00:00Tom Achaud joins us now here in Studio 2 to talk a little bit more about what is going on.
00:04Of course, now he is the CEO of KBW, a Stiefel company.
00:08Tom, great to have you here.
00:09Thank you for having me.
00:10On the program.
00:11We've heard so many stories of tragedy from that day,
00:13but we've also heard so many great stories about rebuilding and resiliency.
00:19You were a young guy, you know, running the equity business there.
00:22But then a couple weeks after this, you know, basically you got promoted to COO.
00:26I think there was a new vice chairman role that was also created.
00:29And you were kind of handed this task of, you know, where do we go next at KBW?
00:34Well, so first of all, we also created an office of the chairman at the time.
00:38So it was myself, John Duffy, and Andy Senchak who were the top three folks.
00:4466 of our 67 colleagues came from the equity side of our firm.
00:49And so collectively, we all focused to go ahead and rebuild the firm.
00:54And really what we did after 9-11 is we gathered ourselves and tried to come up with our priorities.
01:01And the first priority was to do what we could to take care of the families of the victims.
01:06And we decided that rebuilding the firm was going to be the way to do that.
01:11And that that was a great way for us to channel our energy.
01:15Some of it was somewhat therapeutic for us.
01:18And that's when we put our shoulder down and said, we're going to rebuild this firm.
01:22This firm cannot end that way.
01:24You know, we were just talking with Bill Dudley, and he shared a great story.
01:27He was on one of the flights, international flights that got diverted.
01:29He spent a few days in Canada.
01:30He was talking about the hospitality of the people there as they were stranded.
01:35There was a lot of hospitality in Wall Street.
01:36And I know for KBW, but for a lot of firms that lost their, not just their people, but their
01:40offices, there were a lot of other banks that said, hey, you could come to this facility and camp out
01:45here for however long until you need it.
01:47It was remarkable.
01:48It was remarkable.
01:49And while the morning of 9-11 represented the worst of humanity, what happened afterwards represented the best of humanity.
01:56And we were the beneficiary of a tremendous amount of goodwill.
02:00We had two firms, B&P Paribas, immediately invited our equity group to go find a home and give us
02:06office space.
02:07And Wachtell Lipton, an attorney that we had done a lot of work with, invited us to go use extra
02:12space that they had.
02:13And when we showed up, equipment showed up, help with IT showed up.
02:19It was really incredible.
02:20And they never asked for anything in return, either one of those firms or any of the other folks who
02:24called to help us over the years.
02:26Well, as you've noted, out of the devastating personal loss, it also helped to fuel a massive philanthropic effort.
02:33I know that includes the KBW Family Fund, also a push to recognize 9-11 as a national day of
02:39service in the last quarter of a century.
02:42Can you talk to me about how those efforts have evolved and how you are ensuring that they are sustained
02:47over time?
02:48So let me start with a little bit of a fear of mine and ours, which is that 9-11
02:53will become two paragraphs in a history book.
02:56It is much more than that, and that cannot happen, and we've dedicated ourselves to not letting that happen.
03:02We have worked very hard to lean into this resilience, this goodwill, this unity that happened after 9-11.
03:10And we feel the best way to honor the victims is to make 9-11 a day of action, a
03:16day of national service.
03:18So KBW was a founding sponsor of 9-11 Day.
03:22We convinced Congress to make 9-11 Day a national day of service.
03:26So let me tell you what's happening today.
03:28Today we are packing, and 9-11 Day has one service event, but we encourage anyone to do any service
03:35on the day.
03:35Today we're going to pack 17 million meals for those who are food insecure, with over 60,000 volunteers and
03:42over 800 corporate sponsors.
03:44It's the single largest day of service in American history today.
03:49And so KBW, I'm on the board of 9-11 Day.
03:52The chairman of the board is a former colleague of mine from KBW.
03:55We have two terrific founders who founded it.
03:58It was easy for us to get behind them to build it.
04:00And so we're encouraging Americans to do service on 9-11 to remember those victims from 9-11.
04:07And that's just one of the things that we've leaned into.
04:10And what I also learned is we all said never forget.
04:14There's no single definition of never forget.
04:17And I think it's very appropriate for folks to have their own definition and what it means for them.
04:22So for us, it means action and that we're going to honor the victims by doing something like that, doing
04:29something like what we're doing.
04:30And so this is our version of never forgetting.
04:33Tonight we're going to have a reception with over 300 folks who are family members who are in New York
04:40to visit the site.
04:41And we're going to stay connected with them.
04:43We've stayed connected with many of them.
04:44And frankly, it puts energy and fuel in our tank.
04:47And we're grateful for that relationship.
04:50Before we let you go, Tom, I do just have to ask you about the resiliency of the financial system
04:54and what lessons we learned about making sure, not just the financial, but really the economy,
04:59can sort of withstand these sort of, you know, once in a generation type of shocks.
05:06So the first thing is that, you know, we as I was a public company CEO and we had to
05:11do disaster recovery as part of our good governance.
05:15But of course, you know, we actually live disaster recovery.
05:18So so it's very real for us.
05:21Well, first of all, I think running your company conservatively and taking taking care to be conservative that way is
05:28appropriate.
05:29But when when a crisis happens, you want to make sure you have the culture, you have the teamwork.
05:35And for us, we had a great culture with a lot of strong shared values.
05:40And I think it was those features that allowed us to endure.
05:44But but let me tell you a story.
05:46So during the global financial crisis, after the weekend that the GSEs failed, I pulled the firm together that Monday
05:53morning and said,
05:54we don't own any subprime mortgages.
05:56We're going to be OK.
05:57But this is terrible.
05:59It was a very heavy meeting.
06:01Folks got up and left.
06:02And there was one gentleman who stayed to wait.
06:04He came over to me and he said, hey, Tom, we know this isn't the end of times because we've
06:10seen the end of times.
06:11So we know this isn't it.
06:13And he was talking about standing on the sidewalk on 9-11 and watching what was happening.
06:18That felt like the end of time.
06:19So you realize that you can overcome that if you stay together, united and you can overcome challenges.
06:28And I think that's our takeaway and that's our definition of resilience.
06:31All right.
06:32Well, Tom, I think that's a great place to end it.
06:34Really appreciate you sharing your story.
06:35Nice to be with you today.
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