S&P Global's Joseph Cass on interviewing Ken Griffin, Ray Dalio, and how ESG became 'sustainability'

Summary

Joseph Cass runs investor engagement for S&P Global's ratings division, where his job is to stay close to large buy-side institutions. To get access to the most senior names in finance, he built an internal podcast called Leaders about five years ago — one episode a month, structured around a guest and an S&P analyst trading questions. That format has since landed him sit-downs with Ken Griffin, Ray Dalio, and Howard Marks.

Ken Griffin

Cass got Griffin's attention through a LinkedIn post about a story he'd dug up in a 2009 Chicago newspaper: Griffin had quietly funded two years of cancer treatment for one of his assistants, who went into remission, then paid for her family to holiday in Hawaii — none of it publicised. Griffin replied, agreed to a podcast, and they recorded in New York last month.

In person, Griffin reads exactly as his track record suggests: crisp, direct, and fully present. Cass describes him giving clean one-minute answers to anything, and projecting a level of focused intensity that, even in a brief meeting, makes clear why that energy runs through Citadel's culture. Griffin runs both Citadel — one of the world's largest hedge funds — and Citadel Securities, which Cass describes as probably the largest market maker globally.

On why Griffin is more publicly visible than peers like Jane Street's founders, Cass's read is that it's personality-driven rather than structurally required. Griffin has strong opinions and isn't inclined to hold them back. Firms like Jane Street stay closed until they decide they can't afford to be — at which point the posture tends to shift quickly.

Ray Dalio

Dalio was booked for 45 minutes and went nearly two hours. Cass describes him as exceptionally good at connecting unrelated dots in real time. When Cass mentioned his first job on the drive-thru window at McDonald's, Dalio immediately recalled that he had designed the hedging strategy between McDonald's and its chicken supplier — the mechanism that made the McNugget economically viable enough to put on the menu. The anecdote captures Dalio's style: wide-ranging, associative, and genuinely engaged rather than on-message.

Ryan Serhant

Cass flags Serhant — known in the UK primarily as a reality TV figure — as a content-to-commerce model worth taking seriously. Serhant runs roughly seven to eight million followers across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, with an internal team Cass says numbers around 60 to 80 people working purely on content. The model targets the full wealth spectrum: ultra-high-net-worth clients, buyers looking at $1 million New York apartments, and the adult children of existing clients. Cass cites a specific example Serhant gave him: a high-value property sold after a child saw a TikTok, showed it to their parents, and the parents bought it. Cass argues the model is proven and underused across financial services.

ESG rebranding

In 2021 and 2022, ESG dominated almost every conversation S&P had with investors. That has shifted. Institutions are no longer leading with it, but Cass says they haven't dropped it either — the term itself has faded while the underlying activity has migrated to 'sustainability' as the working label. Inbound inquiries and product activity around sustainability remain active. The brand died; the practice didn't.