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

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It's a vacation home but better folks. Our next guest is from Standard and Pores S&P Joseph Cass coming in the studio. Very excited to talk to him. He has talked to some of the most uh impactful financeers um one one notch away from us. We talk about a lot of technology. We talked to some business folks.

He has experience talking to Ken Griffin, Howard Marks, Ray Dalio has a bunch of interesting stories to share with us. I'm excited to pick his brain. Welcome to the showbound, Joseph. How you doing? Hey, what's going on? John, Jordy, great, great to see you guys. Thanks for having me. All good.

How's things on your end in LA? Uh, it's fantastic. Um, the late for you, the the crazy protest here in the UK, but it's still light, so it's good. Well, we appreciate you staying up late to hop on the show.

um why don't you kick us off with a little bit of introduction on yourself and I'd love to just kind of understand how SNP is structured, how it's working these days, like the core business lines because uh it's such a such an institution. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. It's a really it's a huge business.

Um so I work in the ratings division. Yeah. So you have a number of different divisions including the indices. So kind of like the S&P 500. You have market intelligence which provides kind of the data and analytics platform. You have mobility which owns a bunch of businesses, one of whom is Carfax.

Oh, there's there's a number of different divisions um in the company and I'm trying to remember if I've got all of them there, but it it comes together to make S&P global. So, I work in the ratings division which, you know, assigns the ratings, you know, the kind of AAA's or the double B's or the C's.

Yeah, we get a hold of your feet to the fire because S&P downgraded America and I'm hearing an accent so this seems like it's maybe some political issue going on. Well, I can correct you there. It was actually Moody's Moody's.

The the S&P did downgrade the US, but I think it was about I want to say it was about over 10 years ago. So, come down to the same level that we were like 10 years ago. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll take it up with Moody's.

Anyway, uh I'd love to I'd love to go through some of the folks that you've interviewed and hear some stories. Uh why don't we kick it off with Ken Griffin? uh break down his his career, your experience chatting with him and what you learned from him. Yeah, sure.

So, I can kind of give a quick overview as to like why I'm meeting these guys, like why I'm in a situation where I can meet them. So, essentially my role at S&P in the ratings division is to engage with the buy side uh the big buyside investors.

So, after about 6 months and I've been doing this previously at other roles, I felt like I need like a platform to essentially kind of make it easier for me to do this.

uh with these senior guys because trying to get as you guys know trying to get a meeting with these senior guys from the finance side can be tricky unless you've got something very hot for them. So I created this podcast um and just said listen we're going to have a chat. It's going to be like half an hour.

We're going to talk about you. We're going to have a guest from S&P and we're going to kind of give you kind of one question to you, one to the S&P person and see how it goes. And that was like 5 years ago. So now it's kind of grown slowly. I mean I don't do many. I do like one a month.

So it's not as horrific as you guys doing four hours a day. But it's um it's grown slowly over the years. So now we can, as you said, we meet those type of guys. Um so to answer your question um and just a quick plug, the podcast is called Leaders. If you want to look it up, it's called Leaders. Go listen.

But in terms of Ken Griffin, so we I um I mean the actual podcast came about from um I create a LinkedIn post like a an old story about Ken um which I don't think many people knew which was it this was like 15 years ago.

One of his assistants actually had terminal cancer and he funded her treatment for two years secretly kind of without telling anyone and she she got into remission. you know, it was kind of a miraculous turnaround.

And then after that, he funded her to go to Hawaii with her family for like a two week holiday and didn't tell anyone about it. And um I thought that was, you know, quite a cool story.

So I found out about this through like a tiny in like one of the Chicago kind of newspapers, an old PDF from like 2009, and wrote it up on LinkedIn as just like a story post, which sometimes I do.

And then I said, you know, I just sent it to Ken saying like, "Listen, just thought this thing was really cool that you did this lady. " And then he replied back and I was like, I was like, "Oh, wow. " He replied. So I said, "Do you want to do a podcast? " And he's like, "Yeah, no problem.

" So that was like 6 months later. And last month we recorded in New York. Um, and I'm I'm sure like the listeners know who Ken Griffin is, but obviously he's the he's the CEO and founder of Citadel.

Um, so you've got Citadel, the hedge fund, which is this enormous hedge fund, but you've also got Citadel Securities, which is the market maker, which is I think is probably I think it probably is the largest market maker in the world. So, he's a really he obviously a very smart guy.

Uh, so we interviewed him in person uh last month and you know, he is like a he's just as you would expect for someone who is that successful in their life.

like he kind of like he he's very good at answering questions, very succinct, can give you kind of a one minute answer to anything and he kind of sums everything up in like a really crisp way. Um, and he's also very like, you know, he's very personable. So, he came out the lift.

So I'm waiting for him at the lift and he comes out the lift and he has like a group like an entourage around him and I can see someone telling him something like just whispering him something quickly and I'm like okay what's what I wonder what's kind of been said and then in my head I'm like oh they're telling him who I am probably they're probably saying oh this is Joe he's from S&P you're going to do a podcast right now and he comes up to me and he's like he's like very strong handshake looks me direct in the eye and he's like I am so thankful that you invited me thank you so much and I was like you know it's such a crazy you know to me he's literally you know I'm just like another person for him but he he probably has this kind of intense uh kind of state which he's in which is just amazing to to witness and he has this aura around him and it I don't want to use the kind of Rick James analogy but he does have this like aura around him where he's like uh you know you can feel him in the room and you can you can feel his his expectations of his team and of and of you like of me as an interviewer kind of I was like Okay, you know, you're sitting up straight.

You're making sure you have everything down to a tea. So, I was kind of I can you can see why beyond the kind of obvious fundamentals of sit up, you can see how that energy probably permeates through the whole company just through his kind of vision.

Uh do you notice any difference between the Ken Griffin archetype and some of and some of the more behind the scenes financeers?

Like I imagine it's very hard to get someone from from Jane Street on the show because they seem to be quieter and yet Jane Street does do technical talks but you don't hear from the founders that often. Do you know do you understand what dynamic is going on there?

Is does Ken just view media differently or is there something structural going on with his business that it makes sense for him to have more of a uh of a public presence than a pure high frequency trading focused firm that maybe doesn't have to interface with I mean they still have to recruit but maybe they just have a different PR strategy.

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I think I mean my sense is that it's quite kenled. Mhm. So Ken has lots of things to say and he's super super smart and he's not afraid of saying them. Mhm. So I definitely got that vibe from him that you know there kind of no no holds bars.

He's not he's not just saying something because he thinks he should say it. He's honestly giving you his opinion of something. Um and also I mean I I don't know many guys at Jane Street. Um, and I I I haven't actually reached out to those guys.

Probably because I thought it would be a no because they're so kind of closed. They do seem closed, but maybe you could break through. These the sometimes with these guys, they're closed. They're closed. They're closed until they're not. Yeah. So, until they need to not be closed, and they need to have a voice.

So, it's it's kind of a the long game, I guess. Jord, you have a question.

Switching gears a little bit, I'm curious uh your job, you know, on the rating side of S&P, how much more challenging it gets when we're in this sort of uh critical macro environment and things are kind of unfolding real time that impacts businesses, banks, things like that.

How do you know h how do you guys approach um you know situations like we've had even in the last week with with Israel and Iran and and and um other situations like it? Yeah, it's a it's a good question.

So obviously my role being on the kind of investor engagement um investor relationship side, we hear a lot you know in terms of these kind of large huge events and obviously we've had the things in the past week but we've also had the tariffs. Mhm. So it it promotes kind of a huge spike in inbound for us.

Um we're we're very keen to be kind of outbound and like forward facing transparent etc. But there's no doubt that those kind of occasions um everyone wants to speak to us.

Um you know for good reason but also I think you know so the big institutions reach out to you guys and ask you what what else are you seeing broadly? Is that is that how Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

So, it's kind of what you guys seeing at kind of a macro level um what do what does kind of the X situation that's happening right now? How could that impact this group of ratings? It could be kind of financial services or it could be large corporates and they drill down to kind of one sector.

So, I you know could have a someone calling us from one of the largest buy firms saying listen I work on autos strictly autos kind of portfolio.

how will this be how will the tariffs impact my portfolio the ratings what's your view just to kind of um sound with us and we we have like a pretty much every week you know London New York um Hong Kong we have these investor roundts where we engage um with these kind of small communities we speak to them we have our analysts speak and they can kind of you know soundboard their ideas and we can we can go back and forth very cool uh I wanted to move on to some other folks you've you've chatted I want to hear the story of Ray Dalio uh obviously the the founder of Bridgewwater.

He feels like someone who was maybe a little bit behind the scenes for a while building the fund and then uh principles that it was originally a PDF that just kind of like found its way onto the internet. I think they might have published it.

Then eventually it turned into a book, a book tour, banger, viral videos, podcast appearances. Uh but what was your experience like with Ray Dalio? Yeah, I I I it was fascinating. It was totally fascinating.

So, we had Ray on the show uh in kind of think it was 2012 uh 2022 I think it was so kind of two and a half years ago now just coming out of the pandemic. Yeah.

And like uh we boo we had we have everyone booked for like 45 minutes and I think kind of because usually it goes on for about half an hour and we want some just overrun time in case stuff goes wrong and Ray spoke for you know it was coming up to two hours uh to the point. So he was very generous with his time.

He has lots of things to say and like he has lots of things to say on lots of different topics and he's very good at kind of connecting the dots like making links. So for example when I was speaking to him I kind of asked some some crazy questions some some off-the-wall questions to try and make it interesting.

So I talking about my first job at McDonald's. So I used to work on the first window of the drive-thru and like take the order for people in McDonald's here in here here in uh in my hometown. And um Ray was like, "Oh, it's so funny you say that because um I set up the hedging strategy for the McNugget.

So the only reason the McNugget is on the menu is because I set up this trading strategy for McDonald's and the supplier. " So like he's he's very good. He's very He's a very cool guy, but he's very like uh you know, he's very personable and so good at like linking A to B. That's That's hilarious.

You always got to be hedging your McNuggets, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

I've heard about I mean there's the entire supply chain and of course McDonald's doesn't want you know exposure to all that and there's like that famous example of like Southwest successfully hedged gasoline prices for a while and that was a massive beneficiary of that for a long time.

Uh these like small little kind of minute financial operations downstream like the CFO is just kind of off doing something can have like a massive impact on the trajectory of the business when they pull it off. Um talk to me about Ryan Sirant.

He feels like someone who is potentially underrated as a business leader, business thinker. Uh people know him as a reality TV star essentially, and yet he's built this massive media business. You're obviously in the media industry. We are as well. Uh what did you learn from him?

What was what's the experience been like working with him and talking to him? Yeah. And he's, you know, my personal opinion here, not SMPPS. He's a very he, you know, he's someone to look look out to especially in this space. So he, you know, as you say, he started off in reality TV. Yeah.

Which, you know, sometimes, you know, especially people in the UK, they kind of look down their nose at those type of people. But when he started to kind of how he leveraged his appearance, but also his media, like his content is uh is enormous. I think across all platforms, it's something like seven or eight million.

He has like multiple YouTube accounts. He has Instagram, he has Tik Tok, all the kind of usual suspects. He has LinkedIn.

and he has this content content to commerce model whereby um I met him when I was in New York just to talk about this just randomly and I said listen I'm in New York do you want to talk about this he was like yeah and so we just met up and spoke about this very thing whereby he has like different his client base could be you know super super high net worth or it could be kind of someone looking for like a $1 million apartment in New York or it could be potentially the child of the client so that's a big one you know So, so he's very smartly said, "Listen, I just want to spread the board with this.

" So, we've got the YouTube for the kind of like millennials. Um, we've got Tik Tok for the younger guys. So, if I said, "Listen, what does this mean like in terms of like revenue basically?

" And he said, "Well, we sold this like uh I can't remember how many million, but it was like it's very expensive property um off the back of one of the children seeing a Tik Tok. " So, so they they said, "Look, look at this thing. Look at this thing this guy's selling in New York. " They showed it to the mom and dad.

Mom and dad said that's great. Let's go and have a look at and you know and then it sold. So like he's he's definitely got like a very interesting model which to be honest I think um again me personally speaking the S&P lots of other kind of industries sectors could could kind of adopt this model.

I don't know why they're not. It's it's it's kind of been proven now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I' I've heard that story before and I' i've heard that he has something like 60 to 80 people working just on content in his organization to really pipeline everything out across across all the different platforms and he's cast a very wide net but he's built a fantastic business around it.

So when I was there last last No, I had a totally unrelated question that I can cap it off with if please cap it off. Um I wanted to uh get your read since you talked to a lot of these uh byside institutions. How are people thinking about ESG today?

Is it still are they uh you know how do they feel on a personal level and then what do their actions look like at on an investment level?

Yeah, I think on I mean on a personal level it's kind of tricky to to answer that one because I can probably answer on like professionally what they're they're telling us um and on institutional basis. So in kind of 2122 the ESG kind of it was it was just enormous.

it was we couldn't have a conversation with an investor about anything without them mentioning ESG in some way you know and how does this link to ESG and or the S or how does this the G factor into this stuff so whereas now especially kind of in the past I don't know 6 months to a year maybe a bit longer around that time it's I'd say it's definitely a part of their kind of investment thesis but they're not necessarily pushing it to the front so I don't think that they've kind of, you know, totally dropped this idea.

I definitely don't think that's the case because we still get lots of inquiries. We have lots of conversations around sustainability. Um, not so much. I mean, the brand of ESG seem to have kind of died, but sustainability is is growing.

Um, in the amount of kind of inbound and outbound we're having, the products we're seeing in the market, there's lots of um, I'd say it's definitely not kind of just been dropped, which I think may be the perception by some people. Totally. Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, thank you so much for stopping by.

This was a great conversation. We'd love to have you back and we will talk to you soon. Enjoy the uh enjoy the evening. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks