. I mean, there certainly are more companies that are choosing that select, that, that model. But is it a better thing if they choose to just stay private? If they're going to lose control of their company and they choose not to go public, do investors then just entirely miss out on access to those opportunities? I would say yes. But if you're asking, if you're asking the broad, the broad policy question, I'll offer a personal point to you. And, you know, I just, I just say that these things tend to move in a direction, the pendulum swings and the pendulum swings back. I personally think, and obviously if someone owns a company, it's their choice and the market allows for it, but I personally think that lots of companies where one or two shareholders basically control the vote and control the governance is not a good thing for markets. Now, are there going to be, there have been for decades and decades, companies where that's existed? Is it true factually that there are more today than there have been? Yes. And there are some large companies that have that. To Stacey's point, there are lots of companies that are, that it's not the case. But I wouldn't say it's the best governance standard. And I don't, I don't buy the argument that you have to have it to protect your ability to grow and have your company flourish, et cetera. I don't buy that. In full disclosure, I should say that when I asked, the New York Times is a dual class share company and your predecessor, your predecessor very, very funnily, threw it back in my, in my face that way. It was in my head as you asked the question, I chose not to say, oh, what about the New York Times? So it's, you know, but it's, it's going to continue to exist. It's a question of what's the balance and how does it evolve over time? I share David's personal view, right? That I don't think it's good. What I love about this model is that I can vote with my money and so I can choose as an investor, not to invest in those companies if I don't think it's good. Why, that's what makes markets work. But Bill, you are investing in those companies. Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's good. I think it's, I don't think it is good governance and I don't think it leads to great outcomes. I think David's pendulum point, I think we were a little bit fooled because Google and Facebook were so successful as companies having done that. But then I think we've seen plenty of examples where it's not so good. And I'd prefer to get away from that and get back to basically one class of stock, traditional governance and traditional disclosure. How do you do that then? Well, if companies came out private sooner, the founders would own the shares and have voting rights because they own the shares, right? I mean, they're deluding their stakes so much throughout the years that they're starting to latch on. And I think investors earlier in the cycle in the private space need to vote with their money there on what structures they think are appropriate. I think unfortunately it was a little bit of the supply and demand of capital as, as private capital grew so significantly and was chasing the best opportunities, a way to get in was to say, we'll relax our governments, our government's requirements, we'll allow for a due class of stock for the founder, even extreme examples like SNAP. And so we'll let that happen. And I think if we get a little bit more balance in the system, we'll move, again, the pendulum will probably come back. I want to pivot to an economic question, but it relates to the IPO market, it relates to where we are. Literally 15 minutes before I came on this stage, I had a conversation with Paul Tudor-Jones on television and he said that we are in 1999. That's what he defined the economy as being. That is both either a great thing if you want to go for a nice little market run for about 12 to 18 months or a terrible thing because it means that the train is going to come to a screeching halt. Where do you think it is? And how do you think it relates to the idea of companies going public? Well, the only thing I'm sure of is that we're in 2020. And, you know, look, my macro view, if you take a high level macro view, my macro view is that the world's chugging along pretty well. There's a lot of noise, but the U.S., which is an important economic driver, is still in pretty good shape and the chance of a U.S. recession in 2020 is low in the distributions. I think that we've had a couple of things that have created some headwinds that might be softening or might be relaxing, might be turning it to tailwinds. Stage one of the China deal obviously is a big one. And so if the environment stays the way it does now, I think it'll be a constructive environment for good companies to come and raise capital in the market. It is right now. And, you know, my base case is it stays that way. And give you 52 things that can go wrong and change the sentiment. So we'll get to a good, you know, we'll get to a different place. And I'm acutely aware of the fact that however everybody feels in January, generally we're wrong. And okay, when you go back and you look, you go back and you look at the last number of Januarys. But at the moment, you know, I think the environment's relatively benign, but we are late stage in a cycle. There's no question people are definitely long-risk assets and there's been an inflation in value around risk assets. How we land from that and it gets rebalanced, I'm not smart enough to know, but my guess is it won't look exactly like it looked in 2000, 2001. It will look different. I would just, I would agree with David completely. I would say I think what Paul's alluding to is a lot of liquidity. There's tremendous liquidity in the system from whether it's a Federal Reserve dealing with the repo market or private capital or public capital. There's a lot of capital available. And I think that's some, some of you are just being very liquidity driven. Some of the appreciation we saw in the back half of 19 and in the beginning here of 2020. But on the other hand, the fundamentals are very good. The chance of recession is low. Global growth is solid. I mean, you've seen a reacceleration of growth in the U.S. and Europe. Inflation is in check. Commodity price is in check. Highly unlikely we're going to have a real change in monetary policy this year. That's all pretty positive. Burnings have been good. So, so the fundamentals feel pretty solid that could set a positive year. Let me ask you, you don't want to weigh in. Let me ask you a question because we are at the World Economic Forum and we've talked almost exclusively about U.S. companies. I want to talk about China for a moment, also Saudi Arabia, because the ultimate unicorn actually did go public this year. Didn't go public in the United States or in the London Stock Exchange or in Hong Kong. But I'm talking about Saudi or Amco. And what you think that that offering meant, what do you think it means to that country? And U.S., or let's say Western countries' involvement in that offering and in future business with the country, given some of the human rights issues that take place in that country, we get to China as well. But I did want you guys all to touch on that, if you would. I'm looking at David first. For David. What is the transaction? Obviously the transaction is a very, very significant transaction in the context of economic transition for that country because that country is to economically, that country is to a degree that company and that company is to a degree that country. So the fact that that is now a public company, although on a limited basis on a localized market, still not broadly attracting a very, very large swath of international investors is the beginning of a process and a transition that I think fundamentally has to be positive for that country and for the world because that participation I think is a good thing. There can be a whole discussion about fossil fuels. I'd rather we don't take our 45 minutes and have that discussion. And look, we think about ourselves as not the maker of policy around how capital is available in the market, but rather an advisor and an allocator in some way, shape, or form of bringing people together. And so we think about things from a reputational perspective. We think about historical relationships. We have client relationships there that go back for decades and decades and decades. So these are complex issues when you get around the world and you start doing business around the world. They're complex issues that have to be balanced. But the world speaks by how it participates and allocates capital. And we'll watch now and see where we go from there. Do you think that the world, given that you're in the market-based approach to having people allocate capital, do you think that the world will ultimately allocate capital to Saudi Ramco on a more traditional, more transparent exchange? Yeah, I mean, it certainly hasn't happened yet, right? So I think the transaction that existed so far was local market with local investors. So it wasn't a lot. Predominantly local investors. I'm sorry? Predominantly local investors. So I think there is a next step, and I think there are conditions and things that the company will consider around risks associated with diversifying. But the U.S. markets are the deepest, most liquid markets in the world. So I think getting that institutional investor base from the U.S. would be an important part of that diversification strategy for the kingdom. Just one more comment on that. The reason that it was Predominantly localized investors was not because people were making a judgment as to whether or not they wanted to invest in the company, international investors. It was because of the value proposition and the way it was being valued on the local exchange. Had the value been slightly different, there would have been international investors from all over the world participated. Do you think it was just a value question? I think it was a value question. It was not a transparency issue. It was not a... I think it was generally a value question. I agree with David. It's a well-run company with decent governance. If they priced it right, it could have gone to the global market. I agree with David. Let me also ask you just about Chinese companies going public in the United States. U.S. companies potentially listing in China and what's taken place here over the past six months. I know we now have a phase one trade deal that a lot of the U.S. companies are quite happy about. But there was that speculation earlier in 2019 that these markets were ultimately going to get closed to both sides. I go to you on this because I know you have a stake in buy dance, which by the way makes TikTok for anybody who wants to do some lip-snaking on TikTok. There's two of the most exciting companies in China, ByteDance and Financial. They're very large-scale. They'll both be exciting IPOs when they happen. I know both companies have not come to a final decision, whether it's going to be Hong Kong or New York. How are they weighing that decision? Can you speak to that? I think phase one mattered a lot. I think if we hadn't gotten to a phase one agreement and there were still significant hostility, between the U.S. and China, I think it would have been an issue in choosing a New York exchange. I love Stacey's perspective on that. But I think it would have caused them more to default to Hong Kong, especially if it's the success of Alibaba's dual listing in Hong Kong. And the fact that others now in China are saying, I might consider dual listing in Hong Kong. So I think, but I think with phase one getting down a more constructive environment between the two, I think they'll go back. Many of the Chinese companies will still be able to make the choice to say, it's the deepest capital market in the world in New York. And it's a great listing venue. And look at the successful companies that have listed, Chinese companies have listed in New York. It's a long, long list going back over a decade. And so I don't think there's going to be a knee-jerk reaction to say it's got to be Hong Kong now because of U.S.-China trade tensions. But I think it'll be a measured decision. China still is the leading global region where we have companies IPOing on the New York Stock Exchange outside of the U.S. China still continues to drive that. There's anxiety for sure around some of the policy decisions and importantly legal decisions too. I think for any global companies that are considering the U.S. legal and regulatory framework is part of the decision-making process. And I think, you know, we mentioned Aremco. We've talked about some of the companies in China and the legislation that was considered here in the U.S. or talked about here in the U.S. Those are our factors for sure. And I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that if we make a lot of legal and policy decisions in the U.S. that we could end up shifting the epicenter. And I don't think we should lose sight of that. The Alibaba, for example, they did their dual listing in Hong Kong. It actually wasn't about the policy legislation that was being suggested. It was because they wanted Chinese retail investors to have access to Alibaba. And so I think those are other things that we should be thinking about too is if you're a local company, how do you reward your local community with being able to invest in your success? But I think this policy is just a big deal. It is. Because if you think about it, if you're a bike dance, you're a high-quality company, you have options. And there really are significant intentions. You're saying, I'm going to be regulated by a U.S. entity called the SEC. And I don't have to do that. I don't have to subject myself to that regulation. Now, I think that, again, right now, post-phase one, I think people will make a decision more about what's the best capital market for me in my company. But I think if it had gone the wrong way, I think people would have said, I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that regulatory environment if I don't need to. There's another factor, though, that Stacey and Bill didn't touch on that I'm hearing as I'm meeting with CEOs of Chinese companies that are growing. Do they want to be positioned in the world as a Chinese company, or do they want to be positioned in the world as a global company? And that's another factor that also goes. That's another factor that also gets put into the mix. And depending on where we are from a policy perspective, a trade perspective, et cetera, the way those decisions are. I think that's a great point for two reasons. If you take bike dance, 800 million daily active users, 650 are TikTok outside the Chinese firewall. And what we talk about a lot at the board is a global internet company with Chinese heritage, as opposed to a Chinese internet company. I think that is exactly right. Yeah. I mean, 10-some music entertainment went public on the New York Stock Exchange, and that was one of the reasons why they wanted to be in the U.S. was, hey, we want U.S. We want to be a global company. I want to open it up to the audience in just one minute, but I want to touch on one last issue, which is really a theme here at Davos and around the idea of stakeholders, various stakeholders of sustainability, of ethical investments. And one of the things I wanted to ask you, and you and I have had this conversation a bit privately before, but over time, as you think about the New York Stock Exchanges, as NASDAQ and others think about these different exchanges, do you think there'll be a moment at which you'd say, you know what, we only want to have certain types of companies on our exchange. If I was developing the next tobacco company, maybe you'd say, you know what, I'm not going to push that hard to attract that company to my exchange or I'm a fossil fuel company. I'm not going to push that hard to try to bring them public or what have you. Do you think we're moving in that direction? I do not, and I'll tell you why, and we have had this conversation before, but investors should have the right to choose, and it's a really slippery slope if we start to decide for them what opportunities they should have access to. That said, there are things we can do to make it easier for them to choose, and so we provide data. We calculate a lot of metrics around ESG issues. We announced at a partnership where we're providing 500 different metrics on ESG, so investors have the information that they need. We've also partnered up on municipal bonds so that you can look at what cities might have more exposure to climate change and be more susceptible to wildfires. So two equivalent municipalities, one bond might be more interesting to an investor versus another. Those are the types of things that we feel like is appropriate to inform investors, but give them the right to choose. What do you say? Look, ESG is becoming a much bigger topic among our clients. I mean, they're asking us to really consider those factors in making our investment decisions. Have there been companies that you've looked at and said, you know what, actually, we're not going to do that? Yeah. That's a market working. Yeah, we're making investment decisions. Yeah, I ask you a related question, though, about cost, because one of the things you're seeing, you're seeing the big companies that have balance sheets and income statements like Microsoft say, we're going to go not just carbon neutral, we're going to go carbon negative. And the idea, the good news there, is that they're going to try to put pressure on the entire value chain down the line to do similar things. The hard part is, if you're investing in a startup, those are real costs to be buying carbon offsets or to be changing the structure of your company in the immediate term. I'm not saying it's not the right thing to do long term, but I think it's a real question mark when it comes to investing them early. Well, I think everybody's going to have to define what ESG and sustainability means. It may not be about carbon offsets. It might be about diverse boards. It may be something quite different. But I think we're all going to have to take those factors into account in making investment decisions. And our clients are going to demand it. And I think investment outcomes will be better when you take that into account. Final word to David on that issue, and then we'll open it up. But are there companies that you say, you know what, we don't want to represent this company given what's going on in the world today? Well, there's always a lens for us, whether as an investor, an advisor, a financier, where we think about the reputational association of being involved with certain businesses. And so that's going on for decades, and it will continue. But where is the line now? Is the line moving? You're looking for a line? There's not a line. There's a transition that's going on where people are thinking differently about how they want to direct capital to try to promote sustainability, broad topic. It can include the environment. It can include more inclusive capitalism. It can include governance, as Bill pointed out. There's a transition that we're actively engaged in debating, trying to figure out. And everybody's looking for a line. My view is this is going to be a multi-decade transition where we'll see changes in the way people allocate capital. We announced a program just a couple of months ago where we're committed to providing $750 billion of capital through financing activities or investing activities toward broadly nine different categories of what we think are sustainable areas for investment and growth, really with a focus on helping our clients transition their businesses over time. So you're looking for a line, and we're actually looking for ways to move the world in a direction, which is very different than a line. But it's fine for Bill to have a line. You know what I mean? I don't think he should... Is he an investor? Yeah, he's an investor. Like, it's not the same thing for all the different roles and to say, hey, everyone should draw this line. I think the three of us would have... Let me ask you then a final, final question because I did promise I'd open it up. David, don't you think that when Goldman Sachs puts its name on an IPO, a lead left on an IPO, or anywhere on any of these offerings, that effectively it is an explicit endorsement that the Goldman Sachs franchise, the brand, means something? I believe it does. And yes, when we put our name on an IPO, it means something. You're asking a question in the context of ESG where the implication, and maybe I misunderstood the implication, was should we draw a line and say, we will not raise money for a company that is a carbon company or fossil fuel company? And the answer to that is we're not going to do that. We're not going to draw a line. However, we are trying to allocate capital to businesses that help the transition to a more carbon neutral world or a better world and sustainability on a whole variety of fronts. And so I had an op-ed that was placed in the FT a few weeks ago where I said, the world is going to continue to use carbon and fossil fuels and cars and airplanes for a long, long time. The question is, what do we do as capital allocators to accelerate the transition for our clients and for the economy as a whole in a positive way? And that's the way we're trying to think about it. Okay. Thank you for this fabulous conversation. Let's open it up to questions. We have about 10 minutes and we'll try to sneak in as many as we can. If you could raise your hands, we'll try to get a microphone, I think, to you. If we can, I see a hand right over here. Thank you. So you have talked a lot about we work governance and diversity or ESG. We work when out with an old mail board in their original filing. Goldman was part of that. Is that something that you would see not happening again? Is that a lesson that we've learned from we work? Don't go out with an old mail board. I think what you saw there, though, was the market reacted right away. So they very quickly refiled their S1 with a woman on the board. So I think it was obvious that they were hearing some message from the market about what would be supported. So I think boards need to get much more diverse, much more quickly. We've been spending time talking about how we can use our platform to try to accelerate that. And it's something we spend a lot of time thinking about. I'm a huge advocate for the fact that with boards and diversity broadly, not just gender, we're not moving quickly enough and we can move more quickly. I think one of the things that I'd advocate for is there are enormous biases. Let's just take gender in the context of what people are looking for board members. Everyone wants someone who's been a CEO or a CFO. There are tons of women who are talented, who are out there, have 25 years of experience. They haven't been a CEO or a CFO. Let's find ways to get that list to aggregate and get more women on boards. Let's get more people of color on boards and we're trying to find ways to use our platform to accelerate. One of the things we've done to that exact point is we launched a board advisory council where the CEOs of our listed companies are actually recommending and nominating women that they actually, diverse candidates, not just women, that they would recommend to be on a board who might not be a CEO or a CFO in order to build up that candidate pool so that we have provided a new staff. And that is a great, great thing that you're doing and there are others doing it. One of the things we have to do is on the people that are making the decisions, it's great to have these pools, but if we're not taking people out of the pools because they're not CEOs or CFOs, we're not making the progress we need to make. And I would say I hope not. I hope that we're going to see significantly the diverse boards. I know we're trying, as we think about ESG, to be a real leader in diversity at management team level and at the board level. And I hope we don't have any that will be not really a diverse composition. Bill, can I ask you just a follow-up on that, which is one of the things, especially because you invest in early stage companies, when you think about how a company... You know, we all talk about how we want diverse boards and diverse management, but when you think about how a company is often formed, it's oftentimes two roommates. It's two friends. And when I say roommates, it could be two guys. It could be two girls. It could be whatever it is. And sort of how you infuse the idea of diversity from the beginning. So it's not an add-on at the last minute when the S1 goes out and people aren't happy about it. I think a dialogue... And we try really hard at this. The dialogue has to start with those entrepreneurs and those entrepreneur management teams to say, great boards matter. Great independent boards are correlated with investment success. So let's start early to think about getting some outside directors who can really help you as you execute your business plan and execute your mission. Get that dialogue started early. Then it expands into what kind of directors do we want to have? Well, diverse boards are more correlated with better outcomes on investments. And you'll need to that. But I think what people are not doing enough is starting the dialogue earlier about the value of an independent board. And they sort of wait around with a board that's comprised of the entrepreneurs and just the investors and not independence. And we've got to move faster on that. Well, if you build a diverse management team, you're more likely to start providing... You know, thinking about those things and prioritizing a diverse board. And one diverse candidate is not enough on a board or in a management team. You actually need that healthy debate. And it's not so much about the diverse candidates as diversity of thought. And I think if you really focus on not putting a whole bunch of people in the room that think the same way and talk the same way and look the same way, you're just not going to run your businesses as successfully. That's what independent boards do. And good independent boards with all kinds of diversity, challenge management, and make management better at what they're doing. Let me thank everybody here for a fabulous conversation. I really appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Great. Thank you.