Category: Interviews

It's amazing how corporate attitudes change over time. Sometime in the last nearly 40 years since Earth Day started being observed, "going green" has moved from an idea environmentalists talked about to a mission corporate America aspires to. In tonight's program, I interview Interbrand CEO Andy Bates about a survey his company sponsored. The survey asked consumers which corporate brands they perceive as "most green."

Surprisingly, those surveyed chose no company at all as the number one "most green" brand. But respondents did rate Toyota, BP, The Body Shop, and Honda as the next four "most green" companies. A triumph of corporate propaganda? Or is there something "authentic" that consumers sense about these four brands? Bates thinks that consumers do see a difference, particularly since Toyota and Honda have been first to market with hybrid vehicles. The Body Shop has long held itself as a purveyor of green-only products. BP has spent many billions to develop an alternative energy division.

The word “authentic” has been overused lately. But it’s about the best word I can come up with to describe the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange who I interviewed for the first time today. Duncan Niederauer is a regular guy. He took over as the boss of the Big Board last December when John Thain moved over to Merrill Lynch to become the new Chairman and CEO of the troubled investment firm.

Niederauer talks and acts like a stock trader. His style is breezy and friendly. Minutes after I shook his hand, we were already talking about his years at Goldman Sachs, his three kids, and why he’s a fan of the Cleveland Indians (His mother is from Brooklyn and doesn’t like the Yankees, forcing him to pick any other team to root for. He was attracted to the underdog Indians.) He’s starkly different from Thain, who is reserved and formal. I found it revealing that Niederauer chose not move into the grand office that Thain occupied -- with a combination of antique English furniture and a stock ticker -- preferring a more modest space down the hall.

If you watch the broadcast tonight, you'll see my in-depth interview with President George W. Bush. (If you miss the program, look for the video and transcript of the interview on the NBR website.) I thought I'd use this blog entry to share with you what I call my "Reporter's Notebook." The notebook contains my impressions of my conversation with the President.

The interview took place in the Map Room of the White House, where FDR studied military maps during WWII. As for the mood, President Bush was upbeat and confident about the outlook for the economy, despite the recent gloomy economic news. When I asked him about what he plans to do after he leaves the White House in January, he mentioned several projects. At the top of his list is a book which he plans to write without the help of a ghost writer.

I also asked President Bush if he thinks Senator Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obama will be the Democratic challenger to Senator John McCain in the general election. He said it's "too close to call."

No one's shedding any tears for the position the credit rating agencies, like Moody's, now find themselves in. After rating a lot of now highly-suspect mortgage securities as "AAA," Moody's along with S&P and Fitch are taking the lumps from market critics. Moody's CEO Ray McDaniel issued something of a mea culpa during the interview I did with him today. McDaniel noted that Moody's did some things wrong, but also said that it's not realistic to expect any rating system to be able to foresee the kind of contagion that's spread through the credit markets.

The method of rating complex derivative mortgage-backed securities, such as collateralized debt obligations, with a simplistic "AAA" rating has also come under fire.

How do you pick the best quotes from 14-1/2 minutes of good stuff? That's the task I faced today, after Susie Gharib interviewed Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Susie and Fisher covered a lot of ground from inflation to stagflation to how much is enough when it comes to rate cuts? In the end we decided to accommodate as much of the interview as possible by pushing off some of our regular features, like the commentary that usually ends the program.

That said we were still only able to bring you about 7-1/2 minutes of the Fisher interview. So if you like what you see tonight, please check out the streaming video of the full interview on our website. You can also read the complete transcript here.

There is yet another reason to celebrate in Detroit. For the second time in a week, one of the city's beleaguered auto companies has announced a profitable quarter. Today, General Motors said it earned $1.4 billion dollars in the second quarter, excluding special items. Last week Ford reported a profit.

In a way that good news couldn't come at a worse time for GM, Ford, and Chysler. A little over two weeks ago the companies kicked off contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers Union. When the talks began, analysts said the companies' weak financial positions could give them the upper hand at the bargaining table. Now, they think it may be tough for the car companies to plead poverty when they are making money.

But despite a profitable quarter, the U.S. auto industry is far from robust. Both GM and Ford continue to lose money in North America, even though they have dramatically reduced costs through plant closings and job cuts. All of the companies say they need to make deep reductions in health care costs if they hope to compete with Asian transplants.

Why is it that more than 27,000 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders made their way this weekend to Omaha to pay homage to the world’s most famous investor? This year I traveled to America’s Great Plains to find out why Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder meeting is the talk of the investment world. It was my first time attending this event that Buffett calls “Woodstock for Capitalists.”

My flight from New York to Omaha was packed with capitalists. Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- was going to the Berkshire meeting. The passengers were hedge fund guys, money managers, CEOs, and individual investors. The money manager sitting next to me said he’s been going to the meeting every year for 22 years. His son made headline news in the 1990s -- he was ten years old then -- when he asked Buffett at the shareholder’s meeting why he invested in shares of Coke and not Pepsi. In fact, all weekend people told me stories about their “first time” meeting the Oracle of Omaha, and they bragged about how many times they’ve made the pilgrimage since. When I told them this was my first visit, they gave me loving looks that seemed to say “you’ll never be the same after this experience.”

The success of Warren Buffet is legendary.

World famous stock market investor of modern times. An icon for hundreds of thousands of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. One of the richest men in the world. It makes you wonder...What is it like to work for this extraordinary man?

It’s a question I asked three CEOs who work for Buffet: Richard Santulli of NetJets, Denis Abrams of Benjamin Moore, and Bruce Whitman of FlightSafety International.

This week you’ll hear their candid revelations about their boss.

John Thain tells me he’ll be staying on at the Big Board... for the long term.

I asked Thain about his personal plans during my interview with him on the day of the big merger between the New York Stock Exchange and Paris’ Euronext. Now that he’s CEO of NYSE Euronext -- the biggest stock market in the world -- and just pulled off the first trans-Atlantic market merger, I thought he might want to move on to Washington like so many of his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs. When Thain was tapped as CEO in 2004, he said he planned to stay 3 to 5 years. But, now, Thain tells me he’s having “fun,” and he’s “excited” about what he’s doing. He adds, “I’m not thinking about anything different.”

And, what does Thain think about the stock market these days?

At 77, John C. Bogle shows no signs of slowing down. The founder of the Vanguard Group -- who prefers to be called "Jack" -- came to our interview today with great energy and enthusiasm... and without the entourage that often accompanies other business leaders we interview. He was very easygoing, smiled often, and was exceptionally polite to our technical crew.

Personally, I like interviewing Bogle because he advocates a sensible approach to investing that is easy to understand. In a nutshell, he recommends investors put nearly all of the US portion of their stock portfolio into a S&P 500 or Wilshire 5000 index fund. That may not be much fun, but he says it will payoff long term because studies show that, over time, index funds beat actively managed funds.