Robyn Grew on Market Volatility and AI Integration

View Full Transcript

Joe Cass: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. My name is Joe Cass, senior Director at S&P Global, and this is The Leaders Podcast. So today I'm joined by Robyn Grew, CEO of Man Group, and Dave Ernsberger, co-President of S&P Global Commodity Insights. A quick reminder that the views of the external guests are their views alone and they do not represent the views of S&P Global.

Okay, great. Let's kick off. Robyn, [00:01:00] welcome. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Robyn Grew: Thank you for having me.

Joe Cass: So starting at the beginning, so you trained as a barrister, initially.

Robyn Grew: I did. I did. It is true. You heard it here first.

Joe Cass: How did that kind of, I mean, what pulled you into finance initially and how did that path really kind of lead you from a barrister to, you know, the real, the top job at man group?

Robyn Grew: It's, it, it is a question that I feel from time to time. The how did you end up here? Question. And, and, and it's, it's the only career plan I ever had was this. I went to the bar. I was in a common law set and I thought to myself, do you know what? I'd really like to move to the commercial bar. I will find out what this lark is this commerce thing is.

So I applied for a job in financial services in, actually at that point of fidelity, and I never went back to the commercial bar. It's the worst career plan probably anybody has ever [00:02:00] heard one thing to do, failed miserably at it. But once you get into this space, once you have the experience of what it is to be in the fastest moving, most interesting place to sit, where you see the world really operating globally where you are, you are court side for every major event.

That's hard to give up. So it's in that space that I sort of found myself and I have never stopped sort of enjoying not what I do and where I am. And that has landed me here.

Joe Cass: Dave?

Dave Ernsberger: Yes.

Joe Cass: Welcome. Hello.

Dave Ernsberger: Thank you.

Joe Cass: Looking at your kind of origin story, I've watched too many superhero films. Your origin story.

So you left university, you studied politics, and your first job was for Platts.

Dave Ernsberger: That's right.

Joe Cass: Now S&P. So how do you go from graduate reporter? To co-president and what happened in between that [00:03:00] period.

Dave Ernsberger: So, I was actually really relating to what Robyn said about your, your career, Robyn. I, very similar for me.

I, I did a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. PPE as it's known over here, within three months I dropped economics. And that was a terrible mistake because I spent the rest of my life writing about economics. I wish I'd studied harder on that one. But, I, I joined as a reporter.

I knew that I wanted to, to be, I wanted to find out about what is this world of commodities and energy, but like you, with the commercial bar, I think, and that ended up being incredibly fascinating. So between joining as a reporter to where I am now as, as co-president of this division. There were, you know, three different office locations.

There were, you know, a hundred different countries that I spent time in just visiting people and customers and sources. I started a family, had three children. And I've done all of that here with the business. And actually, you know, the personal journey in my own life. And then the professional journey in terms of that front row seat you were talking about Robynson.

[00:04:00] Really history for the last 30 years. You have an unparalleled view on what's going on and a front row seat to it. That's incredibly compelling. So people often ask, well, what takes you from a frontline position to co-president? And, and I would say it's, it's the willingness to do things that people didn't expect me to do.

It was the willingness to respond to things that happened in a way nobody expected me to respond, and being a little bit different, being atypical and saying yes to things.

Joe Cass: Cool. We'll come back to that later. But just moving on to markets. So Robyn, markets are challenging right now. I know everyone says that at every panel in the history of the world, but it's, it's kind of driven.

It's true at the moment. They are challenging. So can you tell us how you are navigating them and really how you are looking to find an edge?

Robyn Grew: Yeah, for sure. This is a moment, isn't it? I, it, it's, it's a, a year of unbelievable change. Paradigm shift has been used over and over again as a statement, deglobalization, but is it really, [00:05:00] is it really happening?

Volatility, whipsaw markets. An extraordinary amount of this sort of industrial revolution. As we talk about technology, I'm sure we're gonna talk a little bit more about that and AI and agentic AI and then some other stuff thrown in for good measure. And, and that, and by good measure, I don't mean in a good way.

You've got wars waging, you have, issues around the climate. So this confluence of disruption is, is very real. And so how, how do you position yourself number one for man group? It's about making sure we listen to what our clients need. We work with the largest global allocators all over the world who are trying to work out how to position themselves, how to manage their portfolios, how to think about risk, how to think about geopolitics. How do you do that?

If there was one answer, the, I I would, [00:06:00] I would, I would love to share it with you. And of course there isn't. What there is, is a need to be diversified to work out that we're not gonna be in a benign environment anymore. We, we lived through that for 10 years and kind of got a bit used to that sense of all assets. Appreciate, just hold onto 'em and you might wanna hold onto them in different amounts. But pretty much all assets appreciated. We're not there. We have volatility, we have inflation, we have dispersion, we have different markets and different countries operating in different ways.

We have different levels of growth. So building a resilient portfolio, building a diversified portfolio, diversifying your diversifiers, having liquidity, being able to think about the macroeconomic environment, how you want to position yourself there. That's how we think you position yourself at the moment.

In other words, recognize that not [00:07:00] everything in your portfolio should be working at the same time. Think about your left tail risk. Think about defensive alpha. Think about the capability to be dynamic and move in a tactical way as well as a strategic way. And we sit here to provide that breadth of content.

And as an active and alts manager liquid in large part, we believe very much in providing content and uncorrelated sources of return that navigate markets as they move and shift. This is not straightforward, but if ever there was a time for that front row seat, we got it right now.

Joe Cass: And Man Group's is known for its quant-trading expertise.

How are you guys, you mentioned it previously touched upon it. How are you utilizing AI as part of the broader investment process, but also are you looking at hiring AI agents?

Robyn Grew: Isn't that a fun thought? The thought of hiring an agent? We use AI agents. I'll talk about [00:08:00] that in a second. So AI is not new.

I think that's the, the most interesting part of conversation. We've been using some version of AI. It depends who you're asking. The firm, let's call it 10 to 15 years, there's a bit offer in there. Possibly longer if you talk to some, and it's become core to our DNA funny thing to say, right?

AI part of DNA. But it's absolutely at every part in the organization. If you'd have asked me three years or so ago who was the most. The area that was most using robotics, for example, you'd possibly be surprised to hear that it's our operations area. So we, we embed machine learning and execution. We embed AI and large language models throughout the organization.

So you are right. We have 35 years of quants, DNA, we have 600 plus people in the organization who identify, and I mean they self identifiers, [00:09:00] you know, programmers, developers, engineers, quants, literally rocket scientists. So it is absolutely intrinsic to who we are. We're always excited to take on and use and utilize new technologies and AI.

And chat, and agentic is part of that. We think the opportunity set at every part of the organization is really exciting. So how do we use it? We use it in data, in data science, in signals, in execution through the organization to make us more effective and efficient. We've talked about co-piloting, but it's now going beyond that, that age agentic agent ai.

We're changing the verbs. It used to be, you know, tell me about this thing. As you typed it into your browser, you're now in build me and that build me mode. That's [00:10:00] gonna take us to the next generation. So tech is absolutely intrinsic to doing as good a job, the best job we can be excelling at it. But I'm very lucky to have a good chunk of my organization who also understands its limitations and it's, we, this technology needs to be in the hands of the experts.

And I'm lucky I've got that.

Joe Cass: And Dave, sticking to the AI theme, you've obviously been, you know, entrenched in the energy markets for decades. Do you think, oh, I guess this question should be, when do you think AI will be able to forecast commodity markets better than humans?

Dave Ernsberger: I don't think it's a question of when it'll happen.

I think there's a genuine question about if it will happen, so we should reflect on that a little bit. You know, thinking about what Robyn was saying there, I I kind of trace the origin story of what we call AI in 2025, back to the origins around big data, which is maybe 15, 20 [00:11:00] years ago. That's, that's the, that's right.

Yeah. And I think, I think when Big Data emerged, some listeners will remember that some won't. But when big data became a thing, we all realized we didn't have enough time in the day to process data. and then we had data science and other tools, and eventually ag. Type technology like today, that's now around us.

Anyway, so I, I think that the, if you look at the history of AI and where we are today, and try and think about where that could take us in the future, it tells me really two things about forecasting to, to your question. The first one is, any forecasts that are data-driven forecasts are already being done better by ai.

So in that regard, I kind of agree with your premise. It's a, it's a when not if question if forecast or data-driven forecast, right? There's, you know, um. We're not actually quite there fully on data quality based forecast, but it, it's, it's there and it's more or less, you know, I would say it's even been there for five or 10 years in a kind of a rudimentary way.

But the second part of my answer is if the last 15 years was people running towards [00:12:00] data to handle it better, I think the next 15 years will be people running away from data to find what's new. And I think, I mean, I just came back from a trip to Vienna. So in my job you need to understand what OPEC is thinking.

There is no AI in the world that will tell you what, prince Abdulaziz is thinking he'll do in the oil market. You still at the moment have to talk to Prince Abdulaziz, and the people around him. Same for, natural gas markets. Same for, what will Microsoft and Amazon do around the data center conundrum to fuel the energy for AI?

The only answers to that come from talking to the people involved. So I think the, if part of that question, will, will, AI be able to generate better forecasts for forecasts that are qualitatively driven, not quantitatively driven? That's a long, long way off, and what I'm curious to see is whether AI can be truly creative.

Or not, and the roots of that will be based on how they interoperate with non-data, non-textual, inter interfaces.

Joe Cass: Yeah,

Robyn Grew: I [00:13:00] think that's, but if you, if I can. I'm gonna have this as a chat because I think it's the most interesting place to think about this is where is the richness of data that you combine and how do you do that better and smarter?

Can you increase your capabilities to be more thoughtful, more engaged, more able to interpret what's around you? But that skillset on the qualitative side is, is still incredibly valuable and important. It's back to however. However, however great we are at creating tools for neurosurgeons. And we are, I mean, we are much better at this than we've ever been before, and the margins of error are smaller and it's 3D enabled in a bunch of different tools.

You still wouldn't want me in charge. You would not want me operating on you tomorrow. That would possibly be a bad outcome. Just saying. So that ability to know. [00:14:00] The limitations and how to deploy the capabilities is incredibly important. Can it do some things better than humans today? Yes. Faster, smarter.

Yes. With less error? Yes. Can it do everything? Not yet. And there's a difference in the ability to search effectively data that exists in the world that we're living in, versus the quality of data that you can use within perhaps your own organizations, if you've got it. If I've got 35 years of data, high-quality data, that gives me something that I can teach an agent in a neural network kind of way that is different and more reliable than if I just plug something out into the universe. So, so I think the, these are the nuances, but do I think it's changing at a rate that we haven't experienced before? This industrial revolution is?

It [00:15:00] is 120 miles an hour for sure.

Joe Cass: I do wonder with the, you know, for example, you, you're saying you can't kind of get in someone's head. It's difficult, but is there maybe an opportunity to, you know, we're talking about training an LLM, which is probably the equivalent of, you know, going on an Atari. what, we'll look back on this, but could you train an LLM or something similar to plug in the decisions that that person has made in certain situations and then.

Get an output of a probabilist probabilistic kind of output of, you know, 40%, 70%?

Dave Ernsberger: I'm sure people do that already, actually. I'm sure. I'm sure that's already part of the program.

Robyn Grew: Yes, we do. Yeah.

Dave Ernsberger: Well, there you go. Yeah.

Robyn Grew: That, that's exactly, that's exactly what you're doing, right? You are teaching effectively the neural network of both your capability and your researchers all day long.

And the build me command that I talked about earlier, the build me, you give it a parameter in plain English. And you can, I mean, I'm for those. This is for me [00:16:00] mind blowing. Maybe that's demonstrative my age, but you can see the plain English version of text coming down this end part of the screen and the Python version of it working the other as it reaches into effectively exactly that. The thought processes and the dynamic processes that you'll utilize in your organizations. That is already part of it. It's the bit that says in the qualitative space, when, when decisions are made, not just based on the data available, that things get trickier. And so let's go back to that original question, right?

What's going on in the world? Well, this geopolitics thing is a real thing. You're starting to see different behaviors, different versions, more nuanced version of deglobalization. a more focus on maybe. Repatriating capital and using it for domestic capabilities, you're seeing very specific fiscal intervention.

You [00:17:00] can start to use different, subsidies of governments as part of where you can see growth areas in certain industries or asset classes. And the opposite, are we gonna see different trading alliances? That's a human thing. So, so it's a very interesting dynamic, but if you can map some of that and to be smarter and you can put it to work, you can then use the, the capabilities of your researchers to do more.

It's, it's that, I think, and it it, the other piece of this is, it's really, really hard to find out for. Right. It really, really is. What you don't wanna do is lose that through some friction in the system. So it's about deploying that capability through an organization so that you return the alpha to the people who really deserve it. And they're, your clients, the people who've trusted you [00:18:00] with their capital, that is who deserve, they're the people who deserve the richness of the return you can get to them, but don't eat it away in poor execution or poor process in your organization. That's where this tech also becomes incredibly important as a commercial differentiator.

Joe Cass: So, Dave, sticking on this topic to some extent. You know, in a world of electrification data centers, what's the next potential bottleneck commodity that could maybe catch people off guard?

Dave Ernsberger: Sure. I think that there, just to speak a little bit about the data centers, the AI and electricity, we, we know there's a bottleneck right now around energy supply to data centers to underpin the work that's going on around dynamic LLM right now.

At the moment, the, one of the big questions that we hear from our customers and commodity insights is, and I actually had a breakfast about this this morning with somebody, is does new capacity need to get built for electricity production and transmission [00:19:00] to fuel all of that or not? Because there's a history and technology of, efficiency and rationalization, and by the time the energy industry invests, if it does invest in electricity capacity and transmission to support data centers, they might not need it anymore.

So one way to answer your question is it's not what's the next bottleneck, it's what's the next, stranded asset, frankly. Which is a question people are thinking about, but it's an existentially important question, because we're now conditioned to think of a world of bottlenecks. Therefore, the appetite is building up in the search for alpha, among other things to invest in a bottleneck areas.

And yet, as history as the history of humanity shows through the cycles of boom and bust, we might find ourselves in a stranded asset situation in three years from now, or five years from now or more. I, well, it's a question to be decided, right? And it's a question we hear a lot from our, our customers, but if we wanna be a little adventurous and think about what lies beyond this conversation.

I think the two a, the two commodity spaces that will be constrained will be, water for sure. we already hear this in the markets, and by the way, water is [00:20:00] many things. It's not just what we're drinking as we do our podcast here, it's also the inputs for, you know, cooling, assets. It's the inputs for running different processes in, in the world around us.

And the other, I'm not sure how to describe this as a commodity asset, but it is a kind of a commodity asset. Is risk, is risk mitigation and weather. And, you know, weather as a commodity has confounded and also intrigued, commodity traders and risk managers for the better part of a hundred years.

But we can see all around us. The climate is generating, surprise, effects, perhaps at an increasing frequency. You could debate that. But the need to manage weather and the need to manage water are the next ones around the corner, in my opinion.

Joe Cass: Robyn. Shifting gears a bit to talk about private markets, which is along with ai, another tick list, which I basically talk about all the time on this podcast. But obviously, I mean, it goes without saying it's exploded within recent years.

Interested to know what you think that means for the future of hedge funds. [00:21:00]

Robyn Grew: So private markets like, like hedge funds by the way. Two very loosely defined things, right? I mean, I think that's one of those,

Dave Ernsberger: Glad to hear you say that.

Robyn Grew: It, it's a loosely defined thing and it's, but it, they get banded a around a lot.

Man Group gets called a hedge fund. Do we have hedge fund, hedge funds? Yep. Do I have long only. Absolutely. You know, so, so do I have private markets? Yes. Is it private equity? No. So these are things that are different. There has certainly been a huge, especially in a, by the way, a zero interest rate environment, huge pickup in private equity.

And over the last couple of years we are seeing some of the. Downsides of being over allocated as some are in private equity, they lack liquidity. Private equity when you have zero interest rates look different by way of investments than when suddenly cash costs something. We haven't been in credit environments really.

We are back in credit environments now, [00:22:00] so I'm very positive about the importance of having great credit products both in the public and the private side. By the way, the definition of what private used to be and what it is now versus what public used to be and what it is now in credit. Different entirely when I was young, which was dinosaurs

were roaming the world. You know, the, the, the, the private credit bad, the tricky stuff. Public credit, good, you know, high yield investment grade. It's not really the case anymore. You've got high yield investment grade, both public and private assets. We have much more, movement between public and private or much more movement between the curve and down the curving credit.

So very excited about certain types of assets in the private space. Think liquidity is incredibly important in the public space. Back to what I said very much earlier, and I'm sorry to repeat myself, but diversification. Is what's interesting here, what you're getting [00:23:00] credit, what you're getting private credit is different as a, as an uncorrelated return from that you might get in equities.

So, so again, building a portfolio that's resilient, where you're diversifying diversifies important. Do I think that hedge funds are gonna continue to evolve and be relevant? Yes. Do I think active investing is more important than ever before? Yes. Do I think liquid active? Absolutely. And so actually the lean in here, I think you're gonna see the hedge fund space in its broadest definition being an incredibly important part

of portfolios in a way that it was kind of being ignored a bit in that more passive environment where you had passive equities. And private equity. So I'm excited about what hedge funds can do to help clients navigate these markets.

Joe Cass: It is interesting you say that about the kind of the brand of private credit, because we've had, you know, you've had kind of the guys from [00:24:00] Apollo, Blackstone, Aries on the podcast, and one of the big kind of stumbling blocks they have is just the brand in terms of, oh private credit.

You know, it's, it's a bit dark, you know, it's, it's in the background, it's a shadow, and half the deal seems to be them trying to reverse this kind of perception.

Robyn Grew: I think there's huge interest from clients in this space as well, both on the public side and on the private side and in having multi-Strat credit, which looks at, has both public and private underlying investments, it it is interesting.

Shadow banking, really tricky phrase somehow does provide this slightly unsavory view. I believe it's there at all. Credit's an incredibly important part of markets. People need to be lent to. People that that's how you grow economies. That's how you grow businesses. and the banks have retreated outta this space in part because of the regulatory environment, and their expertise is sitting in some of those other houses, [00:25:00] including in man group now to provide access to funds.

And that can be at the performing end or at the more stressed or distressed end of that, but that dynamic capability of managing credit and credit risk. A very important part of the world, and I, I, I'm a firm believer that private credit is part of how we help I the underlying investments, but also find returns for clients.

Joe Cass: Dave. When trying to kind of anticipate these big shifts in energy or metals, what data points do your clients rely on the most?

Dave Ernsberger: So, it was actually fascinating just thinking about private markets as Robyn was talking there. Right. You know, the, the. To sort of think about your question a little bit, the, the commodity markets have a complicated relationship with both risk and, and, and finance.

And a lot of commodity, investors have turned to private markets as a result, I would say in [00:26:00] both conventional and non-conventional energy. So the data points that people are looking for, uh. You would start with anything and everything they can get their hands on. Partly because of the amount of, direction that is coming from, arguably less transparent, less visible funding sources and, and decision making.

But it really is ultimately about. In the commodity markets, what are the supply signals that you're getting? What are the demand signals that you're getting? What are the inventory signals that you're getting and what is that saying about price current and future? And, and those, those three core components, supply, demand, and inventory, are at the heart of every single commodity market that we look at.

There is a new overlay. Which is, this sort of deglobalization that may or may not be happening to Robyn's point earlier, like the, the, the commodity markets have become inherently less efficient over the last 20 years because of the, increasing, application of trade [00:27:00] barriers, and this is not a new thing this year, you know, trade barriers have been growing in commodity markets for a couple of decades now.

 because ultimately, you know, energy has always been in, in some part about national security and local. Security for consumers, right? So that, that, that creates an environment of barriers that introduces noise into your classic analysis. And that's a new overlay people need to think about. That's not a euphemism for the tariff conversation.

By the way. The tariff conversation is a whole other thing, quite frankly. But, you know, overlaying national interest on top of an already fairly dynamic supply demand and inventory space is really what our customers are looking for now.

Joe Cass: Robyn, I wanted to talk a bit more about your clients client base at MAN Group.

So you mentioned, you know, they're the largest asset allocators globally for the people kind of watching and listing. This will be pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, maybe insurance firms. You can correct me if that's wrong.

Robyn Grew: All of that, right. Plus endowments, those sorts of, yeah, those sorts of investors.

Joe Cass: Thinking about those kind of investors, has [00:28:00] their expectation changed of you versus, say, five years ago to today?

Robyn Grew: I think has it changed? I think it's been on a journey, and I think the needs are different. Today. What we are seeing is that allocators, those big organizations want to face fewer partners to help them navigate.

Their needs over the next, and this is, this is the point, right? If you're a pension fund, you, you're not trading today, you're trading and investing and thinking about portfolio. That's gotta be resilient for the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 plus years. You know, hopefully somebody's gonna do a great job for my son and he's barely started to work.

You know, that type of stuff. When they're sitting down with us, what we're seeing is a far. Greater desire for partnership and strategic, enablement. This is, nobody's got a blank piece of paper. Where are they today and how do they [00:29:00] move? These decisions take five years, 10 years to rebalance portfolios.

They're looking for different content, not just one thing. They're looking for the value add. It's the how do I help them on their journey with agentic AI, how do I help them with their risk modeling? How do I help them move potentially from the SAA type model, that strategic asset allocation model into a total portfolio model.

And, and that looks different for every single investor. How do I give them access to the, the, the cutting edge education research capabilities like Man's partnership with Oxford University or the work we do with Columbia? It's more than you are delivering. More than, here's a fund, would you like to invest in it?

It's more than a conversation about a fee for a particular piece. It's creating [00:30:00] solutions and putting the component parts of the ingredients you have in a format that works for, that particular allocator, their problems aren't the same shape. They don't look like the same thing, and the more dynamic and capable you are to say, you know what, let's sit with you.

Let's work out what you need. Let's go on this journey with you. Let's create a product. For you that actually solves the problem that you might be facing. That gives you more ability to be dynamic in what you can dial up and down in the allocation, which maybe gives you some flex in the overlays you may have.

That's the conversation we're having and we have to be better and better at that every day. So is the conversation different? Yes. It's on this journey and to be relevant and to be a strategic partner requires something slightly different in the way that you approach that client and engage in with them.

Joe Cass: So giving yourself like a differentiation beyond his our fees. [00:31:00] Here's, here's how our performance, here's our fees. What do you think?

Robyn Grew: Every day and, and especially when you're thinking about creating something which is about resilience, not perfection. And they're two very different things. And so you are there to fill and to be part of that journey to be useful.

We do pieces of work now with clients to, with the actual, question, the conundrum itself. And they're like, we don't know the answer to this conundrum. And we'll, we'll take that away and work on it with the best minds, with the smartest people within the firm. And without the firm, Man gets better because we have,

access to some of the smartest clients in the world. We use all of the resources available to us to be better at what we do, and you cannot, for one moment, sit still. So how do you use the smartest minds? From all over the world to be better at what you do [00:32:00] so that you can be relevant to those clients as they move forward.

That's what it's about. It's less about, here's a product, here are the fees. Trust me, that comes into it at some point or other, but, but actually it's more than that.

Joe Cass: So Robyn. You've been two-ish years in the role as CEO of that group. Yeah. So what's been say the most important leadership lesson you've learned thus far on the job?

Robyn Grew: I think it's a lesson that we all know, really, which is. You gotta continue to question and ask. You've got to continue to know what you don't know, and to challenge yourself. Put put yourself in positions where you are constantly asking for feedback, and that's from your own people throughout your organization to sit in the room with everybody to say, listen, don't wait for me to get this wrong.

Tell me, talk to me. How many [00:33:00] people have been at the, the, the, I've never been to the water cooler, but whatever, you know, been by the side of the water cooler where we've kind of all sort of, and, and, and done the, well, I wouldn't be doing it that way. I wanna hear about that. And I actively go out to people within my own organization, but to clients and to others to say, listen, I don't have the answers to everything.

I can make good decisions, but I can make the better decisions if I have more information.

Joe Cass: Dave. Can you recall a moment in your career throughout any point in your career where you saw a shift in the data that you had access to maybe before the rest of the world or before the rest of the market actually caught on?

Dave Ernsberger: Sure. So. There have been a, quite a few times where that's happened. When you look back on it, you go, yeah, of course that data was relevant. Right? But I I, I, I remember a lot of times when in the moment, a piece of data was out there that was, sort of, [00:34:00] a, a, a for, forward indicator of what was going to happen, but it maybe hadn't been quite noticed or picked up on.

And the one that I learned from the most was, demand for jet fuel. So the fuel that we use in our airplanes, and what that was doing in certain parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, ahead of, war breaking out, and then war breaking out inevitably puts a strain on energy prices, particularly oil prices, not just oil prices.

And so, I remember we were noticing 'cause of our jobs in our division that the folks who supply aviation fuel, were suddenly running out. They just didn't have any aviation fuel to sell anybody. And when you asked the reason why, nobody really wanted to say, but it became clear they were supplying, if you thought very carefully about where it was going, they were flying military.

So looking, I think, a level beyond, you know, we were talking earlier about supply demand and inventory. [00:35:00] If that was all it took to understand what the price is gonna do, everybody would be either million millionaires or we'd all cancel each other out, right? So, you know, looking beyond going deeper, asking the next question, figuring out what's really behind the data, that, that was my learning there.

And, and it was all there in front of you. When you look back on it, go, oh yeah, of course. Right? That was before the, the, the, the war broke out in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that set markets into a, a big turmoil afterwards. Remember everybody was saying. Will there one there be an invasion of Iraq?

Well, Jet Fuel suppliers knew six months before everybody else did. So that was a big one. Yeah. Yeah. The, the other one I would say that was astonishing to me. In, in 2008, I was sitting in Singapore in July, Bear Stearns collapsed, Lehman Brothers collapsed. And we were all in the commodity market area going well

that's interesting. And then within 24 hours, commodity markets collapsed. And what became very clear was the interplay between finance and commodity markets. Something that's been. Hugely debated in commodity markets ever since, you know, the Dodd-Frank Act and a few things that followed are [00:36:00] really in part a reaction to all of that.

But when, when Bear Stearns and Lehman went down, oil markets, here's the thing, the flat price moved dramatically. But the spreads between the prices moved historically, so location spreads, time spreads. The markets were unrecognizable within 24 hours, and everything that we thought was impossible had then been exceeded three times over within a week.

Robyn Grew: And that's exactly right. GFC was one of those moments. So you look at the credit spreads coming into the GFC, at which point regulators went and stopped. Everybody shorting, if you remember actually the shorts. Were an incredibly good indicator of what was actually really happening. Yeah. And where the position sat, I mean, so, so you can see these points.

We've seen it most recently, in data points around the Russia invasion of Ukraine. Yeah. And where the positioning of, the troops were. We have more data. Than [00:37:00] ever before. But we also have more ability to misuse data.

Dave Ernsberger: That's right.

Robyn Grew: And that's the interesting points. The data isn't always clean.

Dave Ernsberger: And, and I think the human bias and therefore the risk of the AI bias towards status quo is something to be thoughtful about.

You know, the biggest mistakes that had ever been made in my experience looking back were people who just assumed status quo would carry on. And that's a question for AI as well. If it's built on, everything has been done up until that moment in time, how can it possibly anticipate what's around the corner?

Joe Cass: Yeah, that's a great point.

Robyn Grew: Absolutely. Right. It isn't that this is where there's such paradigm shift. How do you think about, Yeah, but let's, that's an interesting point. Look at the data we've got at the moment. We have the markets reacting really kind of favorably today. Well, that's because there's been a, a,

trade deals struck between the US and Europe. Let's be clear. You know, we had a prevailing tariff kind of pricing of about 1.2%, and we've got the markets fav favorably [00:38:00] responding to a 15% tariff. Now, what does that tell you about markets? Michael likes certainty. They like it. Than potentially some of the underlying data points, which are yet to flow into the system.

So how's that gonna look? It's a bit of some of those biases that sit in US systems and predicting the for forward is, is is to be done with trepidation.

Joe Cass: And it's, it's kind of interesting with this example, the EU, the trade deal. It's again, probably, I mean you guys would know about this kind of psychological element of framing.

If you give someone, if you anchor something here. And then you deliver it kind of here, it's like, oh, that's a great result.

Robyn Grew: Or markets love certainty. They like predictability and they'll value that over an unpredictable space. So would I rather know as a CFO that I've got a 15% tariff or not know what the tariff is I'm facing?

You can make plans. [00:39:00] We all do it. Yeah, we do it in our own, you know, in our own private lives. You make plans once you know the parameters. You can make the plans and the adjustments, not knowing the parameters. Yeah, that's the unsettling bit, but the downward flow of how this is going to impact how people will consume, whether this will be a problem, whether this will be inflationary, whether consumer demand will reduce, whether those things are yet to play properly out.

And the question, as you rightly say, is, where was the market priced? Was the market priced at 15 or priced at 25? Priced at 10. Look at the way the market's reacting today. I think you have the answer.

Joe Cass: So, Robyn?

Robyn Grew: Yes.

Joe Cass: Very short question. What do people assume about your career That just isn't true.

Robyn Grew: Good grief. You have to ask them, I suppose. But, I think the [00:40:00] thing that probably people assume is that I ha I was very focused on becoming the CEO. And actually I wasn't. So my career has been, as we started off on this question, one of. Enjoying and finding myself in places where I could learn more, do more, and I was kind of excited by that.

So you, if you plot my career backwards with that nice 2020 hindsight, you see me jumping and doing things that I thought were interesting and where I was, I didn't have probably, maybe all the information I needed to, to go and do the next thing. Living in Tokyo or living in the US or whatever it may be.

And I think people assume that I had this North star of becoming a CEO and actually I never did. It's, it's a phenomenal honor to be in the position I'm in, but it wasn't my destiny [00:41:00] in the way that people might think it was.

Joe Cass: And did you have any mentors? Along the way?

Robyn Grew: All the time. And I still do. I, and, and it's a very, it's, I, I look for, throughout my career, I've collected people who have been available to me, who've helped me, who've guided me, and I still use them.

And they're at the senior level. They're at my my, my own level. They're at people who have been junior to me in the theoretical, whatever that is. All the time I, I. I think it's incredibly important to have people around you who can guide you, ground you, inspire you, support you, pick you up, sometimes brush you off and put you back on track.

I think those people are incredibly valuable to me.

Joe Cass: Dave, did you have any mentors along the way going from like a reporter background? Did you kind of have, you know, senior reporters, were there anyone in individuals who really made an impact on you?

Dave Ernsberger: [00:42:00] Yeah. So like Robyn and I've had many, many mentors, and it's actually inspiring to hear how you think about this.

I think about it similarly. Some of my mentors were, you know, formally declared to be mentors by some kind of mentoring program and I always got a lot out of those. Plus people were very generous. I still stay in touch with a lot of them now. A lot of my mentors don't know they're my mentors 'cause I just talk to them and ask them. And to your point about,

Robyn Grew: Exactly.

Dave Ernsberger: What does it mean about structure and that question, like a lot of the people I get the best. Input from are deep in the business, they're in other businesses, you know, and they don't realize when I'm talking to them and asking 'em lots of questions, they're actually mentoring me, in, in, in, in the most important way that that word means something.

 and I think, you know, one of my biggest learnings during the pandemic was, we introduced what was called a reverse mentoring program, where like a dual mentorship program where you kind of got away with this idea that somebody is a mentor and someone's a mentee and you just mentored each other.

And the guy that I was doing dual mentoring with was based in the US doing something very different. [00:43:00] And I learned a lot, like explicitly saying, look, I will, I'm here. I, Dave, I'm here to mentor you on some things, but you are here to mentor me on others. Right. That sort of explicitly creating a duality of a relationship became really important, so I always look to give and get.

Joe Cass: Great.

Dave Ernsberger: Yeah.

Joe Cass: And you, you touched on this before, but what's the most unusual place? That you've been taken during your career, kind of in from the commodity world?

Dave Ernsberger: Yeah. Definitely It was, Baghdad in Iraq. You know, yeah. Yeah.

Robyn Grew: I can imagine that being, interesting.

Dave Ernsberger: I, I went there in 2016. Things were still pretty unstable.

Yeah and it was, it was. So I grew up in Boston, in Massachusetts, which is about as far away from Baghdad and Iraq as you can possibly imagine, existentially, geographically. I mean, you could find places that are further afield than Baghdad, but I never saw myself going to Baghdad, including up until the, the week before I went there.

And it was surprising because I never saw myself going [00:44:00] into something akin to a war zone. but it was also surprising because I didn't realize the people who were there that were our customers. Needed to have that conversation. Now they needed me to go there to have a face-to-face discussion about something that was going on, and it mattered to them so much that they made it incredibly clear that if I didn't go, it wasn't gonna be good.

So as leaders do, I got on a plane, I went there. Not in a personal way, more in a business way. Right. So I, I, we made things happen with our security team to get me over there. And the conversation that we had in Baghdad was, completely different to everything I had anticipated going in. So it was, it was a surprising place geographically in a moment in time, in history, but also from an experience and a conversation point of view.

Joe Cass: What, what surprised you about the conversation?

Dave Ernsberger: Well, some of it I have to keep off the record. Given what we were talking about, I had not appreciated, that not every political system [00:45:00] operates in line with a globally recognized norm. You know, I grew up in a world of capitalism and communism, and now we have Russia and China and India, the BRICS, if you will.

Right? And then sort of, you know, eu, there are some political systems that defy characterization. And people have to successfully conduct business within those two. And when I actually learned how that worked in Iraq, it, first of all, I, you can't learn that in one sitting. But it made me think twice about making assumptions.

Joe Cass: Cool.

Dave Ernsberger: Yeah.

Joe Cass: Thanks for sharing.

Dave Ernsberger: Sure.

Joe Cass: Robyn, last question. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received and who gave it to you?

Robyn Grew: Um. So I think the best piece of advice, it's it. Well, gosh, I had so many great pieces of advice. One that comes to mind in the context of this conversation. Was one from the General Council of Europe for Lehman Brothers, and I was working there [00:46:00] who said to me, Robyn, don't ever not be you.

I was quite junior at the time, and I was probably fretting about something or I just worried about, wandered into his office wholly, inappropriately and said, can I have you five minutes on this? And, and, and the reason he said that was, he was in the conversation again about decision making is, you make decisions, make them, don't not make a decision.

Don't just wait for something to happen. And then he said, and always be you bring what you are doing. Now that curiosity, bring it, bring it every year. Don't forget to be curious. And that stuck with me. Those two pieces make a decision, be you, continue to be curious, has stuck with me. But I've had great advice from lots of different people.

But that one in the context of this conversation, that's the one that came to mind.

Joe Cass: Great. Well. Robyn, Dave, that's it. Thank you so much. That was really, really interesting [00:47:00] for everyone watching everyone listening. See you next time on The Leaders Podcast.