Barclays CEO Venkat on The UK Economy, AI & Cricket

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Joe Cass: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. My name is Joe Cass, senior Director at S&P Global Ratings, and I'm the host and the creator of the Leaders Podcast. So on this episode we have Venkat, who is the group, CEO at Barclays and Saugata Saha, president at S&P Global Market Intelligence, and Chief Data Officer for S&P Global.

Okay, let's go. Venkat, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. [00:01:00]

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Thank you. And I should add that these are my views alone as well, and not necessarily those of Barclays.

Joe Cass: Brilliant.

So let's start with a nice, easy, gentle question, which is close to my heart. What's going wrong with the UK economy and how can the banking industry help?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: So. I'm sorry to do this on the first question, but I'll dispute slightly the premise of your question, which is that there's something going wrong. There are many things that are going right and there are some things that can go even better. So what's going right? I mean, you've got sort of two Indians and a native person from the UK talking in one language.

Hopefully both of us are as fluent as you in that language, but if we are, that is telling you something as fluent as you. And, uh, that is part of the soft power of London and the tremendous infrastructure that we have. Physical, financial, cultural, [00:02:00] and uh, and legal and economic, right? There is a reason why for centuries this has been the trading capital of the world.

Sometimes it's first, sometimes it's second. It doesn't fall much below that. And actually where you are in London and that one square mile around here is the heart of that innovation for over 300 years, and that is just on the financial side. Beyond that, there's industrial engineering, pharmaceutical, so the UK is a great country with great institutions, with great companies.

It's also a country that has for over 15 to 20 years suffered from low growth. That growth and solving that growth is the single fundamental thing that needs to change. It needs to move from one to one and a half quarter percent growth to something like two, and that will solve a lot of those. Now it has managed to maintain that growth.

Here's the good news. It has managed to maintain that growth [00:03:00] despite the trade shock of Brexit, which is now almost 10 years old, and despite three recent shocks, which is a war that's not that far away. An energy shock and a tariff shock. So in spite of that, the UK has done reasonably well. But you know, there's a budget happening here in about a month, uh, which we'll try,

we hope to address some of these questions. The second part of your question was about the financial industry and how we can contribute. The financial sector is about 10% of the country. In employment, in GDP, banks are among the highest taxpayers in the country. Some people want us to have an even higher position, but you know, we are happy where we are.

Uh, we bring money into the economy. We help direct money within the economy. We helped capital get allocated, and so there are two constructive things we can do. One is we can help fund growth, which we do. Second is that we can bring investors into the country and continue to make London the vibrant [00:04:00] marketplace that it is.

And a hub for financial services, which are then exported around the world. Barclays, for instance, is a big exporter of financial services. For a long period after the financial crisis in the UK there was a sense that the financial industry, particularly the banks, uh, were not in the national interest. Almost became an enemy.

Thankfully, in the last few years, that's changed and people recognize the importance of the financial industry to the country. But there's a really important role we can work to, we can play with the government and with everybody else in having responsible finance, responsible investment lending into the country, and helping people on that journey towards individual and corporate and national economic growth.

Saugata Saha: If I can, um, add to what, uh, Venkat said. Um, you know, for us at S&P Global, um, London continues to be a very important hub for talent. And the work that we do and the [00:05:00] way we serve clients, uh, it's, it's at par with New York in terms of the presence we have here and what we do to serve clients. And going back to the point about deploying capital, um, we just last week announced the, uh, acquisition of a UK based company called With Intelligence, which essentially does, um, private markets, uh,

data and analytics, and it's almost a $2 billion acquisition. And that kind of reaffirms our position that this is an exciting place to do business. There's, um, talent in the market and capabilities, and we can serve global markets out of London.

Joe Cass: Great. Well, that's a great positive, uh, some great positive answers to, to kick off with.

Saugata, first of all, welcome to the show You've never been on Leaders, so welcome. So you're leading a business, a division at S&P that you know, arguably has one of the most detailed financial data sets, you know, globally. First of all, how's that going? And also what are the challenges that you're facing in, in the position?

 

Saugata Saha: Um, thanks for the question, Joe. I'd say, you [00:06:00] know, it's an exciting time to be leading this business. I have two jobs at the company, as you said. I run the market intelligence business, which is essentially, data, research managed services, solutions for financial services customers. So increasingly beyond financial services as well.

And I'm also the chief data officer for the company. And given what's happening with the artificial intelligence in the world around us, it's an exciting time to be doing this job. Um, the biggest challenge that our customers have, and there's a whole lot, a lot of them, I think one is, the uncertainty that they face in running their businesses day-to-day.

Second is, and that uncertainty is led by general macroeconomic conditions, geopolitics, trade uncertainty, and also technology driven uncertainty. The second is we all recognize that artificial intelligence over the next, call it five, 10 years, we'll have a dramatic shift in how many industries operate.

And one thing, we all know that artificial intelligence without good underlying data is kind of useless, and we are well positioned to be [00:07:00] able to package our data in ways that our clients can use it in new use cases and create even more value in solving some of the toughest complex problems. But that's not easy.

It requires, um, us to do different things with our data. It requires our clients to have a very different mindset in how they work with data and how they work with IP and making that bridge is, is a challenge, and it's an exciting challenge.

Joe Cass: Fantastic. Venkat. When you say the word bank, people can understand that, take that in kind of very different ways.

So could you break out the main divisions, kind of revenue drivers of Barclays and as a group, what's your strategy and how are you kind of getting on with it?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: So, I should begin with our history. We are a 335 year-old bank. We started around the corner here actually, um, on Lombard Street. Uh, lending money against Gold.

Okay, a bunch of Quaker, uh, uh, merchants in the city of London. What's a [00:08:00] bank at its very simplest? What we do is we help people store their money. We help people. We help people borrow money, from us or others. We help people move money, pay each other, and we help people invest and grow their money. Those people can be individuals like you and me.

They can be corporations, small or big. They can be governments and they can be, uh, you know, very large multinational enterprises. And we are a global bank. We operate in the uk and we've been increasing the amount of money in the uk. Coming back to your first question about, you know, that we invest in the UK and our assets in the uk, to your first question of confidence in the country and then we operate in the us.

Across the world, but, with a lot of emphasis on regions which have a direct natural corridor to London, whether it's in Europe, whether it's in the Middle East, whether it's in India, whether it's in Singapore or Hong [00:09:00] Kong and Japan. Or Australia. So as a bank, we have five divisions. We have what we call Barclays UK, our main UK retail division facing UK retail clients.

It's the so-called ring-fenced bank. Then we've got a UK corporate bank, which serves. Small, medium sized corporates across the country, 56 offices across the country. We've got a private banking and wealth business, which serves inside the United Kingdom people, uh, who want to manage their own stock and bond portfolio to those who want financial advice to what people call ultra high net worth or private banking.

That private banking part of our business is global. Then we've got a global investment bank, and we are the largest investment bank. Outside the top five Americans and in many parts of investment banking, we are actually well inside the top five. And that investment bank has two divisions. It's a trading division of what we call a markets division, which operates in the major financial [00:10:00] markets around the world, helping people buy and sell securities, manage their risk, helping them borrow against securities.

This is the lending part. And then we've got an investment banking division, which also does two things. It provides banking services for very large corporations, help them manage their money, foreign exchange derivatives. And helps them with advisory and issuing things like stocks and bonds. And there we operate across the world.

So those are the five divisions, the investment bank. And then in addition, of course, in the US we've got a credit card business with over 20 million customers, um, facing off against and where our clients are, some of the largest corporations, uh, in the US who want to have partnership credit cards. So for instance, like airlines like JetBlue.

So those are the five divisions, the US credit card business, the investment banking division, and the three UK facing divisions, which is our retail division in the UK, our UK corporate bank, and the private banking and wealth. Although private banking, as I said, [00:11:00] has an international dimension, we had a strategic plan, uh, which we announced seven quarters ago at the start of last year, where one of the aspects of it was to,

invest about 30 billion pounds worth of risk created assets in the UK. Coming back to your first question as, because we, this is our home. It's been our home for 335 years. We've got great brand recognition here, and we think that this is a economy well worth investing in. We also said that we increased our return targets for the bank.

And we said that we would increase the amount that we pay back to shareholders. I'm happy to say we had, uh, results just two days ago here in London that through these seven quarters we've been on Target every quarter being a little far, you know, faster. But at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is to help people, companies, corporations, on those four things, store their money, borrow money, move money, and invest their money and [00:12:00] we want to do it safely, responsibly, profitably for them and profitably for us.

Joe Cass: Fantastic, and congratulations on the results you mentioned. Saugata, you've got this massive data set, enormous at S&P Global Market Intelligence. What are some of the kind of most cutting edge ways?

You're using AI or you're seeing people use AI right now?

Saugata Saha: Sure. Um, our goal with AI is essentially to think about, you know, AI being everywhere in everything for everyone. Right? And that's been a, that's has evolved as our strategy both internally and externally. Um, internally we've invested a lot of time and energy in not just building out tools and capabilities that, you know, all 45,000 of our colleagues can use, but also making sure they're equipped and trained to be able to use those.

Externally, we are doing two things. One is making our data AI ready and putting it into new channels, which make it easier for our clients who have AI related use cases to consume that [00:13:00] data. But equally important, what we are doing is into some of our marquee products. We are building an AI related capabilities.

For example, um, S&P, capital IQ Pro, which is one of our flagship, uh, desktop products on which data gets consumed. We've built an exciting new features like. Chat IQ, document Intelligence and Chart iq. Chart IQ is my favorite one where. You look at the, you could look at the Barclay stock price for this week, three years later,

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Not that I look at it.

Saugata Saha: And you could highlight the stock price and say what happened? Right? And it'll look up various sources of information and give you a synthesis of what it thinks happened that caused a certain movement in the stock price. Right? So our strategy is really all encompassing as we think about deploying AI.

For us, as you know, Joe, data is not, uh, byproduct. Data is our stock and trade, so we take the potential upside, of the AI revolution very seriously, and we are working [00:14:00] incredibly hard to make sure that we can create value for our customers in ways that it would be incredibly hard for them to do that. So exciting times.

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: I mean, I should add, I know you didn't ask me for an advertisement, but I'll give it to you anyway. Uh, Barclays has had a long relationship with S&P. We've actually strengthened that relationship in some ways recently, and part of it is on the basis of some of the, you know, the innovations, the developments, the capabilities that Saugata was talking about.

Which is, uh, I've seen some of the demos and I think, you know, data is ubiquitous and what has happened in the last 30, 40 years is that ubiquity of data has, on the one hand, made it cheap. But on the other hand, you've got to be able to use it efficiently and intelligently, which is what I think you're trying to do, and you adopting new technologies that allow you to do that, over time. And, and for a customer of data, I mean, we produce data, we also consume data for ourselves and for our customers. It's important to be able to access that and to do that [00:15:00] efficiently.

Saugata Saha: I appreciate the endorsement that wasn't pre-planned, but uh, you know, as you said, you know, we...

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: i'll do anything for a good cup of tea.

Saugata Saha: We've got a long, deep relationship and we wanna make sure that we are doing our bit to continue to invest in our product so that they stay relevant for the future.

Joe Cass: Excellent. Thank you both. Venkat, sticking with AI, so how is AI shaping the banking industry and also how is Barclays looking to leverage this technology?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Uh, look, it is absolutely fundamental to everybody's thinking. It is becoming more and more important in the doing. But the challenge, of course is the doing. We've taken a few approaches to it. Number one is we've made the tools available. To everybody. So we've worked with Microsoft, we've got copilot on everybody's desk, and then tools beyond that to allow people to access and, and you know, data within the company.

We are then training people individually to use it. [00:16:00] Then we are encouraging teams through hackathons. We've had them over two years to find small pilots that are interesting that they can actually feel control of their own workflow and a control over how they improve their workflow using AI. This has been enormously successful in the kind of company, but I would say a lot of this increases awareness.

One or two projects that have come out of that, not one or two, maybe five or six, have actually given ideas that are potentially very scalable, which is the other end of it. So the other end of it is the scalable application. You know, things, and these are commonly known things like customer service.

Things like, um, document search and document management. Uh, even on our trading desks, you know, bots that help improve electronic trading because they see requests for, uh, quotations, they then look across our traders inventory and, and, and, and price making systems and come back with a faster [00:17:00] price. So the ones at scale are the ones in the end that are really interesting.

Because they depend on the bottom up ideas, but they also depend on the bets that the company will make. And there the important thing, at least at my current stage of evolution or knowledge of AI, is, it's not so much the technology per se, but how willing are you to redesign processes around AI, completely end to end, beginning to end?

How understanding are you of the risks that may come. You know, people are always willing to take human error over machine error, right? For reasons I don't fully understand, but people are willing to take it. How understanding are you of the risks? How do you overcome the risks and how willing are you actually to make that full change?

These are tough, tough questions [00:18:00] and, and where people are willing to give it over. Individuals are. But businesses and divisions and processes are understandably cautious. But that's where I think the big, the big focus is. And we've got about 12 or 13 large projects working. Uh, some are having a large impact and you, but you can see, you know, some people are, you know, more eager to use it.

Some people are more cautious. But that's where I think the potential is.

Saugata Saha: I, I think, I think, uh, Venkat nailed it on the head with the last part, which is, um, as you said, the barrier to adoption. The adoption curve will be defined not by technology or the technologists or the people who deploy the technology.

It'll really be defined by the societal willingness to accept change. And our ability to manage that change socially. Um, I think, I think, you know, the acceptance, social acceptance of errors made by humans versus machines is a good one, right? [00:19:00] If you look at what's happening with autonomous driving globally, um, is, is a good example.

And if you extend that into other industries like us, um, we are very quick to jump to errors made by machines and point out how that might be unacceptable. And we want standard of a 100.00% um, you know, accuracy rate. Whereas a lot of the systems which are run by humans, um, are not a hundred percent accurate, right?

You can get to a very high level of accuracy depending on willingness to spend money or the criticality of the process, but it is not a hundred percent. So driving that change is gonna be important. And my view, my personal view is, I think on some of these things, it doesn't serve anybody to be too far out ahead of the customers.

You wanna be a little further ahead. You wanna lead the customers to the future, which is promising and exciting, but being too far out ahead, it's like, you know, the little like Apple Newton, way ahead of its time. Brilliant product. Some of us are old enough that we remember that and uh, it didn't go anywhere, even though it was, [00:20:00] you know, Steve Jobs.

And brilliance that produced the product. But there was a time and place when the whole ecosystem came together and when there were enough use cases and societal acceptance for the iPhone, and that took off like a rocket. So I think you'll see similar analogies. I mean, my, my view is that with ai, where we are today.

It's a little like the internet in the late nineties. Um, winners and losers haven't yet been defined. There are magical use cases out there, which haven't been conceived, but this thing will be big. I don't think we've figured out all the ways in which this will be big, but making it big, realizing that value will require changing a lot of hearts and minds, which won't be easy.

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Can, can I pick up on one social aspect of this, the other social aspect, which is it'll obviously have an impact on the way people work. Not just the number of jobs, but how they do their work, what job satisfaction they get. It's a really, really important thing for us. Um, especially those of us who have the responsibilities [00:21:00] to sort of, um, for large companies and, and the way people work in those companies.

And frankly, for our own children because that's what they will come into, or in fact are coming into today. Um, and we have to manage that very thoughtfully. It can't just be a productivity driven exercise. right? It has to be, uh, an exercise that keeps in mind what work is the dignity in, in, in, in employment and labor, the intellectual fulfillment and the financial benefits that come from this.

That is going to be challenging as well.

Saugata Saha: And, and I think Venkat based on, you know, the direction of what you're talking about, we will also see societal changes where certain classes of jobs will go away. You know, number of travel agents today is a fraction of what we had 20 years ago, but, you know, 20 years ago you also didn't have, um.

Social media influences or creators or you know, um, you didn't have Uber drivers as kind of a class of...

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: and you didn't have expedia.com.

Saugata Saha: Exactly. So [00:22:00] you'll see that change and I think we've gotta embrace it. We've gotta find ways to bring people along, our employees, our customers, and I think the risk is being too far out ahead on that change.

And losing the narrative and the people on the journey.

Joe Cass: Yeah. Fantastic. It's a great debate. So moving, moving things on Venkat to a, to a topic that, you know, everyone seems to be talking about right now in finance. So wondering how you think about the increasingly popular private market sector, so particularly private credit.

So in your perspective from the banking industry and also Barclay's view, where are you at right now?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: My view, first of all is, credit is credit is credit. There's lending in the economy. Yeah. In order to grow, companies need to borrow. Right. You can't fund everything with an equity investment.

There's a role then for lenders in the, in the economy. Historically, that lending was in banks. And I told you [00:23:00] Barclays started by lending money against Gold, right? Uh, and it started financing traders out of London. It started financing people who wanted to borrow to build railroads and steam ships.

Um, and today, of course, we, we finance technology and green energy and data centers. But it began with banks. It moved towards what we call public markets. You know, you guys at S&P have been rating bonds for a long, long, long time. Uh, and stocks of course, and companies, but, you know, um, but though the. Uh, then after the financial crisis and even before the financial crisis, it was moving from banks

who still have the majority of lending into, into the public markets. But at all times there were other agents who were lending money directly, insurance companies, and the like. After the financial crisis, there was a period and continues, where lending to smaller companies [00:24:00] and what we would call riskier companies, um, lower credit quality companies, became under the capital rules more difficult and onerous for banks.

So there was a step shift towards what we call private credit funds. Now it's perfectly understandable, it's a logical consequence of regulation. Um, and these companies need to borrow. So it's good that somebody else is lending to them, right? That society's growth depends on that borrowing. As far as a bank is concerned,

we then work in the ecosystem in a different way. We sometimes help those companies identify people from whom to borrow. We can continue to lend sometimes, but what we also do is we finance those private credit portfolios. Which we allow them to borrow from us against their portfolio. Again, we try to create terms that reward us and that manage our risks.

So I think it's an [00:25:00] important feature of the economy. I think it's a feature that's always existed. It's growing in important, but because it is growing, people worry about what the interconnections are to the financial system and whether too much has gone there. And what you're seeing the regulators, do now is ask the question, oh, well I took it outta the financial system, the banking system.

I've put it somewhere else. Now that's become big. Let me try to understand what the feedback to the banking system is. But I think it has an important purpose. There are some very, very many good companies who are engaged in this. Um, banks work with them, we'll continue to work with them. You've had in the last couple of, uh, in the last month and a half, a couple of notable.

Uh, you know, credit failures and the. You know, one arguably was private credit one was not necessarily private credit. It doesn't matter. And I think that's where the distinction can be misleading. Lending is lending is lending. [00:26:00] And you've got to run lending. Whether you do it in a bank, you do it in an insurance company, you do it in the public markets, you know, uh, S&P looks at the rating.

So do other companies look at the rating? You've got to be careful. You've got to select your client properly. You've got to understand their cash flows. You've got to validate them, you've got to monitor them. You've got to be attentive to everything about them, especially as we are finding out the strength of their financial controls and the independence of their financial controls.

Joe Cass: Great. It's interesting you said credit is credit because that is literally exactly what's included on the S&P ratings, private credit page in, in big tech. So yeah, we're in agreement there. Okay. Saugata at a high level, kind of what do you think will surprise people most about financial markets over the next five to 10 years?

Saugata Saha: Oh boy. Um, 10 years is...

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: glad he asked you that question.

Joe Cass: It's a nice, easy one.

Saugata Saha: 10, 10 years is a long time. But look, I, I think there's gonna be a whole host of changes, uh, in terms of how we [00:27:00] think about financial markets. Um, and I'm not trying to predict the future. I'm talking about some scenarios that are likely based on what we see in the world around us.

Firstly, I think you'll see new stories of value and, you know, was talking about. Banks inherently being stores of values, places where you borrow money, ways to move money, and ways to grow money. At least for the first three of them, you'll probably see new asset classes like stable coins, and I may, maybe, I don't even call them.

New asset classes emerge. Second is, I think tokenization is gonna be a big theme. You'll see that emerge and that's gonna have implications for our asset classes across the board. Um, I think geopolitics will play a, uh, increasing role in shaping trade flows. And trade flows are generally followed by financial flows and financial markets globally.

Um, and then I would say lastly, AI is gonna have a pretty profound impact on financial markets, um, down to the workflow level. Many workflows, the way we know it today, will get significantly disrupted, whether it's managing actuarial risk or [00:28:00] underwriting, or of course the big one, which is the whole customer experience part of it.

Um, so you'll see these changes happen and I think for most part it's gonna be evolutionary. It's not gonna be, um, in a quarter or three quarters rapid changes, but. The whole industry is gonna shift towards how we consume technology and how we leverage technology. Surprisingly enough, you know, of the big themes I talked about, um, three of the four other than geopolitics is technology driven.

And, uh, you will see some of these shifts. Um, private credit we think is gonna be, you know, a, a theme that's gonna grow. Now we are, obviously, we don't lend or borrow in the private credit space. Our goal is to make sure there's more transparency. Information available, tools available. And you know, our strategy reflects that.

Um, the more opaque, uh, the more difficult the markets where you to get information, we believe that we can create more value for our customers. And that's also where you're seeing us make [00:29:00] investments, um, With Intelligence. That position is a good example, but we are also organically spending a lot of time, um, trying to create shine spotlight on private markets with more data and information and analytics.

And I would say there is also a bit of a confluence between AI and private markets because AI can help scale up. One of the things about private markets, which we didn't talk about, is that the number of, credit opportunities in private markets is exponentially larger than public markets, and that makes getting information much, much harder.

And, uh, also there is less information available and I, I think that's gonna be a theme in terms of, uh, getting better information will make better, um, distinctions between people who win and don't win.

Joe Cass: Great. Venkat, in your kind of fourish years as CEO of Barclays, what would you say is, uh. I know it's probably a difficult one to answer.

What's the most important leadership lesson you've [00:30:00] learned?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: So the question is, what do you learn differently when you're CEO? And I think the thing that, if I had to say it simply in one word, it's responsibility. All jobs at all levels have responsibility. But when you become the CEO of a company, you have a breadth of responsibility.

Uh, and a concentration of responsibility because the buck stops with you that, uh, that is very different qualitatively. You also have a responsibility over a longer period of time. Now I'm a CEO 335 years, or 330 years when I joined into the Barclays journey, I've got to leave it in a better place, you know, so that this bank is there 330 years from now.

Uh, what that means. Then in doing the job is that you've got to be responsible to your customers, do business in a right and ethical way. You've got to [00:31:00] be responsible to your colleagues creating work environment in which they like to come. They feel included and they feel that they have the opportunity to rise to the best of their ability.

Right? Which is the most important thing. Um, the third thing, is beyond, you know, you have to embody that way of working with ethics and uh, and, and with, with principles yourself. So the company has to run that way. Your customers have to see that you're running responsibly. You have to act with that responsibility, and you have to plan and run the business with the stability and then durability.

You can pass it on in a better way to the next person. That's the most important thing in the job.

Joe Cass: So Saugata, looking back at your career thus far, was there a specific position, a company or just an individual, like a mentor that was [00:32:00] really a turning point for you personally?

Saugata Saha: Um, there'd been quite a few, but if I had to pick one, I'd say it was probably, um, when,

Doug Peterson, Martina Chung, and a few others persuaded me to leave McKinsey and come over and join S&P Global. Um, I was actually, yeah, the backstory is I was at McKinsey & Company among my many clients. Uh, one was S&P Global back then, actually known as McGraw Hill Financial. And I'd gotten to know the leadership team.

Um, and I was particularly, um, you know, I was doing a fair amount of work with the company, Martina, Jack Callahan, who was a CFO back then, John Berisford, who was our head of hr. And then I'd just gotten to know Doug Peterson, uh, and in 2014 they were very persuasive in getting me to leave McKinsey and come over.

Um, it was a relatively small company back then, about 16, 17 billion in market cap, and I saw the vision that Doug had, uh, in what he wanted to do to transform the company and, you know, take it from a small [00:33:00] publishing editorial company to a data analytics powerhouse. And, uh, I'd say that was probably the most transformative moment for me.

There were a few others along the way, one of which was. Um, John Barford was very persuasive in getting me to, um, run the integration program for when we acquired SNL. Mm-hmm. Uh, not to be confused with Saturday Night Life. This is the data analytics company based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I think that was a pivotal moment for me as well.

So I'm grateful for all the opportunities that people created.

Joe Cass: Great. And Venkat, what about you? Have you had any like individuals mentors or people who kind of you recognize along your, along your kind of career journey?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Well look, a lot of them, I've learned from a lot of people. I worked at JP Morgan for 22 years and I had the privilege, uh, towards the later part to, to learn and watch from Jamie Dimon.

I think he is, uh, without doubt, you know, the greatest banker or financial leader, of our generation, um, which is [00:34:00] I would say 30, 40 years. Um, and maybe 30, 40 years from now. Who knows? Um, but, and see other business leaders across time. But I think learning from people is one of the most important things you can do.

Joe Cass: Fantastic.

Well, Venkat, finally last question. I can't record a podcast with you. So I, I've got a friend who works at Barclays and Barclay's Wealth called Dave, and he mentioned, you know, you have to ask Venkat about cricket. I said, no problem. So, with that in mind, can you tell us about your love for the sport over the years and do you ever play still?

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: I wish I could play every now and then. I lift a bat, but, uh, not successfully. I should add. Look to me, I, you know, uh. Growing up with cricket and then I moved to the US to study and worked there for many, many years. And so it was, you know, watching it on TV early in the morning or late at night. Um, maintained I [00:35:00] would say an affinity with the game.

And, and, uh, so I've always been following it, following it from the distance. Being at Barclays for the last nine years has given me more of an opportunity. Obviously I spend a lot of time in London and I live in London, so it gives me a greater time, especially in the summer, to watch more cricket. Uh, and I've taken an interest in, in the game we, we do some sponsorships in cricket.

And the most important thing actually, that I've learned to love. Is to follow and watch women's cricket. Barclays has sponsored it a lot. It's really grown. It's grown, not just in the uk, but it's grown across the world. Um, and I think, you know, on the one hand the game is changing towards what people call the shorter form, which old guys and purists like me may not always like.

Joe Cass: Like 2020.

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Like 2020. Yeah. Okay. Um. I still like to go see test matches if I can. But, uh, and then there's been a move, you know, among what we call the cricketing powers. [00:36:00] And I think the sad thing is when we were kids, the greatest team in the world was from the West Indies, and you want to see that come back. I want to see that come back.

Uh, but on the other hand, compensating is the rise of the women's game, which is actually fun to watch. I encourage anybody who's listening and watching who's a fan of cricket, who hasn't watched a women's match to watch one.

Saugata Saha: I, I shared, um, Venkat's love for Cricket a long, long time ago, and it, it becomes a lot harder if you're living stateside to follow the live game.

And if you're not following the live game, it's a little harder to kind of stay in tune. I think for me, the watershed moment around my love for cricket was, I think four or five years ago, just before COVID, I was staying at a hotel in India on a business trip, and coincidentally happened, one of the T 20 teams was staying there and obviously there was a riot of fans outside the hotel every day.

One day when I was about to leave in the morning, security stopped me and said, can you wait for a second? The team's leaving. So the team walked out. They all filed out one by one. [00:37:00] And I looked at everybody walking on it and said, don't know him, don't know him, don't know him, don't know him. And at the end of it, I said, all right, I've lost my touch for the game.

At this point, I just throw in the towel. So, but I'm glad you could stay in touch.

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: No, no. But look, I mean, you know, uh, one of the best games I've ever been to was in India versus Pakistan, uh, T 20. A year and a half ago in New York, in Long Island, a popup stadium. Oh yes. About 40,000 people, fans and the, and the conviviality and the joy within each group of supporters, but more importantly between the groups of supporters was a great joy to watch.

You know, many obviously Indian friends, Pakistani friends, united by the love of the game. And that's what I think is the game is about.

Saugata Saha: We gotta go for a match sometime together.

C. S. Venkatakrishnan: Yeah, we will. We will.

Joe Cass: Well, on that note, Venkat, Saugata, thank you so much for joining Leaders Podcast and thank you for