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The harder question was the one that my partner asked me.
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He said, "Chris, you know that this is your moment.
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If this goes well, we're at another league.
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If it doesn't go well."
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Hi, Chris
Christoph.
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It's great to see you.
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Good to see you as well.
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How are you?
I'm very good.
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Come on in.
Thanks for having me.
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(upbeat music)
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EQT is one of the largest
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private equity firms in the world.
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Everyone in your industry knows you extremely well,
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but people who are not in private equity,
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I mean, what do they need to know about EQT?
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What do you actually do?
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When we were founded back in 1994,
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we came out of the Wallenberg group of companies.
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Our purpose of the time was to be more than capital.
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And now, we say that we wanna future-proof companies
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and make a positive impact.
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And since our founding in '94,
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we expanded from our base in Stockholm,
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throughout Europe, into the US, into Asia.
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And now, we're number two or number three
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in private equity in the world,
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we're number three or four in infrastructure,
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and we're number 10 in real estate,
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and we're still growing quite nicely.
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I like this verdict of future-proofing companies.
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What exactly do you mean by that?
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As an owner of companies,
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our responsibility is to make sure
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that we set up the right board around the company
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and the board's responsibility is
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to get the right management team.
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But around that, you know, a lot of companies need tools
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and new technologies to drive the business forward.
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Like the last years it's been
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around sustainability, digitalization.
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Now, AI, of course, is the big one.
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You write a lot about that actually,
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which is great, and we work with you on it.
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Next, might be quantum computing.
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And these are trends and themes
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that impact all companies in every situation.
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So, what we try to do is build expertise
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around that internally and with external networks,
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so we can bring that expertise to the companies.
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But we wanna make sure that we're there on the cutting edge.
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Should we go a bit outside on the rooftop?
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Let's do that, sounds great.
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(upbeat music)
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So, Chris, you became CEO in 2019.
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I'm sure you had your own highs and lows
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as a CEO in that period.
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And I'm sure you had your defining moments for EQT,
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but also as a CEO.
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Tell me a bit about that.
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I mean, what has been one of those moments of truth for you?
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There's no doubt that it's our combination with BPA.
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EQT's been building our platform slowly
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but surely geographically.
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So, we had a tiny business in Asia,
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but we realized that for us to become a global leader,
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we needed to have a presence that's half of the world's GDP.
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And we thought we could bring something to the table.
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We brought together the largest private equity firm in Asia
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together with our Europe and US platform,
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and became one of the largest players in the world.
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A big moment and a very intense process.
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And what gave you the conviction
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that there was such a great fit?
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The story is actually quite funny.
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So, Jean who has built the business with his team,
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he called my colleague Thomas, and he asked,
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"Hey, Thomas, you guys have done a very successful IPO,
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can't you tell us about that a little bit?"
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And then Thomas called me, he's like,
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"Chris, he's thinking of doing something."
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And I said, "Yeah, he is."
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That's how I was very excited.
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I had met him once before too.
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And I said to Thomas, "Why don't we ask him
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if he wants to combine rather than go it alone in an IPO?"
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So, we had the call, and then my colleague Gustav,
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who's running business development,
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he actually asked at the end of the call, he said,
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"Hey, now that we've talked about IPO
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and all that kinda stuff, that's all great,
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but wouldn't it be more fun to create
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the number one player in the world in private equity,
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which is the path that we're on?"
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And Jean said, "Wow, I hadn't thought about that."
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And then a week later, Thomas and I
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flew down to meet him in Italy where he was with his wife.
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And we had a long dinner.
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And that dinner was fascinating actually.
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We covered 360 degrees around what it means
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to run a private equity firm,
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how important it's to have the right values and culture
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what we think about compensation,
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where the industry is going, you know,
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all the questions you can imagine
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that we could exhaust in the evening, we exhausted it.
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And then at the end of the evening,
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we looked at each other like, "Well, that was pretty cool,"
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but you know, we didn't really know what he wanted,
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he didn't know what we wanted,
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but it was a great platform to build from.
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And then from there, you know, we connected again
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and say, "Hey, we should combine."
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How did you bring your stakeholders, your own partners,
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but also then at that point, external shareholders,
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along and convince them that
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this was gonna be a great combo?
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So, when I first brought it to the team, you know,
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people said, "Whoa, you know, this is a big move, right?
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So, how do you know it's a cultural fit?
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Is this really strategic?
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Should we put user resources behind it?
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Are they really high performing?"
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You know, some of those are three of the most.
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Are they all gonna run away once you.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And some saw it immediately,
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yet, others would be the challengers.
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And I think that's very healthy,
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because these moves are big and sometimes they're not right
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and you want to make sure you figure that out.
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It was really about creating moments
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where the right people got together
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to prove it also to themselves, you know,
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their part of the business,
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whether it was the operational side, or the sector teams,
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or the performance teams,
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or the senior partners, or whatever.
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But it was a deep and intense process.
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Yeah.
And took time.
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I've observed hundreds of transactions
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and integrations and supported many.
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And in the end, my observation is it typically,
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doesn't kind of come down to the financials.
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In the end, it's either make it or break it
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for the deal is the cultural fit.
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Yeah.
And also the leadership fit.
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Yeah.
Now, you described that
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as a good kind of get together
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and you felt the stars were aligned.
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But I'm sure as a leader you also had your moment
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where you felt, oh my God, I do put my head on the line.
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And where could this end if it goes wrong?
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So, how did you navigate through that?
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There are two elements to it.
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One, is actually bringing the right people along
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and, you know, to verify all the questions.
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They needed to verify on our side
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that we were as good as we said, and we did the same, right?
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Because you're skeptical
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and this is what we do for a business.
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The harder question was the one that my partner asked me,
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and he said," Chris, you know that this is your moment.
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If this goes to hell, you're screwed.
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You know, it's your head."
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I think those are the moments
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that you have to look at the whole situation
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and say, "Hey, is this really the right thing to do?
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Are the right people aligned?
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Do I really believe in it,
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or are you doing it for some other reason?"
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And it wasn't, I had no qualms at that point in time,
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but his question made me go a whole nother round
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around all those elements.
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Like, okay, yeah, I can't find a better path,
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so let's do it.
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It was a big move,
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but I'm sure you also had your moments
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where you were wondering
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what could go wrong and how did it feel?
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It was a rollercoaster ride,
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because during the process, we started off
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at the time when interest rates were zero,
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our stock price was at all-time highs,
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there were no clouds on the horizon,
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everything was hunky dory.
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And during the process, a lot of different things happened.
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The Ukraine war started,
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you know, stock prices started correcting,
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inflation started to creep in, M&A processes take time.
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So, there was a lot of volatility around us actually,
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during that, the whole coming together.
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And what was fascinating about it is that
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once we found kind of the strategic North Star
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around why we're doing this, and we're doing it,
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because they have capabilities geographically
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and competence wise that we needed.
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And we had a platform in many dimensions that they needed.
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And we realized that coming together
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we could be bigger, stronger, faster,
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and build an even better business for the future.
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So, we actually, fought through those troughs and valleys.
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How has it changed you as a CEO,
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what you went through there?
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The first year that I became CEO,
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I felt like I was running after things.
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Like there were things were ahead of me
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and I was trying to catch up.
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And I think that process, it was the opposite.
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So, it's switched, I think,
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from running after things to getting ahead of things.
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If you don't drive change,
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if you don't take the company to the next level,
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somebody else is gonna outcompete you,
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whether it's organically or inorganically.
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And I think that's what makes this job fun,
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but it's also what makes it kind of relentless, you know?
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Now, let's take a step back and come back to EQT.
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You did this acquisition a while ago.
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It's all going well so far.
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If you fast forward into 2030,
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what will the acquisition of BP&A
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have meant to EQT in the history of the firm?
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It's transformational actually.
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So, this question, my colleague asked me,
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"This is it, this is it, you know?"
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If this goes well, we're at another league.
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If it doesn't go well, you know, I'm dead.
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And so is the firm in a sense, which was pretty scary.
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But it gave us a whole nother platform
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to engage with all the stakeholders around our industry.
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So, global CEOs, the public markets in a bigger way.
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We have dialogues with clients now,
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which are much more broad
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across asset classes, across geographies.
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We do strategic partnerships.
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We're a force in the industry for change.
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That would've been hard to do as a regional player actually.
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If we hadn't done this,
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then probably we would've been at some point shaped.
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Yeah.
Rather than being a shaper,
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it's not as fun.
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Chris, thank you so much for your time.
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Yeah, it's great.
To learn more about EQT.
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I've been working with you guys for decades,
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but even for me, this was very helpful and instructive.
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Congratulations on the bold move.
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And thank you also for sharing some moments of vulnerability
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and talking how you took those moments of truth
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for yourself as a leader and for EQT as a firm.
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Thank you.
Thank you yourself.
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(dramatic music)