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right if you think about a capital the the stock market most of the investors in stock market are passive right their index funds their mutual funds their exchange traded funds many investors trade all the time it's very healthy thing for the market to have someone place a bet where they buy 10 of a company and where they are take a business that is underperformed for 10 years and bring in a ceo like hunter harrison and turn around a railroad that's a great thing for the market and it's a very healthy thing for the economy you're about transactions you know you want to buy and then you want to sell and you want to make a lot of use profit now we can it may be you want to buy after 10 years or 15 years sell after 15 years but it's a transactional thing rather than spending a whole lot of money uh to really run a business and create a product and do all those kinds of things you know the argument even paul volcker's made this apartment too many people are going to wall street too many smart people and working with you and it's all about transactions not about building something well let me let me let me take account of that in terms of what we do so we're not about transactions at all in fact we do very few transactions maybe one or two a year okay we buy stakes you're not a pure trader we don't trade we buy a stake in a business we get actively involved in the business we work to make the business more valuable and by the way pretty much everything we've ever owned the exception of borders has a higher value today than it did after we sold it which means that the impact that we've had in the business has been positive i'm also a you know an executive officer of a business i'm i'm the chairman of the board of a company called howard hughes this is a business that i created it's a business i created by taking 34 assets outside of general growth sticking them into a new company recruiting a management team building a board of directors uh and this company's doing marvelous things so for example in new york city we own the south street seaport uh management team again i want to take credit for their work but what they've accomplished is they got approvals to do a new uh they're going to completely transform the seaport they're going to do a new development there we're building a new shopping center uh in uh in las vegas we're changing kind of the landscape in hawaii with a 60 acre development of 9 million square feet of of real estate so these are companies that are building and adding enormous value and the business that would not have happened uh were we not to have taken a stake in general growth and spun off that entity what about procter gamble uh procter gamble uh great company uh we uh 175 years of you know generally pretty fabulous successes great brand names great brand names uh last four years have been very difficult for the company and you came in adamant to remove bob mcdonnell uh the you know we thought it was time he was ceo and by the way he hasn't been there that long he'd been there about uh four years okay and uh he'd been with the company obviously a long period of time and uh you know the because most of the capital in the stock market is passive investors can't themselves make these kind of changes so they rely on someone to take a lead which we did on procter gamble by the way in procter gamble i worked very quietly with the lead director we would speak periodically it was only when we felt it was time that i made a public presentation about what the concerns were at p g and a couple weeks later bob i think resigned of his own of his own doing now that stock's gone you know it's up there has come back one of the legendary names and aj lafley's a fabulous ceo and i think he's going to do a great job turning the business he's also working on recruiting the next founder of the company but as a you know i got enormous number of phone calls from procter gamble alums uh thanking us for the work that we did at p g and the same thing is true at general growth i mean if you look at the bucks bound family had a five billion dollar net worth going into the the financial crisis that was down to 25 million when the uh general growth stock went from 63 to dollars a share to 20 or 30 cents we helped take it back to 34 a share that's been a great thing not just for a wealthy family but for the the pension funds that own that stock for the you know i get thank you notes from investors who've invested alongside us so what's the drive for you what's the motivation um one i think what we do is important i think i'm making you know i do a lot of you so you're making companies stronger because you come in and you have a certain amount of power because you have a certain amount of investment and therefore you would like to say that if you look at your track record you do much better in making companies stronger than you do in weakening companies in any way that's absolutely true i mean i don't think anyone would ever accuse us of weakening a business now jcpenney not every investment's going to work out you know there was more risk in jcpenney than pretty much every other investment we've made because of the nature of the changes that weren't worth the attraction for you if there was more risks than anything else you've ever done the potential for reward right and what's the reward if you look at the reward or simply how much money you make for you no look i i don't keep score or what no i don't need more money i'm not i'm not motivated by uh financial returns i'm motivated by one of a great uh uh track record you know if you look at buffett he's had a whatever a 60-year track record so i've got uh i'm 20 years in but the record's been good so far but you know i'd like to have one of the best track records annual growth i'm not allowed to comment on returns um that's an sec restriction but the um you can look around there i'll tell you they're quite good but what i like you know i've done a lot of philanthropic work over the last uh a number of years i actually think i make a much greater contribution through what i do in the in my for-profit activities than i do in my not-for-profit not only that you sign a giving pledge that is true all right that is true um that's very true meaning that you don't want to leave your children you're going to leave it to half of it at least yes a charity well more than half you know well more than half but what's i think what people forget uh is you know wall street has unfortunately in the last uh certainly since the crisis got a pretty bad name but wall street is responsible is probably the biggest engine for job creation you know enabling businesses to access capital enabling businesses to to grow i mean you look at howard hughes was a creation out of thin air it's now a business that employs you know it's going to ultimately employ thousands of people create a ton of jobs do you think the criticism of mitt romney during the campaign for his activities in running a private equity firm one there yes yes absolutely uh i think uh good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy and and grow more jobs than they say they grow a ton of jobs i think the biggest risk of private equity jobs that would be going away the biggest problem with private equity is something there are periods of time with private equity firms use too much leverage which puts too much pressure on a business and and risks a business failure putting aside that i think you know the the top private equity firms create a lot of economic value too much leverage and too much was part of the problem of the economic recession we went through but we're not going to save the country with philanthropy despite the fact i you know i'm philanthropic i don't think that's going to solve our economic age it will save the country we'll save the country our good economic policies that create the right incentives and a administration that's supportive of the business community i think that's actually very very important and you know policies that will make us competitive globally you know it's a it's a global economy uh there's a story today i think in today's journal about companies merging with european businesses to move their operations offshore from a tax point of view we have to have a tax policy that discourages that kind of action so you can bring the money home yeah i mean i look at the honesty the idea have a tax policy so that the money can come home rather than leaving off sources so you don't have to pay taxes on it yes but i i think if you you know the united states is not dissimilar uh to the kind of companies we invest in we invest generally in very good companies that have lost their way and with better management enormous value can be created if you look at canadian pacific this was a dying investment it's a dying railroad under hunter harrison in a very short order you know less than you know a year and a half he's made dramatic changes to the business the president is the ceo of this business that we call america and the decisions he makes with respect to you know the way incentives are designed the way he works with congress as a as a leader in effectuating policy change can make an enormous difference in the growth rate of the country and job creation and happiness in our safety um i think i think that we can't diminish the importance of business and business practices i mean look at what bloomberg has accomplished as a mayor of new york city he took his for-profit mentality and uh has applied it to a city and i think the city has accordingly thrived i'd love to see the same thing happen for the country that's tough management too yeah it's also he has the benefit of independence um financial independence enormous benefit not obligated anybody particularly very important so we should elect rich people no um but we should i think that there's a lot to be said to have someone with a business background making decisions about the economy just for just because i don't quite understand this i mean our hedge is hedge fund performance down if you yes if you look at the overall statistics yes and why is that uh the answer is i think there are a lot more participants uh i think that there have been so it looked like it was it was just a sweet place to be and it's less sweet now it's become a much greater percentage of the amount of capital that's invested right and the scale by just the math makes it harder for that capital to grow at a high enough rate i also think there's been some regulatory change that's made it harder for certain kinds of hedge funds to make money you know i think it used to be that um you know people could uh you hear of hedge funds that would just you know ask enough questions that they would get answers ahead of the market and there's some there were some bad behavior that took place and and the government put in place you've had some insider trading issues as well yeah and i think a lot the crackdown on that stuff has maybe taken away some of the bad returns from from the business but i think the biggest driver has been uh the uh the fact that the business has scaled but look it's just like the mutual fund industry as a collective it's not particularly attractive place to invest your money but there are a few very good mutual fund managers who've done a lot better than the market over time same thing's true for hedge funds same thing's true for investors in real estate if you weren't invested what would you be um that's a good question i mean i would do what i do now even if i weren't compensated for doing it because i think it's a way for me to make the biggest contribution that i could make i mean i look i think about uh government if i could if i could effectuate change the same way i can effectuate change in the in the private sector but i think i can have more influence as a private participant than a public participant
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