Customer centric leadership

The one piece of advice I always give young graduates who are starting off in banking or private equity You need to lose the ego. Most people who join these finance seats come from good backgrounds, went to Ivy League or equivalent schools, and tend to be relatively more intelligent than the average person But then they join a job like banking and quickly realize that none of that IQ is being put to use Your days are spent doing mindless grunt work, including > changing font colors on PPT decks > updating formulas on excel sheets > coordinating Zoom meetings with clients > sending calendar invites to investors > creating nice looking graphs and charts for CIMs For a lot of folks, this is completely different than what they imagined their life to be like as a banker or private equity investor You joined this field expecting to close "exciting" multi-billion-dollar deals, but the reality is that you are just a glorified assistant to your VPs and MDs In a short time, a lot of analysts start to feel that the job is beneath them, and they stop taking it seriously as a whole. While this can be a perfectly good reason to leave banking after a couple of years, I highly encourage young graduates to suck it up and actually try to do the job well Two main reasons > you will actually learn a lot more if you try > you will preserve relationships in the industry While I agree that most of the banking job is BS at the analyst level, it does actually set a fantastic foundation for the rest of your career Even simply learning how M&A transactions work, how models are created, and how deals get negotiated are valuable skills for any job in any field As an analyst, you get to be a fly on the wall during boardroom conversations that very few people ever get to see or hear in their entire lifetime You should take advantage of it Banking is very much a job where you will receive as much as you give. The more you try, the more you will learn Second, and even more importantly, no one wants to work with analysts who have bad attitudes about the job Working hard and trying your best will set a precedent for yourself that people in the industry will remember you by Careers are incredibly long, and finance is a small world. Even if you dont plan on being in banking forever, there is a possibility that you will come across your coworkers again in the context of something else in your life If you move over to PE, you might see them on the other side of a deal If you apply for a job outside of finance, it is possible that you will need a referral from your VP or MD to go and land your dream gig If you want to go down the MBA route, the same will be true Being a hard worker is a great reputation to have for anything you want to do next. Burning relationships because of your ego is 100% never worth it Always remember that you are just starting your career, and nobody trusts you to do the big things yet But do the small things well, and build a solid reputation for yourself. Don't ever think that a job is beneath you because you are too smart or intelligent for a mundane task I have seen many bankers and PE folks come and go in this field. The ones with too much ego and pride at a young age are never able to stick it out long enough

I took part in the Iftar. It is a great honor for me. For the thirteenth Ramadan in a row, the Muslim community of Ukraine and the Crimean Tatar people are marking it under difficult conditions – under Russian aggression and Russian strikes. We very much hope that next year Ramadan will be celebrated in peace. And this is what we wish for all peoples who are now in danger – in war. We see what is happening in the Middle East and the Gulf region. We hope that the regime in Iran does not prevail, because it is an anti-human regime, and it spreads war across virtually its entire region – it is important that people and countries succeed in defending themselves and that the war there does not drag on. I thank every state that truly helps protect life – both our lives here in Ukraine and the lives of other peoples. Let us remember: we are all confronting the same evil – those who destroy life, those who despise people. It is no coincidence that Moscow and the regime in Iran have been so close. What unites them is their lack of respect for people. All of us in Europe and in the world must be effective in defending against such regimes – we must be effective so that life prevails. May it be so. Thank you all. We will certainly not forget our people in occupation and in captivity. And we are doing everything so that normal human values prevail over Russian evil.

For all the striking similarities between Trump and Putin, there is a fundamental difference between them. Trump is a product of a society of abundance, of excess — a lifestyle without limits. Do whatever you want, take everything from life. Step over every barrier, including moral ones. When external obstacles disappear (because all desired things are already accessible), an illusion arises that internal obstacles disappear as well. Other people turn into instruments and objects. They become things that feel nothing. There is no need to empathize with them. This is how excessive hedonism turns into cruelty. Putin is a product of a society of scarcity, of deficit. His defining myth is “the blockade of Leningrad.” His key word is “privation” (lisheniya). In a society of privations are born Russia’s “superfluous people” (lishniye lyudi). In this psychology of suffering, the very idea of joy and pleasure disappears. “My only pleasure” is that someone else suffers more than I do. And so, when these “superfluous people of privations” gain power, they want others to suffer as well. “We suffered — now you must suffer too.” “You must be deprived of what is dearest to you; you must experience privation.” This is how an excessive cult of suffering turns into cruelty. In the end, we have two types of cruelty, two systems of contempt for human dignity — both brutal, yet rooted in different sources. The “martyrdom-driven” cruelty is stronger than the “hedonistic” one. It has greater endurance and knows how to withstand pain. Its sadism is not spontaneous but carefully planned and sustained. It knows how to manipulate hedonistic cruelty, constantly feeding it new “pleasures,” including Epstein-style ones. But the endurance of Ukrainians enrages this sado-Putinism. Because no matter how much we hurt, we do not intend to suffer more than they do. We preserve within ourselves the capacity for joy, even despite pain and loss. And this infuriates the Russian collective Putin. He does not know what to do with it.