Ken Moelis Quotes

There is a desire for change. There is a millennial generation that doesn't like what they're seeing, but doesn't quite know what the solution is.

That is the brilliant thing about the millennials. They're not obsessing about, "Hey, there is not going to be a job for me" - they're trying to take advantage of how good a life they can have without having to create so much nominal income.

[Millennials ] are sharing cars. They're sharing apartments. I'm not sure my generation quite knows how to take advantage of it.

Without going too deep, without globalization I am not sure everyone would be able to have a supercomputer in their pocket at the low cost.

A big secular thing going on is technology and deflation. This is where I think millennials are getting that it is an improvement in life, and they're taking advantage of it.

Everybody is talking about synergies. You've got to take out every cost you possibly can. You have to position yourself as your services change.You have to think about in five years from now what is going to happen technologically to you. And then you do have to think about M&A or your balance sheet, and you have to think about everything in the context of, "Am I prepared to meet that challenge?".

I asked one retailer, I said, "Let me ask you, are you going to raise prices next year?" They looked at me and said, "Not only are we not going to raise prices, we're going to have to lower prices, increase the quality of the goods, and turn the inventory quicker."

The ability of people to reach their own news sources now, and create different views, is really unbelievable, and [populism] may be part of this.

The investing public understands that you need to do things to position yourself.

That is the brilliant thing about the millennials. They're not obsessing about, "Hey, there is not going to be a job for me" - they're trying to take advantage of how good a life they can have without having to create so much nominal income. Income is there to create quality of life, but you can share your car and get where you want to go, and you can travel the world by couch surfing. I think they're taking advantage of deflationary forces to improve their life while not maybe having to chase the nominal money that was needed to buy a whole car, a whole house, a whole couch.

In each business, there is a process, or a delivery system or information system, that is changing rapidly under them.

There are some very difficult things to understand that globalization is providing, that people really think are just here but really are a function of some of that. There are some very difficult arguments.

I think that life expectancy over the last 10 years has increased dramatically. You're living longer.

You ever go out to a restaurant now? You can get quality food - you can go out and get the best food that was available 20 years ago. They'll put it on a plate, you'll sit in a plastic chair because nobody values the chair, the white tablecloth, the maître d', but they'll put on your plate some great food for what used to be available at Applebee's prices. There are some really nice things going on, some external values being delivered to people.

I want to be clear. Who knows if [ Donald Trump] will be a vessel that people will get behind, it might not be, but there is a movement out there.

We pick on retail, I think, because each individual has experience with retail. It is easy to talk about.

Not everybody has experience in drilling for oil in the Permian Basin, but the same thing is happening in every industry everywhere in some manner.

The reason you're put in the CEO chair is because a company is facing these issues and you've been designated the person best to organize around them. I think that people are pretty energized around trying to figure this out.

In most industries, technological change is happening at a rapid rate.

Whatever it is, in a 1% GDP world, I think people feel like there are other things they have to do other than just organic growth.

Do people have confidence? I think the real confidence you need is the confidence in your outlook, and I think people are pretty confident it is a low-growth world.

I worked at Drexel Burnham and DLJ, and then I worked at a financial conglomerate that had 60,000 people - there was a difference. But we went to the schools and said it's the same. The experience I had in 1992 is exactly what you're going to get in 2002.

I don't want to pick on Deutsche Bank, but I think the world of the regulated financial conglomerate, it is a strange thing. There is nothing in common between writing checks and running branch offices, issuing credit cards - those are good businesses, but they really have zero in common with M&A advice. They're a different customer.

John Cryan and I worked together at UBS, and I think John is one smart, hardworking individual, and I wouldn't bet against John. I wish him well.

Everybody is looking at their base business and saying, "What else is it? Sure, we do this, but while we're doing that, what else do we know about our customer, and what does that enable us to do?" That comes from the access to information and the ability to analyze it with a speed they never had. I think everybody is thinking that way.

The only thing I find executives down about is the regulatory environment.

I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now.

There is a lot of opportunity in all of this stuff [like healthcare business]. I don't know why everybody is focused on the negatives.

Income is there to create quality of life, but you can share your car and get where you want to go, and you can travel the world by couch surfing.

I think [millenials] are taking advantage of deflationary forces to improve their life while not maybe having to chase the nominal money that was needed to buy a whole car, a whole house, a whole couch.

You see a wave of populism in the world. There is something wrong. This maybe because of technology. The ability of people to reach their own news sources now, and create different views, is really unbelievable. There is a desire for change. There is a millennial generation that doesn't like what they're seeing, but doesn't quite know what the solution is.

Remember, for 5,000 years people probably rode those horses. They probably felt that horses were a permanent part of civilization. Everybody has had this moment.

There are only two people running [Donald trump and Hillary Clinton] - you have to pick one of two people, and it's not like I said Mickey Mouse was going to win. This is why, like you said about Brexit, inside of London I don't think they saw what was going on.

I do think [in USA] is a need for change. There is something wrong when you have $20 trillion of debt and crumbling infrastructure at the same time, and really fewer people employed than have been. Something is wrong.

I think people sense that - that there is something not right about that equation [in the USA].

You get behind some of the numbers, like the underfunded pensions in the US, and I'm not sure people even understand how wrong their situation is.

The leverage Wall Street has to change the world is greater than technology. At a very young age, you're in the room with CEOs, making critical decisions. It should be exciting. It is exciting.

Digitization has created opportunities for everybody to accumulate information in a way they were never able to, and analyze it with a speed that just wasn't there.

The challenges, the changes we're talking about often seem to them like unbelievable opportunities to deliver a product quicker, better. If you can improve the quality, lower the cost, and improve the turns - and you can do that because your information systems, your delivery systems, are better because of technology - well, you see that as a wonderful opportunity to gain market share.

I would point out is that most of the change over the past 5,000 years has been arithmetic, and it now logarithmic. Digitization, the whole Moore's law thing where it doubles every 18 months - that is a speed that is faster than most people are used to.

I've always said this: I've never seen a Michelin three-starred restaurant that was a buffet. They usually serve à la carte. I do think the delivery of a specific service, a specific advice for a specific reason, is the way you get the equivalent of a Michelin three-starred relationship.

It is a very interesting world. I'm excited. It is much more optimistic than people think, and there is going to be huge job creation from all these things, and there are going to be huge life improvements.

If you're not exposing yourself to a non-consensus view somehow over the course of a day, you can reject them, but you should expose yourself to them.

The consensus is a very dangerous thing to get complacent about.

By the way, I'm not sure the managing director who was 50 in 2005 understood that the job had changed - that when he or she came out of school in 1986, that it was different. How would they know? We've got to admit that.

I went to Brazil, and you get on the ground and you see it, and you could tell the government was in trouble two years ago. This was just going to sweep the government aside, and it was a force you could feel. Brexit, the same thing.

In most industries, technological change is happening at a rapid rate. I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now. Digitization has created opportunities for everybody to accumulate information in a way they were never able to, and analyze it with a speed that just wasn't there.

You see a wave of populism in the world. There is something wrong. This maybe because of technology.

There was a time when people thought that if you piled a bunch of mortgages together, the top of the pile was AAA. There are a lot of things that become consensus.

It was phenomenal to see what was going on there. I came away from there so energized about India, and I was pretty sure that [Narenda] Modi was going to win an election that wasn't easy to see.