“Nobody can transform Africa but us, we Africans.”
これは彼の哲学の中心。
7. 英語プロフィール
Aliko Dangote is Africa’s most influential industrialist, known for building large-scale infrastructure and manufacturing capacity across the continent. From cement and fertilizers to one of the world’s largest oil refineries, he focuses on transforming Africa through local production, long-term investment, and empowering the continent’s young population
Aliko Dangote: Building Africa's industrial future from the ground up | Podcast | In Good Company
Hi everybody, I'm Nikolai Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and today I have a real pleasure sitting down with Aliko Dangote. Aliko is the founder and the CEO of the Dangote Group, Africa's largest industrial conglomerate. Nearly 50 years ago, he started with a small trading firm in Nigeria, and today his empire stretches across the continent.
He has built what many said was impossible, a large-scale African industry from scratch. Warm welcome. >> Thank you very much, Nikolai. >> It's a pleasure having you here. >> be here. >> How did it all start? >> Well, I started as a trading company in 1978. >> And what kind of things did you trade? >> Cement. At that time, I started first with cement.
I was getting four, five trucks and trading them there in Lagos. And then later on, I got into fish, into rice, into sugar. And you know, we started we continued to expand. My first import of sugar was actually in 1980. >> Wow. >> You know, and everything was under import license, so I got a a license. >> I mean, your family had been into trading for several generations, right? >> Several generations.
>> Your grand your grand grand >> My great grand you know, this if you from the maternal side. Uh my mom's grandfather, they call him Al-Hassan Dantata. He was actually even trading, you know, Nigeria, Ghana, you know, and uh he died in 1955 before I was born. But he was the richest West African at that time, during his time.
And of course, my own late grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, he was actually the richest Nigerian, too, at some point. >> up with your grandfather? >> I grew up with my grandfather, because my father died uh when I was just about 8 years old. >> Mhm. >> You know, so uh but I never >> was it your grandfather who who who taught you how to trade? >> who taught me how to trade? He sent me to school and this.
But then actually I never ever grew with my father. I've never stayed with my father. >> Mhm. >> You know, because when I was born, I was the first grandson. I know in our tradition grand first grandchild will now go and stay with the grand uh parents. >> All right. >> So my sister, my late sister happened to be the first grandchild.
So they took her away. And then the next was me, a boy. So they also took me away. So both me and my sister we grew up with my own grandparents. >> Wow. >> Yes. >> What's the what's the key to trading well? >> The key First of all is actually discipline. You have to be very very disciplined. You have to know what trading is.
It's not that you'll be jack of all trades, no. You must choose what do you really want to do for your life. And then you pick up and concentrate on that. And then uh pleasure and business, they don't mix at all. And that is the kind of discipline that I got. My grandfather used to start working from 6:00 in the morning.
>> Mhm. >> And he work till you know, late. He had a very simple life. Uh some days he drive himself. That is how simple that you know, he you know, he he was. Very disciplined, honest person. I actually took a lot of things from him. >> What did you take from him? >> Uh first of all to be very honest. To make sure that you are fair to everybody. To be also generous.
He was very generous. To tell you how generous he was, he gave out all his assets and money before he passed. >> Wow. And then also in terms of business, he has always been very very very very fair. >> When you when you say that business and pleasure don't mix, does it does it mean that you don't like what you do? >> I love what I do.
So when you look at the business for example today, right? Uh why is it that I work people see that I work so hard? Do you know why? Because my business is actually my hobby. I take my business as hobby because if I take it as a job I won't work this hard. >> How hard do you work? >> I work Let me give you an example.
I go to bed maybe sometimes 11:00 12:00 but I wake up around 5:00 in the morning. I go to the gym. By 7:30 8:00 I'm done then I go to my office and I work as hard as any staff. >> And you're close to 70 now? >> I'm close to 70, yes. I'm 69. I turned 69 just uh a month ago. Actually, there's about 3 weeks ago I turned to 69.
But I think that discipline is good because I don't want to Let me tell you something, you know, Nikola. For example uh when I decided to go into industry you know what I did? I sold all my properties in the US. I had two houses in the US, big mansions and I had a house in UK. And I wanted to really sit in Nigeria and concentrate.
Why? You know, sometimes when you own a house, a holiday home anywhere you have to create that time to go and use that property. So now my life is very simple. Wherever I go I use hotels. I pay. When I leave, nobody will call me and say I have a burst pipe or something is wrong. So, uh I'm committed to what I do.
And I just don't do things offhand. I always create a vision. It's just like now we created a vision 2030. So that I know I have a target to meet. >> Mhm. >> I just don't do business on a normal this is no no no. All my businesses they are targeted. >> How do you How do you decide which businesses to be in? Because you could have chosen everything.
And then you've had a few things and you focus in on fewer things. >> Well, I first of all look at what do we need as people? What is it that we're supposed to be producing and we're importing? So, we do what you call uh a you know, backward integration. >> Mhm. >> Which means what we are importing now we produce it. We'll produce what we need.
>> Mhm. >> And we are now producing things that when you wake up as a human being every morning you must use part of what we produce. >> Mhm. So, that's like cement, sugar >> cement, sugar >> But you have also tried you tried flour and you tried textile and you exited that. >> I exited that, yes. >> Yeah. >> Because of the foreign exchange challenges, that's why we left the flour, you know, mill.
But today we are very very good in terms of exports. >> Mhm. >> If you look at it now, part of what we are announcing is that when we when you invest in any of our business going forward in the cement, for example, in the refinery, in the petrochemical, in the fertilizer, in the port >> Mhm. >> we guarantee to pay you dividend in dollars.
Because we're very well into exports. 80% of our revenue will be in dollars. >> Mhm. >> So, that's why we're announcing that look, yes, you can have a choice if you want for locals, we can pay you in naira. If you don't want naira, you don't We want to de-risk. You know, because most foreign investors, sometimes, when they invest in a company, what actually matters to them is that when they get their dividend, it's difficult to also get money to buy and remit your money.
But we are We have addressed that issue. We are saying that, "Look, invest." >> And you generally reinvest the money back into the business. >> All All our business Because if you look at Dangote Industries, right from inception to date, we have never ever paid any dividend. If we are going to get dividend, we only get it from companies that we listed.
But companies that are wholly owned by Dangote Industries, which they are not listed, we never ever take a dime out of the company. >> But But Aliko, when you look at the group now, what would you say are the let's say three most important decisions you have made that has made this a success. >> Actually, major decision is to now go into cement in trying to save a lot of African countries because they are struggling.
Cement was selling for $250 a ton in countries like Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville and Nigeria, you have to pay and wait for 3 months. So, we realized that, "Look, people who are in cement, they are not really serious about making cement available." So, we now came in and we have now invested heavily. >> And you're in 14 countries since the moment you started.
>> in 14 countries. Now, again, when you look at you know, oil, in Africa, we have a lot of countries that they produce oil, but they don't refine. So, they export the crude oil and now they import the products. And importation costs a lot of money. It actually goes deep into our own reserves.
So, when I look at Nigeria, for example, today, I say, "Okay, fine. But, we've been having fuel queues for 52 years. Sometimes, people used to stay at fuel during Christmas. You might have to go and queue for 2 days trying to buy fuel for a country that produces uh oil. And we have tried government refineries. They're all destroyed.
They were not really doing well. So, we said, "Okay, fine. Let me take this bold decision." >> So, then you decide, "I'll make a refinery." >> I decided that I'm going to make a refinery. I want >> make the biggest >> the biggest ever >> in the world. >> in the world. Ever in the world. 50% more than the biggest. >> $20 billion.
>> $20 billion of investment. >> Tell me about it. >> So, we started with that. We launched the project in 2013. We have had issues of the land for 5 years. One land, 3 and 1/2 years. The other land, 1 and 1/2 years that we have not been able to get um access to it. All these were being blocked by what you call the mafia in oil business to make sure that we don't come and address these issues.
But, we were not deterred at all. We were actually focused. We knew what we were doing. And Nicola, when we started, right? The exchange rate of naira was 156. We even got up to 1,900. But, we still went ahead. We had to build our port because there was no port in the country that could take those heavy equipment.
One piece was 3,000 tons. We have another which is the regenerator. Then, we have another piece which is the crude distillation unit. That is 2,700 tons. So, we have almost about 30 of these equipment. And we build the refinery importing most of these preheaters and core in modular forms. >> So, you have to build a harbor, you have to build roads.
>> roads. We have to do water. Water is 440 million liters of water, you know, which is treated water. So, our water department alone is more than let me say in hectare in size is more than 30 hectares. >> How many people worked on this? >> 67,000 people worked on the building of the refinery and it took us >> This is This is a size That's the size of the town where I grew up.
>> Well, you know, but I mean, that is how we had to actually now because we are building something. And luckily, let me tell you what you don't know. Luckily for us, we didn't know what we are building. Because if you knew I was faced with the plan and the drawings all at once, right? I wouldn't have built this refinery.
I would have actually chicken out. >> Really? >> Yes, because I mean, you know, when we started, you know, it's like you started swimming across the ocean. When you get middle of the ocean, you realize that the tide was bad. When you go forward, it's bad. When you go backwards, it's So, you have to walk forward. And that is what what we did.
We had to just keep working and working and believing that we will deliver. >> Where did you get the money from? >> We got a lot of support. You know, first of all, we were actually meant to fund most of these from our internally generated funds. But because of the devaluation, so we had to now rely on Africa Africa Exim Bank, African Finance Corporation, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, UBA and couple of some of the local bank.
But of course, we also have a very good relationship with the Standard Bank of South Africa. And at the beginning, Standard Chartered Bank of UK. We were very, very, very, very lucky. And what happened? When we finish the refinery, things now have turned out to be much more than our own expectations. >> Mhm. What are you seeing on the back of the crisis in the Middle East in terms of that business? Well, actually all of your businesses.
What are you What's the effect? >> What the effect on our businesses is actually more of beneficiary >> Yeah. >> than actually downside. Because if you look at urea, where we are producers, >> Which is the fertilizer. >> Which is fertilizer. Today, fertilizer is in a very high demand. Not only in the high demand, in February before the Middle Eastern crisis, we were selling a ton for about $400.
Today, we were selling a ton of uh, you know, fertilizer for $850. $ And we are actually oversold. In plastics, polypropylene, uh, it has moved from 900. In UK today, it's about $3,000. Okay? And for us, if not because of the polypropylene we are producing today, all the plastic industry in Nigeria, which they are very huge, they are almost like number two or number three in terms of employment, they would have shut down.
Because there's no way you can even get it. Our aviation, we are oversold to end of uh, you know, till middle of July. >> Mhm. >> Uh, you know, and we're producing 20 million liters a day. >> Where do you source your crude now? >> We source about 56% from Nigeria, some from uh, other Angola. We buy quite from Angola. We buy from Libya, we buy from US.
At a point we are doing almost about 78 cargoes of WTI from you know, US. But we are getting more of Nigeria's crude now. So, you know, we have to buy now 21 cargoes every month. That's how big we are. And you know, we are more than doubling the refinery. You know, in the next 30 months we'll be at 1.4 million.
Which is huge. >> What are the forces that you've been trying to work against you in this project? Just you you mentioned kind of you know, the kind of mafia. >> Well, the the the the people who are actually benefiting because Nigeria was given almost about 10 billion dollars every year as subsidy. So, there are shippers who are making tons of money.
There are traders who are making tons of money buying the crude and sending us you know, product. They use it they said that you know, it's uh it's a trade which they give you crude and then you supply them with products. They are also the local people because it was subsidized. So, a lot of people very few people are getting allocation.
So, they are making tons of billions of naira. So, this are the people that are not agreeing for us to settle down because they believe that no, we are coming here to displace them which is I mean, that's of of course, that's what we have done now. >> Absolutely. And now you're going to replace more people because you are planning to do a project in Tanzania.
>> Tanzania, there are couple of countries that they say okay, look with what has happened in the Middle East, we don't want to rely on the supply anymore from there. We need our own refinery. So, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and some of the other countries like, uh, you know, I mean, Rwanda and co. When we build the refinery the same size, 650, we'll be able to serve up to Ethiopia.
>> Do you Are you going to build these refineries? >> Uh, yeah, we're we're going to. We're going to build. >> So, how What's the total What's the total spend on this? >> We have now the group, as a group wide, we have 45 billion dollars to spend. But, you know, we're also doing LNG in Nigeria. We're doing a gas infrastructure to remove all the gas we're flaring in the southern part and eastern part, bringing it to the west where we're setting up an LNG, uh, you know, plant.
About 12 million, uh, tons of, uh, LNG. Each train will be about 6 million. >> How are you going to pipe You're going to pipe this together? >> We're piping from there down, and then we have the gas treating plant. You know, the Nigerian gas is an associated gas. So, you have to treat it before you can now use it to, uh, regasify.
>> Mhm. >> You know, so, what we are trying now to do is to make sure that, yes, we look at our income. What is our income stream? What is our revenue? And what is the EBITDA that we have in between 2026 to 2030? What is the gap that we have? What is the another insurance gap that we need to fill? And this is what we have done.
That's why we are coming off with selling part of the business, getting more investors into the business, and also making sure that we continue to, uh, you know, accelerate on the business. Cement going to 100, uh, million tons. Uh, in cement, really, we don't even need much, uh, money. We are getting financing, and the cash generation is very liquid, it's heavy.
Uh so, we'll be able to actually fund this 45 billion, which will eventually lead take us to 100 billion dollars of revenue. Because our target is to get to 100 billion dollars by 20 30. And with a market valuation of maybe more than 200 to 50 billion dollars. Because as we speak today, last year our EBITDA was 3 billion dollars.
But the target by 2030 is to be 10 times that amount. It's to be at over 30 billion of EBITDA. >> What's the difference between thinking big and thinking too big? >> What is the difference between thinking big? Because if you think big, you grow big. When you think small, you don't grow at all. So, you have to first of all know that the business you are going in is a business that you know in and out.
It's like myself and any of the staff, 10 of the top most staff, when you work them late at night, they will tell you the process of each and every part of our business. >> Mhm. >> So, uh we don't think small, because first of all we know that the market we are operating that's bigger. >> But how do you make sure you don't overstretch? >> No, we don't overstretch because we make sure that whatever that we do are on in terms of funding, we can fund it with no sweat.
We have a lot of financial institutions that they believe in us and they are ready to go ahead and back us financially to be able to deliver. That's number one. Number two, they know that we have history of delivery of projects. So, since we have history of delivery of project, they know that yes, their money is not going to be at risk.
We have delivered a refinery that has never ever been built with petrochemicals. And we manage 67,000 workers at site. We built during the most difficult times, which is COVID. We built in a very difficult environment, which is Nigeria, and we are able to deliver. When we delivered, did we really commission? Did this thing really work? Very well. The answer is yes.
The refinery has been tested. We have now processed even crude at 661,000 barrels per day. So, we have demonstrated that capability. Well, now a lot of financial institutions are saying that yes, if it is Dangote you are doing this project, we are there to back you because we know that you can deliver.
You have the capacity and you have the knowledge and you have the experience. >> So, now you have 18 businesses in 17 countries. What are the big What are the biggest risks you think? >> Wow. Well, the biggest risk for us is actually if there are civil war, which is not I mean, it's not in the offing at all. The other biggest risk is you know, government inconsistencies in policies, of which we are addressing that one because if you look at like our refinery, the national oil company already owns 7
and 1/2%. 7.25% and they are trying to buy more. We are the ones that are saying that no, we want to now spread it and have everybody to be part of. So, these are the two biggest risks that we have. The other one was to do with infrastructure. But, what we are doing also, equal to tell you, the infrastructure we are working with government.
You know what we are doing today. We have roads, which they are more than $3 billion, which we are building. So, the issue is that because our taxes our companies are doing well, so the taxes are high. >> Cuz you're the biggest taxpayer in Nigeria. >> Well, yes. So, now what you are doing is that we are building roads.
When we build the infrastructure as roads, there's a government policy where they allow us to defray what we have invested in the roads over a period of 3 years. First year, we take 50%. Second year, 25%. Third year, 25. So, we don't really wait for government to give us that infrastructure. We are now building the infrastructure to be able to absorb the kind of businesses that we are doing.
And not only for us, for the other investors Mhm. in Nigeria. >> But what are the challenges when you are you are the biggest employer in the country? Uh you are the biggest taxpayer. And you are dependent on the government. Uh What are the What are the challenges operating in that environment? >> Well, we are not uh dependent really on the government.
No, because if you look at it, it's like anywhere in the world today, people who are operating in America, for example, tomorrow morning, if Mr. Trump wakes up from the wrong side of the bed, he can bring a regulation that can either help them or try to slow them down. Which I think today, those things are changing.
Even Africa, because the governments they believe that the only way for them to, you know, create jobs, okay, to create employment is through the private sector, because government is already full to capacity. They don't have the resources to do that, but depending on the private sector, where now you give very good investment policies, right? it means that it has made the governments to be partners.
How are they partners? You know, today, if I run the business, even if I do when I don't make money, I've generated a revenue where the government will collect VAT. And they collected minimum taxation. So, government in some of these like our cement business, I keep telling people that government is making more money than us.
Because of the various taxes that we pay. But we're happy because we're also growing. So, we're okay with that. You know, we want to also behave and be a good socially responsible company. And that's what we are. So, it is a partnership where government will now give very good investment policies, good regulation, and making sure that yes, we also don't abuse the system.
>> Mhm. >> Which we don't. >> What is it What is it that foreign investors don't understand with when it comes to doing business in Africa? >> What they don't really understand There's one thing that really that is baffling them that okay, fine, if we Well, what you are saying is good. How come we Africans are not investing in our own economies? >> Mhm.
>> Because the mistakes that we'll be making in the past is that we're looking for foreign investors. But foreign investors are only attracted by domestic investors. So, and that's what we are doing today, Nicola. Because if you look at it, we're investing heavily. I I mean, we don't even take money out of the business.
So, majority of companies today I can just mention a few like Aliko. We're in a very big discussion with them and we want to have a very serious partnership in fertilizer, in the oil business, and in any other businesses like infrastructure. People are looking at infrastructure. That's why we're building a the biggest deepest port in Africa in just about 60 km away from Lagos.
So, these are the sort of things that we are doing, which I believe now the government also themselves, they realize that look, for me to deliver on my electorate promises, I have to work with the private sector. So, that has actually given us an insurance because if the government disrupts any of our business, they will be the first ones to suffer before us.
>> How different are the African countries in terms of culture and company culture and just how different is it to do business in the various countries? >> It's not really very difficult because it depends on what kind of culture you try to create in your own organization. >> Right. >> If you have a very solid organization, you have very good culturally, you know, trained staff, it's as good as being operating anywhere >> Mhm.
>> in the world. So, I mean, there's actually no issues about that at all. You know, like what I told you, we just don't go and pick up people from the street and employ them. No. We have an academy. We have graduate training. These are people that we employ the best of the best in universities and we put them through what you call graduate training.
And once they are, you know, this And we will We have always been giving them a choice, to be fair, because we are the big corporation in the country or even in the continent. We are saying that, "Look, if you are happy, stay with us. You have a guaranteed job. But after your training, you might as well, even if you have a better offer from Shell or any other company, you can go there.
" So, we are actually contributing to the national development of the country. And now we are in 14 African countries. What we always do also is to go to these 14 African countries and bring them in to train them. We have also what you have uh what you call young global leaders, which we have now trained over 200 Africans.
And it cost us a lot of money because it's in partnership with uh Davos, with the >> World Economic Forum. >> uh World Economic Forum. So, World Economic Forum, they are doing this thing for Africans. They are giving Africans only five slots. So, I said that, "No, increase it to 25 to 30, and Dangote Foundation will pay the bill." >> Mhm.
>> So, which we have now, I think it's a project that is costing us about 650, 700,000 Swiss francs every year. And we're picking up people that we don't even know. Some of them they are you know, but you have to be below 40. Some of them are ministers. So, they go now and join these young global leaders, you know, with uh a very, very good decision.
And they are very happy. We have >> But when you But when you look at the demographics of Nigeria and Africa, you would need a lot of young leaders. >> We have, I mean, Nigeria I mean, in Africa by 20 even 30, we'll have almost 1. uh we'll have almost one No, but 2050, 1.6 billion working uh you know, uh uh staff. >> Mhm.
>> You know, these are young people. You know, in Africa, majority of our population that are below 30. >> Yeah. >> More than 70%. >> What are the reflection when you think about that? What are your reflections? >> My reflection is that the future is Africa. >> Mhm. >> When you now sit down and reflect where we are today.
>> And what what needs to happen for the future to be Africa? >> A heavy investment in infrastructure, in training, education first. Cuz you have to work with an educated society of which a lot of the governments they are putting average of about 15, some of them even 20% of their budget into education. >> Mhm.
>> You know, because we have to upskill to make sure that yes, we are producing the workers that we need for tomorrow. >> What are the most promising countries from that point of view? >> The promising countries Nigeria, uh Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, uh Rwanda, is small but it's very very promising.
You have Egypt is promising, Algeria is also promising even though they're not very open. Uh so, there are more than 10 very good countries in Africa that you can go and invest. Ghana is doing extremely well. >> Mhm. >> Uh Côte d'Ivoire, which is uh you know, in West Africa, they are doing extremely very well. Even Guinea.
Today, you look at the uh mines that was just opened by Rio Tinto, which cost over 20 billion dollars. >> Mhm. >> You know, so people are coming in now. They realize that yes, Africa is open for business. And people are ready to go into these sectors. >> And who is who is helping Africa with business now? Could you just reflect a bit on China versus the US versus Europe? >> Honestly, Nikola, you want me to be very open.
Yeah, so it's China. >> Mhm. >> China really have dominated business in Africa. >> And how do you >> Because of the absence of the others. >> Yeah. How do you How do you you see that? >> Well, they're making money. >> Yeah. >> They're dominating the uh landscape. And obviously, you know, Africans uh you know, even our own governments, they don't joke with China because China, they put their balance sheet on the table.
>> Mhm. So, some examples of how China has helped you. >> Okay, let me um some of the projects like in cement, like some of the things that we do, purchase of their equipments and co. They give you a supplies credit backed by their insurance company, which is called Sinosure. Sinosure has invested to talk about 1.
2 trillion in supporting their companies to go abroad and sell their technology, sell their equipment, and giving you a credit of 4 5 years. Okay, but if you are now going to now if I now go to Italy for example, and they're asking me to write a check of a power plant of 500 million dollars that I want to you know build.
And I have one which is also good, might not be even as good as Italy. Okay, but the Chinese are saying that no, no, no. Just give me 20%. The rest I will give you 5 years uh you know financing. Which one are you going to take if you are in my shoes? Obviously, you take the Chinese one because the Chinese one it means that I can do more.
>> Mhm. >> These ones they will suck out my cash and I won't be able to do more. So for me to grow that big, I also need to leverage. I'm not going to over leverage, but I need to leverage the business to be able to get to where I want to be. And where we want to be is something very, very, very big. You know, we want to do pause.
We want to I spending 45 billion dollars between 2026 and 2030. So if I'm going to you know, obviously I will lean more to this, but right now today I've seen the US is also changing. This time around when I went to uh development financial finance corporation of US, they just got about 208 billion. They are very hungry for infrastructure.
They are very hungry for funds and they are ready to lend. So with that one then they are ready For us to now look at them and do more business. I've had the delegation of some uh people from the uh you know, House of Reps of uh I mean the assembly of uh Japan. And what I told them is that no, Japan you'll be missing for a very long time.
And today when you are coming, make sure that you come with their own balance sheet on the table because uh we have choices of buying from many other countries. But if you don't really come with that support, I have to go to a country that can give me that support for me to be able to leapfrog to the next level.
>> Yeah, I can see that. Do you think it's Do you think it's possible to increase efficiency in Africa without increasing inequality? >> Well, the inequality issue we have to address. It'll be very difficult to do that without addressing the issue of inequality. And that one I think various governments of Africa they are working towards that.
And I'm sure we'll get there. >> And climate? >> Well, the climate, you know, when you look at uh we're not the biggest polluters. In those whole thing we're less than 6% of the uh of the polluting the environment. So, we're doing quite a lot. You can see >> But it's difficult. I mean, cement production is difficult, right? >> Yeah, but we have quite a lot in cement today.
Nicholas, it's not like before. If you come to our cement plant in any even under the kiln that is moving, rotating, you can sit down there and eat. The uh uh process that we have is more stringent than that of even Europe in our own plants. We are using robotic machines. We are using the dust emission is very low.
We are using uh alternative fuel to make sure that we cut down all these things. And if you look at it now, what are we doing today? You know, the biggest polluters are shipping companies. So, we're stopping almost maybe 500 ships from going in there to pick up crude to go and refine to now bring back the you know, products.
Today, as we speak, almost all our trucks maybe 90% today of our trucks are all CNG. We're not using diesel. Even though we produce diesel, but we are using cleaner energy for that. We're looking at now not only generating power from hydro and gas. We're also doing solar and wind. >> Mhm. >> So, because we have massive land, especially in the northern part of you know, you know, Nigeria.
So, in every aspect of our own business, which is also driven by the government, is to see how do we actually because this climate change is real. >> Yeah. >> But you know, with us, we have a lot of issues to address first before we now get to that. So, what we are doing now, we are doing them simultaneously trying to provide for our needs at the same time working on the climate.
>> Yeah. Yeah. >> Because I mean, today we can't just say that hey, look, climate from today, we will not do this, we will not No. But what we are doing is that yes, we are providing what we need, but at the same time bringing in the climate issues into place so that we will be out of this climate change uh issues.
>> Yeah. Ali, can I ask you about leadership? When I talk to people about you, one word that comes up again and again is patience. >> Yes. >> What's the key to patience? >> The key to patience, first of all, you have to have We have very good uh uh people that were leading in the organization.
So, uh sometimes you have to be very patient for people to be able to pick up and be able to prepare themselves for that leadership. So, we are preparing a lot of our people to be able to take over that leadership. And that's why we have to have the patience on in terms of okay, fine. Somebody will just not start running first day. So, my leadership style is to make sure that, for example, when I'm hiring people, I always hire people who are more intelligent than me.
>> Well, I doubt I doubt I doubt that. But, how can you check whether I'm patient guy? So, now you're interviewing me. What do you ask for? >> Uh well, you know, if I'm going to have uh this You know, in the interview, that's why we just don't do interview through uh the Zoom or whatever. No, no, no. We have to, first of all, sit down with you and talk to you.
You know, you can also ask us questions. But, what we are looking for is to have that chemistry. We have to now make sure that we align, we have the same, you know, thinking, and uh you are not thinking of something totally different. You are not uh thinking of being socialist, for example, or we are thinking about being capitalist.
So, that chemistry has to come in. >> Are you more patient now than when you were younger? >> Uh to tell you the truth, let me be very honest with you. I'm more aggressive now. >> Yeah. Why? Why? Why? >> Because I've seen a lot of opportunities that I've never ever knew that they exist. >> Wow. >> Never. I've never ever I told people that I've never ever dreamt of my own company.
I've been an ambitious person right from childhood. But, I've never ever thought of my company being 10% of where we are today. And we still have a lot of you know, opportunities to go. Because I look at like China. I mean, look at the country for example like Singapore. They don't have natural resources. They don't have land.
They don't have anything. But they've been able to create something out of nothing. >> So, when you look at the opportunities that you didn't see before, what are they? >> Oh, a lot. A lot. I mean, we have the critical minerals. Africa controls about 60% of the world's critical minerals. We have young energetic population. We have uh uh the most arable land in the world.
60% of the arable land of the world is there. Okay? We have land mass. So, all these one and the minerals that we have we're not actually processing any one of them. So, the opportunities are enormous. A lot of now you look at what happened now between Ukraine and Russia. European countries are now running to see where can they get their energy from like LNG for example.
Nigeria, like what I keep telling people, is not a country that we we we don't have oil. >> Mhm. >> The oil that we have is not as good as not as much as the gas that we have. Most of Nigeria's oil, I mean gas, came out by accident as a result of looking for oil. So, when we go now deep looking for gas, Nigeria can be one of the biggest suppliers of LNG in the world.
And that's why now we want to do a gas pipeline which the government is promoting and they want us to join taking gas now all the way from Nigeria round up to Spain. By the coast side. So, now we are already in Ghana. So, Ghana the next phase will be Côte d'Ivoire, Côte d'Ivoire, Mauritania where they will inject their own gas.
Then Senegal too will inject their own gas. Then we jump into Europe. So, going forward Africa will be supplier of most of these criticals. Critical items. >> What do you think is driving you now? I mean, you're already the wealthiest guy in Africa. >> What is driving me is legacy actually. It's not about being, you know, riches because I mean, I don't have too much of needs, you know.
I mean, that's why I mean, today, okay, I have I'm restricted. I cannot just do the giving pleasure right now. I pledge all my wealth to this, you know, in my religion, Islam. It does not allow for that unless if the inheritors agree with you. But I've given now 1/3 of my wealth to the foundation. If anything happens to me now, 1/3 will automatically go to my, you know, you know, foundation.
But what is driving me the most is that we have a lot of needs in Africa. And for people like us, for cooperation like us, we are the ones that are supposed to provide that leadership in terms of transforming the economies of Africa. If we don't we will not be able to get support from anywhere. We have been waiting for long for foreign investors to come and invest and actually, you know, show what are the potentials of Africa.
But today we are the ones that will end up showing people that these are the potentials. And now we believe, I personally believe that by doing so, a lot of cooperations will join us in funding this massive infrastructure that will make Africa, you know, to be at the next level. >> What do you hope your legacy will be? >> My legacy will be that one of the one that actually pioneered, you know, the industrialization of Africa.
>> Mhm. >> That's my focus, to make sure that Africa produce what you consume. This is my main focus and for us to to keep pushing to make sure that we have one common market. Uh I have a group which is called the African Renaissance and they're quite a lot any big guy in Africa, 54 of us were in this group which we meet uh physically once in a year in uh uh Rwanda uh which is Kigali.
And uh we've been supported by a lot of presidents and I think the more they understand what we are trying to do the more that we'll achieve. You know, because nobody can transform our continent but us, we Africans. >> Mhm. >> And that is why we are trying to mobilize all the entrepreneurs to make sure that they join us at different levels.
Some will be doing big things, some will be doing medium uh things, some will be doing you know, this and then that one will attract foreign investment while now because we don't have enough to be able to provide and take the continent to the next level. >> How do you How do you use your foundation to try to improve the continent? >> Well, the foundations work.
You know, the foundation about uh 2014 uh I did an endowment of 1.25 billion dollars. So, what we are now doing mostly is actually partnership. We have uh I think if I'm right, based on what uh Mr. uh you know, Bill Gates told me, he said that, uh, you know, we are one of the best partners they've they've had as a foundation.
You know, we've been able to eradicate, uh, polio. And we're working on, uh, quite a lot of things, you know, uh, in primary health care, nutrition. These are areas that we're working with them. In some areas in education, we're doing that on our own. >> Mhm. >> But as we speak right now, my head of foundation, she's in Saudi Arabia trying to work with other foundation to see how do we really attract because we have, unfortunately, in Nigeria, we have almost about, uh, more than uh, 10 million, uh, kids out of school.
So, we're investing heavily in terms of education. And, uh, as we grow more, we'll keep funding the foundation to be able to take care of all these poverty alleviation, health, empowerment of people, >> Mhm. >> and, uh, also education. So, these are the areas that we're really focusing. >> How do you relax? >> How do I relax? Um, I try to sometimes take my grandkids, if they're around, take them to the beach.
I love going to the beach, but I love also exercising. >> you do What do you do at the beach? >> We just go there and play. >> That's what you do. >> Talking of play, you're a big Arsenal fan. You nearly bought the team, right? >> I al- almost, yes. >> And tell me about it. >> Well, you know, uh, >> You had to make a choice.
>> When when when I was really very, very focused on buying Arsenal, then I was also facing the challenge of making sure the refinery gets to its own completion, the fertilizer, the petrochemical. And then when I look at it at that time, I was thinking, "Fine, but I have needs of funds. Will I go and put at that time? Arsenal was worth just about $2 billion.
Should I put my $2 billion in Arsenal? And now allow the business to suffer, or should I now complete the business, then I can continue to remain a very big supporter of Arsenal. So, I decided that no, I'm going to continue to support them, watch their games, go there, and I am an Arsenal fan, rather than now trying to take my >> Do you have a red and white scarf? >> Yeah, I have.
Even, you know, the t-shirt. Every day that anytime that they are playing, I always wear the t-shirt. And I have one, you know, which is also uh signed up by the captain. So, I mean, I'm a fan. I It's better for me to remain as a fan and continue to fund my own business, rather than just putting now I mean, today they are worth billions, and it's not really worth my while at all.
>> What is your advice to young African people? >> My own advice to young African people is to work hard. And also have the belief that the future is greater than the current situation that we are in. That Africa is a promised land, and they should stay at home, and make sure that we collectively build our continent, rather than just flying out somewhere else.
>> Aliko, it's been amazing. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here.mo
ALEXANDER STUBB: Mister Prime Minister, ministers, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great honor to be here today inaugurating the Raisina Dialogue. It’s also a great honor for me as the President of Finland to have spent the better part of three hours in the presence of the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, today. We got to be such good friends that I feel I can say this. For me, it was an empowering moment because today, we stood there together representing almost 1.5 billion people. And I’m sorry the speech is going to go only downhill from here.
During the past decade, it’s been remarkable to see how Raisina has developed into one of the foremost platforms for strategic thinking and global engagement. And I think for that, we should all be thankful to both Minister Jaishankar and Samir Saran. The fact that you’ve been able to do this in eleven years and gather such a distinguished group, with some flight problems getting here, I think, is remarkable. So congratulations for that.
Three Mistakes We Make
Let me take some twenty minutes of your time and begin by the following. I think we human beings make three mistakes. The first mistake is that we over-rationalize the past. We think that the world worked in a certain way and juxtapose examples thereof. The second mistake we make is that we overdramatize the present. And when we do these two mistakes, the problem is that we end up underestimating the future.
And I’ll try to avoid that today, but the problem is that us nerds of international relations, we quite often draw parallels between the past and the present, sometimes to make convincing-sounding predictions and sometimes just to make the case that the world was more orderly and much better in the good old days. At the same time, we get quite hit up about things that we see around us, as if the world has never experienced crisis of the scale that we are presently facing.
I was reminded of this lately when, over the holidays, I read the biography of U Thant, former Secretary General of the UN, the first Asian one. The book was called The Peacemaker, and I just drew the conclusion that, at least having read that, the number of global crises is actually fairly constant. Now, by this I do not in any which way want to diminish the significance of the increase of the number of local and regional conflicts that we are now witnessing around the world.
The State of the World Today
I’m deeply concerned about what we see today in the Middle East, in Sudan, and in Ukraine, just to name a few. My worry though is that these conflicts are incrementally becoming global. And my aim today is to try to find a pathway back to an international order in which institutions, norms, and rules are respected. Without a functioning world order, power vacuums will be filled by raw power, rogue behavior, and predatory hegemons.
So today, we hear assessments that the rules-based world order is dead, that a wrecking ball is destroying all of the international institutions and rules that have been built since World War II, and that the rupture of the old system is inevitable.
Sure, we’re living through a major challenge in world politics. Sure, the old order is being challenged, questioned, and attacked. But I would argue against a binary “everything is lost” kind of a view. I think the reality is actually much more complex.
I really liked Mark Carney’s speech in Davos, and Mark was here on a visit as well a few weeks back. I sort of want to build on his speech here today, but instead of only describing what is presently wrong with the global order, or disorder as the case might be, or longing back to the good old days, I think we should set our sights on the future.
We should strive to provide concrete normative proposals on how to fix the global order and make it work better for all. That is not idealism, but it is motivated by interests and realism.
The Finnish Approach: Cool, Calm, and Collected
Now, you’ll know that we Finns are often described as being cool, calm, and collected. And I see at least two former Swedish Prime Ministers and a former Danish Prime Minister in the audience, and you can ask them. I’m sure they will agree.
Now, when the going gets tough, a Finn goes in the sauna and takes an ice bath. We consider it a good way to clear the mind, take a breather, and try to understand what is going on in the world. And that’s what I’ll try to do today, not in the sauna or the ice bath, but here from the podium.
I think this goes quite well with the theme of this year’s Raisina Dialogue, Sanskara — assertion, accommodation, and advancement, just as the chairman just noted. I think we have to sit down during these three days, take the world as it is, and make the best out of it in a dignified manner.
Two-Part Framework: The Problem and the Solutions
So today, I will kick off the Raisina Dialogue by focusing on two things. First, I will attempt to identify the problem.
So, what’s wrong with the world order today? And second, I will try to outline a number of possible concrete solutions for the future, which you can then tear apart in your dialogue. In both of these parts, I will reflect on India and what India teaches the world.
It’s an attempt by someone who’s been born and bred into the Western-dominated liberal world order to understand how the world is really changing and be open about it.
My thesis is very simple. I believe that the Global South will decide what the next world order will look like. And India, as a major power, will be a major — if not the — force in deciding whether the world will tilt towards conflictual multipolarity characterized by deals, transactions, and spheres of interests, or whether the world will tilt towards a new cooperative, fair, and representative multilateral world order based on international institutions, rules, and norms. The policy choices that India and other key powers make truly matter in this time of transition. They will set the direction of the future.
Part One: What’s Wrong with the World Order?
Let me begin by stating the obvious. The world is changing much like it did after World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. It’ll take a few days to settle, but only two things are sure. One, there are more players who have agency than there were after World War I or World War II, or indeed the Cold War. And number two, the starting point for a new settlement is different from 1918, 1945, and 1989.
The global power balance has shifted. The Global South has both demography and economy on its side. I mean, here we are in a country which is portraying growth rates of seven percent, probably projecting all the way to 2047, and at the same time, it’s the biggest democracy in the world. But my argument is that the era of a Western-dominated world is over. That’s the disruption.
This is obvious, but it will take some time to sink in across the West. Nostalgia can give us lessons, but it rarely provides us with solutions. So I think that a good starting point to any analysis is to deal with the world as it is, not with a world that we would wish it to be.
So, we live in a time of power politics, a time where might seems to make right. Violence has once again become a go-to foreign policy tool used around the world with very little restraint.
In Ukraine, Russia is trying to subjugate a sovereign country through a war that is a blatant violation of international law. The way this war will end will have major consequences not only in Europe, but globally. It is in all of our interests that the outcome does not reward the aggressor.
In the Middle East, the events have taken rapid turns. We’re now witnessing a regional escalation with countries who were pushing for diplomatic solutions. I had the chance to speak to the President of the United Arab Emirates yesterday and the Emir of Qatar today, while getting insights from the Prime Minister of India on how he sees the situation.
In Sudan, the vicious circle of domestic power battles and regional rivalry have led to one of the deadliest conflicts of our time, forcing millions of people to leave their home.
Gone are the days when international politics were predictable, even to some degree. Now each new day may bring new surprises and challenges to tackle. This is, of course, interesting for us who deal with international relations, but in terms of global stability, it is an ongoing challenge.
Learning from India’s Worldview
One of my favorite foreign ministers, Dr. Jaishankar, has remarked, and let me quote once again: “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” This is what you get. You give speeches and you quote someone else, and immediately everyone applauds.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Dr. Jaishankar. What we need to recognize is that all the three examples that I mentioned — Ukraine, Middle East, Sudan — and many other wars and conflicts, are all of our problems. We need to work together to solve them. We can see the effects of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine on fertilizers, on oil prices. The same thing we are now seeing, of course, with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Now, does all of this mean that the liberal world order, the one we created after World War II, is dead? No, it doesn’t. The fact that the rules are broken does not make the whole system null and void, any more than someone getting caught for speeding makes speed limits irrelevant. If we give up on international rules, the current world order would collapse, but we are far from that.
Now, none of the previous world orders have been perfect. We should drop the illusion of a utopian order in which all two hundred nation states of this world live in harmony, peace, and eternal love. Instead, we should try to figure out how best to contain power in an imperfect world.
When I say we should drop the illusion of a perfect order, I should probably specify. I mean we in the West. To us, the change we’re living through has come as somewhat of a shock. History didn’t end as many expected in 1989. For decades, we got to enjoy relative peace and stability, functional global supply chains, and stable alliances. At times, we offered advice and criticism from our ivory towers to those faced with a different reality. Now our holiday from history is over. Instead of preaching and teaching, it’s time for us to learn from others, and India would be a good starting point.
India has been under no illusions. For your entire independence, you have based your foreign policy on a pragmatic and realistic worldview. You’ve showed the rest of the world what strategic caution and safeguarding autonomy means, all the while championing multilateralism and global cooperation. It is time that we all became a little bit more Indian.
Whether you call it non-alignment or multi-alignment, you’ve been careful not to rely solely on the goodwill of one partner or bloc. You have invested in your own security and actively developed partnerships in many directions. Your approach makes sense. You represent one fifth of the global population, together with Finland. And you cannot be a mere follower. You have to be an active and independent actor.
The Europeans have now also been taught a lesson from India. Passivity is not a strategy. We have to develop our capabilities, avoid harmful dependencies, and strengthen our global partnerships. And we have to continue investing in our alliances. Indeed, for a country like Finland, the collective security that NATO provides is a necessity. The economic clout that the EU projects is a must.
Despite not being part of a formal alliance, India does not isolate itself. Quite the contrary. Your power is based on active engagement. A timely example of this is, of course, the EU-India strategic partnership that took major steps forward earlier this year with the conclusion of a comprehensive free trade agreement and the launch of a security and defense partnership.
I think this was huge. This agreement and the other major trade agreements signed by both India and the EU in the past year underline the fact that we still believe in multilateral cooperation and the benefit that it brings. Our deal is not just the mother of all deals, but a strategic choice and a gesture that opens up a new era in our relationship.
Together, we’re building a partnership that can set an example to the rest of the world, a partnership that is built on mutual respect and common interest and serves to strengthen the multilateral system, not to undermine it. We refuse to believe that the future will only belong to, say, two great powers, while the rest of us are left to choose our sides. This does not hold true now, and it will not hold true in a decade or two. We should not allow it.
Part Two: Shaping the New World Order
So, let me then move on to my second part — a few concrete suggestions on how we can begin shaping the New World Order. Some of the proposals are of substance and others are of process.
India and Finland, we might be geographically different, but we understand what it means when power goes unchecked. We have both gone through difficult periods in history and fought for our democracy, equality, and sovereignty. We don’t want to see these values forgotten.
Finland’s foreign policy is based on what Samir Saran noted earlier — values-based realism. We stand by our values that we consider important and central to us: democracy, equality, justice, human rights, and freedom, just to name a few. At the same time, we are ready to engage in dialogue and cooperation with countries that do not necessarily share our values.
The aim is to find a balance between values and interests in a way that prioritizes principles but recognizes the limits of power and respects the reality of the world’s diverse cultures and histories. You cannot solve the world’s big problems — such as conflicts, technology, energy, or climate change — just alone.
In many ways, India has been applying values-based realism for far longer than we have. Thousands of years ago, Kautilya’s Arthashastra recognized that the international system is competitive and interest-driven.
Values-Based Realism and Multilateral Reform
It called for a pragmatic and realistic approach to statecraft. At the same time, the ruler’s ultimate duty was to values and ethics guided by the concept of dharma. This marriage of interests, values, and principles is evident in how India works as a constructive founding member of the UN, and one of the biggest contributors to global peacekeeping operations. Defending multilateralism is in your DNA. How then do we apply values based realism in the multilateral system?
Three Substantive Proposals
I have three substantive proposals.
Proposal number one: we need to improve representation. International institutions must not be one more tool of power for the powerful. Currently, their power structures reflect a world as it was, not as it is. The voices of the global South must be heard much louder than today.
The obvious place to start is the UN Security Council. I have proposed two permanent seats for Asia, two for Africa, and one for Latin America. And let me be clear, India should have a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Equally, we should reform the Bretton Woods institutions. The countries where the future of the world economy is made should have a bigger say. We also urgently need to reform the WTO to work better for all of us.
Currently, the rules based trade system is not delivering as it should, and trade is being wielded as a geopolitical tool, an instrument of power. In this area, India’s leadership is needed.
Second, we must create rules and norms that bring stability but allow for diversity. Technology, especially AI regulation, is a test case. AI is a life changing technology.
It is the first technology that can be seen to have agency on its own. We are creating something new and we have to make sure that what we create works for all. For that, we need common basic rules and guardrails. But we also need to acknowledge that the different realities around the world, different systems create very different threats and opportunities. So new technologies should not deepen the digital divide between the developed and the developing world.
They should bridge it. And in my mind, India is both a driver and a bridge of AI and technology. This is a field where you showed leadership recently in the AI Impact Summit. I could not agree more with you, Mister Prime Minister, when you said in your address at the summit that AI will only benefit the world when it is shared.
Third, we need to accept local and regional solutions while developing our joint international institutions.
These two layers, local and global, can live side by side. My point is that for international institutions to survive, we need to strengthen regional integration globally. Mercosur, ASEAN, the African Union, the GCC, and the EU, and many others are examples of organizations which are good at dealing with regional challenges. Regional organizations are at their best when they support the multilateral system and amplify the voices of their members in the international arena. I add that victims of war cannot wait for perfect institutions.
We have to push for solutions in an imperfect world. Global phenomena such as climate change, migration, have local impacts. They require solutions. Overall, we need to approach that foreign policy in what I call dignified foreign policy. We have to create an atmosphere of dialogue and engage with each other on an equal footing with respect.
A New San Francisco Moment
By reforming the multilateral system to better reflect the realities of today, we have a chance to save it. At the same time, we have to hold on to the core principles of the system as it was built. Those principles are enshrined in the UN Charter, provision of the use of force, and respect for sovereignty and international law. And this applies to each and every one of the 193 members of the United Nations.
So to finish, let me make a procedural proposal on how to try to get things back on track. The foundations of the United Nations were built in San Francisco, much like the framework for our global financial system was built in Bretton Woods. I think what the world needs now is a new San Francisco moment. A moment where world leaders come together in the spirit of cooperation to think long and hard how to reform the international institutions that have served us since World War II. We need to rebalance the world order. We need to agree on the principles on which we can find common solutions to common problems.
And if I may, my procedural proposal is that we should have a new Delhi moment. In other words, that India gathers world leaders here in Delhi and begins the process of looking what happens after wars.
Conclusion: Finnish Happiness and Indian Optimism
So in conclusion, it is in our interest to make the international system more inclusive and fairer while maintaining its core values and principles. The division of power is a political reality. Some have more, others less.
How one uses power is a political choice. We can choose multipolar opportunistic competition, or we can choose mutually beneficial multilateral cooperation.
Now us Finns, we are known for eight years running as the happiest people in the world. Although I have to say that one would not necessarily draw that conclusion from a Monday morning tram ride in Helsinki in November, but statistics tells us that we are happy. Now Indians, on the contrary, are smiling people.
And you’re constantly topping one very important statistic, the one that measures optimism. Most Indians believe that tomorrow will be better than today. So let’s combine Finnish happiness and Indian optimism in constructing a fairer and a more stable new world order. Together, we are stronger. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mister President. Now may I invite His Excellency Doctor S. J. Shankar to propose the word of thanks. Namaskar, and a very good evening to all.
It is a great pleasure to join you this morning. This Forum is discussing a fragmented world as a problem. And reinventing cooperation as a solution. I agree with both the diagnosis and the treatment.
2. Having said that, let us recognize two facts. One, that fragmentation is here to stay. And two, that it is not altogether bad; in some ways, even good. After all, it means less dominance, more space and greater democratization. Flowing from that, we should ask ourselves three questions about its downside: is it against efficiency, is it against stability, and is it against security? To the extent that it may be, those issues can only be addressed through deeper cooperation.
3. When we look at it objectively, the world was always part globalized and part fragmented.The real change has been the factors that drive fragmentation, the intensity of their implications and the manner in which the world has come to terms with it.
4. In the past, the forces that both united and divided us were relatively more straightforward. As a result, the lines drawn were clear cut and neat. Some were conscious strategic choices; others were assumptions and norms. That is no longer the case. The nature of fragmentation is itself very much more complex now. And that will surely shape our search for solutions.
5. Let us analyze the centripetal and centrifugal forces at play in the world currently. What characterizes our current existence above all is the degree of economic integration and interdependence. The world is increasingly about supply chains, their efficiency and their resilience. This is not just about goods; it is equally about resources. Key to its working is the viability of logistics. Making connectivity a smooth experience has therefore emerged as a priority. No place is too far away for business anymore.
6. Technology has been equally indispensable in this process. As it gets more massively deployed beyond national boundaries, its integrating impact is clearly visible. This has its own downside, but that is a subject for another conversation. The advent of AI will only accelerate these trends, since the capture of data and deployment of models are inherently trans-national. An accompanying facet to this, of course, is the mobility of talents and skills. That has gained further salience as travel itself becomes easier.
7. Paradoxically, the challenges we confront have only further strengthened the centripetal side. Whether it is pandemics like Covid-19, acts of terrorism or the impact of extreme climate events, these cannot be contained within political jurisdictions.International cooperation is a must. Because our primary identity and decision-making instincts are fundamentally national, it does not happen automatically. Cultivating an openness towards the world is therefore essential. In India, we know it traditionally as ‘Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’ – the world is a family. Much of the current turbulence we see is about societies which are challenging that belief.
8. Let us then turn to the centrifugal side. What are the divisive forces at work? They start with the leveraging of financial strengths, production capabilities, market shares and control over resources. The natural play of commerce is increasingly influenced by the calculations of strategy. This spills over into the domain of connectivity as well, whether we think of chokepoints or projects. These traits are further accentuated by the growing sharpness of technology rivalry. This has long existed in the military and dual use categories, but has steadily spread across the board. The greater intensity of competition is shaping the behaviour of many states.
9. Politics is also at work against globalization. When international regimes are perceived to be gamed, their acceptance starts to shrink. Some entrenched powers also find it hard to come to terms with loss of competitiveness. International economy then becomes a zero-sum game.
10. We have seen this unfold over the last decade with a promise of much more to come. Challenges confronting the world may be manifestly global, but the responses are definitely more national. The Covid pandemic is itself a prime example. On countering terrorism, it has given rise to double standards. As for climate change, there are empty promises with some even in denial. But most of all, the natural evolution of the international economy is being blocked by non-market factors. The right to industrialize, indeed the capacity to do so, is being denied to many developing states by the manipulation of competitiveness and restricting market access. This is but another facet of exercising dominance and retaining control.
11. Let me sum up the state of the world. The political changes after 1945 and the economic changes due to globalization have led to a rebalancing. It initially had economic expressions, but with the passage of time, political and cultural ones as well. In due course, counter-forces came into play, leading to new realities and fresh debates. But the predicament of the world is not just structural; it is also strongly behavioural.
12. The world is today witnessing greater weaponization, higher risk-taking and a politics suited to the social media era. The inclination to assert differentials is greater. Capabilities too are deployed with less hesitation.Technology advancement is itself encouraging such traits. As the interests of a few are openly prioritized, the costs to the many are less considered. This can only be countered by cooperation on more issues with greater players. At the end of the day, we will see whether multi-polarity really delivers.
13. So, how does the world reinvent cooperation in this fragmented scenario? Essentially by five steps:
(i) By de-risking the international economy and diversifying production and supply chains. Resilience and redundancy are key. This will limit hostage taking in the economic domain.
(ii) Forging new understandings and closer relationships among influential nations. This will help stabilize the global order and address issues and problems through agenda-specific cooperation.
(iii) Enhance awareness of the costs of narrow thinking and confrontation. International law and regimes, UNCLOS being a good example, must be collectively protected and promoted.
(iv) Encourage the power of aspirations. The Global South should be provided greater capacity and opportunities. This would also create new factors of global growth.
(v) Provide global goods through common and shared endeavors. We cannot rely on a few to uphold rules and norms. The world must take more control over its own future. This, amongst others, must be expressed in reformed multilateralism.
14. And these five factors, friends, make a powerful case why India and Republic of Korea must cooperate more closely. We have complementarities in fields like ship – building, digital, health, infrastructure or defence just waiting to be exploited. The value of our economic and technology partnership, political and strategic cooperation and closer people-to-people ties were the subjects of my bilateral meetings yesterday. And I thank the organizers in present that as an argument in a global context as well.
Donald Trump (00:00):
Well, thank you very much. It's a great honor to be with a friend of mine, a man who is respected all over the world actually, but he's in charge of NATO. He's a secretary general, Mark Rutte. And he's really done a great job. He was not too much involved when they weren't too nice to us in our recent little military skirmish, but he is a man that's respected by everybody. And Mark, maybe you'd like to say a few words.
Mark Rutte (00:36):
Absolutely. And a few things I want to share with the media, with you being here at present and it's about your leadership, first of all about Iran. I really want to make clear how important it is what you are doing on Iran. This is first of all about the nuclear capability Iran was basically getting its hands on. And that would have been a threat to the region, it would have been a threat to the whole world. This is a country which is exporting chaos, it is exporting terrorism, and they were very near to getting their hands on the nuclear capabilities.
You've seen last week and with the G7, all the leaders in the G7 applauding the fact that this nuclear capability has been degraded. This is extremely important. And I just want to make this clear because sometimes people think, why was this whole Iran thing going on? This is about security, about safety. This is the leader of the free world taking responsibility beyond the shores of the United States for the rest of the world. And this is what you did.
I know there have been debates about whether your allies in Europe were with you or not. I just want to say one thing which is-
Donald Trump (01:41):They weren't.
Mark Rutte (01:42):
Yeah, but let me say one thing, which is... I know you think that, but let me... And I know about the, let's say, your irritation about that. But when you look at the numbers, four to 5,000 US planes taking off from bases in Europe in the six weeks this war took place, still the ceasefire took place mid April. Bucharest, the airport in Romania having to close. It had to close for commercial traffic because they had to make sure that you were able to send a tanker aircraft up in the air. I know there have been isolated cases about which you are really disappointed, but generally speaking, your European allies have been there with you. I really want to make the point. Four to 5,000 US tanks taking off from European airbases. So, that's about Europe. Now I want to take you, if you stay here-
Donald Trump (02:31):Yes, good.
Mark Rutte (02:32):
... I go over to these boards here. Because I want to show you what this president was able to achieve. And I start with this chart. This chart is about the Trump Trillion. The Trump Trillion shows you the increase Europeans and Canadians are paying into defense since you took office in 2017.
Donald Trump (02:55):Right.
Mark Rutte (02:55):
Trump 45 plus Trump 47. A total of extra spend by the Europeans and the Canadians of 1.2 trillion. When you look at the effect of Trump 47, so the isolated effect of the extra defense spending in 2025 and 2026, you see almost $140 billion extra spend nominal on defense by the Europeans and the Canadians. And also this year you will again see an increase by about 120 billion, which brings a total in two years of over $250 billion. I can assure you, this is because of Russia, because of the threat. But I'm also absolutely convinced that you being President of the United States, being consistently pushing for something which since Eisenhower has not been achieved, which is the Europeans equalizing their defense spending with the United States, this is your evidence.
(03:44)
Then when it comes to jobs, look here. In total, 195,000 jobs being supported by investments. Investments from European companies into the United States, 83,000 jobs supported by that. 112,000 jobs created by the fact that Europeans are massively... About half of all their defense spending when it comes to defense industry output is spent in the United States, 112,000 jobs. Last year they spent $54 billion on US defense industry output. There is now a order catalog, order backlog of 300 billion. So, $300 billion of defense spending from Europeans buying this in the US over the next couple of years, which is already on the order book. Last year, 54 billion, a total now order book of 300 billion, totally almost 200,000. These are real jobs, real people, like you had yesterday when you spoke in Pennsylvania, the people behind you.
(04:41)
But I want to say two things more if you allow me. First of all, to get all of this done, we had to increase the defense industrial output. That is a big problem. The problem is that both in the United States and Europe, we are not producing enough. Our stock piles have to be replenished because the war in Ukraine and what we do there and for all the other reasons. You have taken leadership. Last week you signed the defense procurement. You made it possible for companies to work together to be able therefore to ramp up their defense production. You have been very harsh with them a couple of weeks ago. I had one of them over in my office.
Donald Trump (05:16):[inaudible 00:05:17]
Mark Rutte (05:17):
Yeah, it was really harsh. I had one of them over in my office. He was still trembling, one of the CEOs. And I said, "This is good. This is exactly what we need." Because we need this extra defense output. This is important for Europe. When I pointed all these jobs, of course, also many jobs being created in Europe and in Canada, but again, almost 200,000 here in the United States supported by all these investments. But it is about defense of the share output and this is also what the Ankara summit has to be about. The whole first day will be about defense industrial production, because we can spend as much as we want, but we need the interceptors, the missiles, we need the tanks, we need the artificial intelligence, et cetera, et cetera. And this is what you are doing, doing that in the US, but also therefore putting all that pressure on the defense industry base.
(06:04)
And finally, you had the G7 last week. I think that was a big success. What you've seen there is that, yes, you are president of the United States, but I want to make this point. For me, you are first of all the leader of the free world. In two weeks in Ankara, you will have not seven countries, you will have 42 countries, the 32 allies, US and you're the 31, but also 9 or 10 other countries from the Middle East, from the Indo-Pacific. And they want to hear your lead. You will provide that. I know this. This is what you do in Iran, this is what you're do in defense of the shared output, on spending, and all of this. You've been leader of the free world. And now we see it with Ukraine. The fact that Ukraine stays strong in the fight, that you still provide all the stuff they need, paid for the European and Canadian allies, fair enough, but very important for them to stay in the [inaudible 00:06:53] and all the other things United States is doing.
I'm really looking forward to that summit. I know that Erdoğan, the president from Turkey, looks forward to receiving his good friend, Donald J. Trump. But I just wanted to tell the story because, ladies and gentlemen of the American media, this is important. This is your president, but also leader of free world taking the leadership role as is necessary.
Donald Trump (07:14):Thank you very much, Mark. Very nice. Thank you very much. Any questions, please?
Speaker 1 (07:19):Mr. President, after all this, you've been so transformative vis-a-vis NATO. And I think the secretary general just stated that. You transformed NATO the likes of which-
Mark Rutte (07:30):[inaudible 00:07:31].
Speaker 1 (07:31):... nobody would have even thought that you could have done. After all that, do you still think the European allies, like you told me, [inaudible 00:07:40], and if so, what can they do to make things better?
And to you, Secretary Rutte, can you confirm that all the thousands of flights, as you stated today and yesterday on Fox News, are in compliance with NATO [inaudible 00:07:54]?
Donald Trump (07:55):
Well, let me just say he's been a friend of mine. He's a great guy, great leader, great secretary general, everybody respects him. And I appreciate your nice words, but you really have done a good job. I think if anybody else were in that position, we wouldn't even be meeting today, to be honest with you, because we were let down. We didn't need help on this at all. We've demolished them in literally the first week, but it would have been nice if they would have said, we'd like to help. We didn't even need it, but it would have been nice if they said that. They didn't say it.
(08:29)
But as secretary general, and he's the boss of the whole operation, he was... I believe if I would have called him... And I didn't bother doing that because I was doing individual countries just to take the temperature and see how they were doing. But I think if I would have called him, he probably would have found a way to help if we needed it. I feel would have been a little bit different. But I was disappointed. I was disappointed with Italy. I was disappointed with the UK. He's now gone. He had a lot of problems. But we were disappointed with the UK. We were disappointed with Germany and France. We're disappointed with most of them. Spain is a horror show. Spain is terrible even from your standpoint. I mean, they don't want to pay anything. They think they're in for a free ride. Spain is not a good group, not a good group at all.
But I have great respect for this man and so we're going to be discussing what took place and we'll see what happens. Thank you. Good question.
Mark Rutte (09:26):Can I answer to your-
Speaker 1 (09:27):Yes, please.
Donald Trump (09:27):Yeah, please.
Mark Rutte (09:28):
... second question, because I don't have many disagreements with the President of the United States. Here I have to slightly, because I do agree there's reason for disappointment. Absolutely. But my argument is this. These are isolated cases. When you look at the overall... Take, for example, Germany, from day one they delivered on their... These are bilateral commitments, a bit of the techniques of this, but the technology, but these are bilateral commitments these countries are having with United States. So, this is not strictly speaking NATO, but bilateral commitments. They all did what they promised to do. And this led to the between four and 5,000 US planes taking off from Europe.
I would argue it would have been very difficult to do Iran without having Europe as a power protection platform for the United States. Delivered again. He's right, there's also reason for disappointment. It is a mixed bag.
Speaker 1 (10:19):In compliance-
Donald Trump (10:19): Well, the big question is, are they paying the 5%? They agreed six months ago when we were together to pay 5%, and for the most part they're not paying.
Mark Rutte (10:29):Well, when you look at the numbers, take for example, Germany, so we agreed they get a couple of years together because you cannot spend it in one year because you have an absorption problem.
Donald Trump (10:38):You can.
Mark Rutte (10:38):But Germany, for example...
Donald Trump (10:39):You can. [inaudible 00:10:40].
Mark Rutte (10:40):
Germany is doubling its defense spending between 2021 and 2029. They will spend over half of 50 billion by 2029, which is staggering, more than the French and the Brits combined even. Take the Dutch and Poland and the Baltics, already there. Countries like Denmark really stepping up, and the Nordics. It's a bit of a mixed bag, but most of them are doing it and the alliance is so much stronger because of this man.
Speaker 1 (11:07):Are the [inaudible 00:11:08]-
Donald Trump (11:09):Please, yellow dress.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Thank you. Thank you. [inaudible 00:11:12], GB News. You mentioned that our minister has got one foot out the door, the new guy's coming in, Andy Burnham. What do you know about him, Mr. President? And what does he need to do to improve the relationship?
Donald Trump (11:22):Know about who?
Speaker 2 (11:24):The new incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham.
Donald Trump (11:26):
I don't know anything. I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. I hear he's extremely liberal, extremely. So, that means he probably won't open up the North Sea. I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice. I said, "Open up the North Sea." Go to Aberdeen, which was the hottest city on the whole continent. It was the oil city. It was the oil of Europe. And they closed everything. It was terrible. I saw it before my eyes and I couldn't believe it. The North Sea is loaded. I have had every oil company come to see me. "Sir, could you give us access to the UK? We would do anything to drill in the North Sea." They haven't even found what's there. The amazing thing is, they buy their oil from Norway, which gets the oil from the North Sea. Think of it, and they pay a big premium. Norway's got now $2 trillion in the bank, and UK is dying, so they should open up the North Sea. It's an easy one. A lot of good things are going to happen. It's among the greatest fields in the world. Peter?
Peter (12:36):
President Trump, great night for Democratic socialist candidates last night. In the New York primaries, they swept, and knocked out two incumbents. You're from New York. Why do you think it is that now, the endorsement of Zohran Mamdani means more than the endorsement of Hakeem Jeffries?
Donald Trump (12:55):
Well, they're going radical left. They're going, really, you talk about the Democrat socialists, it's really communists. These people, I watched that woman last night. That's not a socialist. I know socialist. That woman is a communist, and what they don't say is that I was 16 and 0 last night, but mine were a little more boring, a little more mainstream. They were Republican conservatives, but we were 16 and 0. If you look over the last two and a half years, we're about 347 and just about 0. That's pretty good, but nobody writes that. He picked three. They won. They beat a guy named Dan Goldman, who's a loser. He was one of my prosecutors, one of my many prosecutors that they used on me. Dan Goldman, not a good prosecutor, fortunately, but he's now looking for a job. I was very surprised to see, because he's a pretty liberal guy. When they go more liberal than Dan Goldman, they're really into never- never land.
Peter (14:01):Does this tell you that the Democratic Party's 2028 nominee will likely be or could likely be a Democratic socialist?
Donald Trump (14:10):
Well, it should make it easier for Republicans, because most of the nation is composed of sane people. They don't want to ... If you look throughout history, go back thousands of years, you've always had socialism and communism by different names. It's never ever worked. It's not going to work this time, either.
Speaker 3 (14:32):Mr. President?
Donald Trump (14:33):Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (14:35):Thank you very much, sir. As a Turk myself-
Donald Trump (14:38):Whose phone is it? Don't worry about it. Oh, was that you?
Speaker 3 (14:46):Not a fire alarm.
Donald Trump (14:48):It's all right. Fire.
Speaker 3 (14:50):As a Turk myself, I can tell you with great confidence that your presence in Ankara is eagerly anticipated. What's your message to your great friend Erdoğan and the Turkish people? Because you're going to be there in less than-
Donald Trump (15:04):Are you from Turkey?
Speaker 3 (15:05):Yeah, I'm a Turk myself, and-
Donald Trump (15:07):
Good, good. Well, I like him. He's a friend of mine, and he stayed out of the war. He was a prime candidate to go into the war with Iran, maybe on the Iran side, because he's not a big fan of Israel, as you know. I asked him to stay out, and he stayed out, and you know who else was great, was President Xi of China. He could have come in. He gets half of his oil from that area. I could see him wanting to, and I asked him to please stay out, and he did. We did a good job, but he stayed out. Erdoğan's a great leader, very strong person, great military, and I asked him to stay out and he did, and so did President Xi, and frankly, so did Putin, if you really look, but you could say that Vladimir has some other things to focus on, but they all stayed out. It was pretty amazing. People were surprised.
Speaker 3 (15:56):Tied to that, Mr. President-
Donald Trump (16:00):
I think that Erdoğan is ... Look, he loves Turkey, right? He's doing a great job. He loves Turkey. I love the US, but he loves Turkey and he's doing a great job. He's a respected man and respected leader, and he's been a friend of mine. Now, I shouldn't say that, because guys like Peter would say, "Oh, he likes Erdoğan." No, Peter won't, Peter is good.
Speaker 3 (16:20):Mr. President-
Donald Trump (16:20):Some of the others, let's say, but Erdoğan is a strong man, but he's been ... Everything I've ever asked him for, he's done.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General clearly pointed out that allies want to do defense business with you, and Turkey is definitely one of them. They want the F110 jet engines and they want the F35 fighter jets. Are you going to Turkey with a big gift back for Erdoğan?
Donald Trump (16:47):I think so. Yeah, I think so. Look, he's a member of NATO. Some people don't consider him so, but he really is. He's a strong member of NATO. Yeah. I'm going to probably do something that's going to make him very happy.
Mark Rutte (17:00):Turkey has a huge-
Donald Trump (17:02):Tell him hello.
Speaker 3 (17:02):[inaudible 00:17:03].
Donald Trump (17:03):Tell him hello, he's a good man.
Speaker 3 (17:03):I will tell him.
Mark Rutte (17:03):Turkey has a huge defense industrial base. 3000 companies working all over the alliance, also in the United States, so strong countries.
Donald Trump (17:11):People don't know how big Turkey is in terms of the military. It's a very strong ... They have a lot of our equipment, a very strong military, because of him.
Speaker 4 (17:19):What are your expectations, sir, about this meeting in Ankara? What do you think? What do think? What are your expectations, what are your asks?
Donald Trump (17:25):Well, except for the fact that it was being held in Turkey by President Erdoğan, I don't think I would have gone to it.
Mark Rutte (17:31):You wouldn't come for me?
Donald Trump (17:38):
I might go for go for you. I might've. I mean, I wouldn't have gone for what we went through over the last two months with the various countries, but you're probably right. I would have gone for you, but I would have not gone for most people, but he called me up, he said, "Please, I have it in Turkey, you've got to be there. The United States has to be there." I'm going out of respect to President Erdoğan.
Speaker 4 (18:00):What do you want the allies to do more than what they are doing right now? Do you have an ask?
Donald Trump (18:07):
Just be loyal. I just want their loyalty. We don't need their money. We don't need anything. We have the most powerful military in the world, by far, but I just want loyalty. We're so loyal to them. We're always fighting for them. We have thousands of troops all over Europe. In Germany, we have 50,000 troops, and then you want a little ... Give us a little nudge, give us a little kiss. We don't want much, and they say, "No, we can't do it." We're paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the troops that we have in Germany, the troops that we have in UK, the troops that we have all over Europe. I will say, Poland was very good. I endorsed him, and he won. By the way, many people that I endorsed outside of the United States won. You know that, right? Do you know we had a big win yesterday with Columbia? A favorite place of Marco. Marco loves Columbia. No, I endorsed a man who was on the end and he won, but the same thing in Poland. He was number 10.
Mark Rutte (19:07):[inaudible 00:19:08].
Donald Trump (19:08):
I endorsed him. I didn't like the man that was the president at all, and I endorsed him. He was a fighter, a big fighter, a good fighter, and I endorsed him. He came from 10th place and he won, and they say it was the biggest upset in Europe in 50 years for a major election. You know what? He's going to be a great president of Poland.
Speaker 5 (19:29):Mr. President, [inaudible 00:19:30]-
Donald Trump (19:30):We don't really have many people. South America, but just the other day we endorsed somebody that ... El Tigre. They call him El Tigre because he's tough. He's another fighter. I like fighters, again.
Speaker 5 (19:41):Mr. President, you like winners.
Donald Trump (19:42):He won, and it's good.
Speaker 5 (19:43):Mr. President, you like winners. Do you think President Zelensky is winning right now? He famously [inaudible 00:19:46].
Donald Trump (19:46):Well, he's doing pretty well. Look, no matter how you look at it, he's doing pretty well. He's holding his own, at least. A lot of people dying on both sides, but I think he's doing pretty well.
Speaker 5 (19:57):Can I ask you-
Donald Trump (19:57):You have to say he's courageous. He's got great equipment, but he's got great men. He's got fighters.
Speaker 5 (20:05):Can I ask you one other question? Have you seen the report into the Minab school attack, sir, and could you tell us-
Donald Trump (20:11):I have not seen it, no.
Speaker 5 (20:12):Why not?
Donald Trump (20:12):At some point... Well, I have to wait for it to be complete.
Speaker 5 (20:16):It's being completed now.
Donald Trump (20:16):
I don't know that they're ever going to solve that problem. I mean, you could ask Pete, but I don't know that they're ever ... They're going to say it was one of our missiles. Pete, I don't know that they're ever going to solve that problem, in terms of, whose fault was it? Because there were missiles flying all over the place.
Speaker 5 (20:30):[inaudible 00:20:31]-
Donald Trump (20:31):
It's horrible what happened, but there were missiles flying all over the place, and somebody said it was our missile. Well, maybe it wasn't our missile, but I've seen nothing to lead me to believe it was. There were plenty of missiles being flown by other people. What do you think, Pete?
Peter (20:46):Oh, Mr. President, we've taken the investigation very seriously, and when the appropriate time is right, whatever that outcome is, that'll be the time to divulge.
Speaker 5 (20:55):Do you know what the [inaudible 00:20:55]-
Donald Trump (20:55):I mean, if you come up with the right answer, I don't think it's going to be us. I don't think it was us. There were a lot of missiles being fired at that time. Yeah, please.
Speaker 6 (21:03):Mr. President, you just had a colorful lunch on the Senate. I did the Senate. Would you be open to a compromised measure that had provisions of the SAVE Act into a reconciliation?
Donald Trump (21:12):
Not really. No. The SAVE Act should be just not compromised. It's voter ID. It's proof of citizenship, and it's also the mail-in ballots. We want mail-in ballots for the military, if they're away. We want them for people that are ill or people that are in some form handicapped or have a hard time, or people even that are on vacation. I'm open to that, but mail-in ballots, you have to vote, because we have a lot of rigged elections.
Speaker 6 (21:39):[inaudible 00:21:42]-
Donald Trump (21:41):
Then, we added in, men in women's sports is a no-no. No men in women's sports, and no transgender mutilization of our children. These are 99% issues, and we have to do it. We have to protect. Look at what's gone on in Los Angeles and California. The vote still hasn't been counted. What's it? Two weeks now? It still hasn't been counted. I don't know Spencer Pratt, but I watched him and he was doing really nicely. All of a sudden he's out, and I said he was going to be out, because he was doing well, and then a week later they started saying, "Oh, he's starting to lose favor. He's starting to lose." I said, "They just rigged the election," and they were going to do that with Steve Hilton. He's a good man. I asked the US Attorney to go look at their votes, and as soon as I did that, they announced that Steve Hilton would be a finalist.
No, we have rigged elections. Now in my case, I made it too big to rig. Remember the expression, too big to rig? We have rigged, and we have to have voter ID. If we don't have voter ID and proof of citizenship, but basically, it's The Save America Act. Everybody wants it. Everybody is in, including Democrats. 87% of Democrats want it. Not the leaders, because they want to cheat. Their policy is so bad they're unelectable.
Speaker 6 (23:06):If the [inaudible 00:23:06] came to your desk, sir, would you veto it?
Donald Trump (23:08):About what?
Speaker 6 (23:09):If the housing bill that you didn't sign today, if it came to your desk-
Donald Trump (23:12):
No, I said I'm not signing the housing bill. I want to see what happens with [inaudible 00:23:14]. Look, the housing bill is housing. I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody, maybe anywhere. It's all about the interest rate. Lower the interest rates. You can have all the housing you want, but you have to understand, I don't want to hurt people that own houses, too. These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They've become rich. I don't want to hurt them either.
Speaker 6 (23:40):[inaudible 00:23:41]-
Donald Trump (23:41):
What you want to do is, what? Good for everyone? Get the interest rates down. We have this numbskull that was the head of the Fed before, and he's a stupid person, and we call him Too Late because he was too late with the interest rates all the time. We need low interest rates. Low interest rates will solve everything, will solve that. Now despite that, we're doing well with housing, but what we're really doing well is oil is plummeting and costs are coming down affordability, we're doing great. The Democrats gave us a tremendous affordability problem and we're reducing prices a lot.
Speaker 8 (24:19):Mr. President, a new prime minster will be installed in a matter of weeks, three or four weeks. Would you want to be the first person on his list to visit globally?
Donald Trump (24:31):No.
Speaker 8 (24:31):Why?
Donald Trump (24:32):
But I think we're probably of a different persuasion. He's very liberal. But I got along well with Starmer. I disagreed with Starmer. I said, "You have two problems, immigration and energy and crime too, by the way. Crime." You have a terrible mayor of London, by the way. I don't want to cause any problems, but your mayor of London is grossly incompetent, a bad person and a horrible representative for your country. You know that. That's why you're smiling and laughing and it's true. But you know that. The mayor of London is a horror show, but you have a crime problem. You have an immigration problem. The immigration helps cause the crime by the way. And you have a tremendous energy problem.
(25:17)
You're building stupid windmills all over the country and they don't do the job. You have the greatest oil field in the world, one of them, it's called the North Sea oil. All you have to do is bid it out to Exxon, Chevron, Shell, British Petroleum. They're begging to go there and pay billions of dollars. And because the left is so crazy, they don't want the money and the country is losing... I mean, your country's going to go bankrupt. Think of it. You have one of the... Now most countries don't have that. You have the North Sea oil and you have the best part of it. Think of it. You go to Norway who doesn't have the best part of it and you give them... And they have $2 trillion in the bank. They have $2 trillion, maybe more, because the UK pays them all this money and others. But you have one of the greatest fields and I told this guy 15 times and he wouldn't do it. I said, "You're going to lose your prime ministership." And he did.
In fact, I called it about three days earlier, right? Remember I said he was leaving? I wonder if that nudged him out.
Speaker 9 (26:34):Would you block a final Iran deal if he included any kind of fees on shipping from America entering the strait?
Donald Trump (26:39):Yeah, no, I would. It would be unacceptable to me because we have numerous straits and if you did that for them, you'd have to do it for other people. You have other straits. I wouldn't allow it there either. Yeah, it would be a game changer.
Speaker 9 (26:51):And have you made progress on munitions building in Europe? That's obviously something [inaudible 00:26:55]
Donald Trump (26:55):Yeah, we always make progress. Some of the countries that he represents are as good as him. He's great. They're lucky they have him. They're lucky to have that guy. The person behind you.
Speaker 14 (27:09):I would think that Congress voting to end the war with Iran, even in a non-binding way, impacts your negotiations with Iran?
Donald Trump (27:18):
So we're doing great in our negotiations with Iran. Right in the middle of one of the key things, which we're going to get anyway, we got... " We have breaking news. The Senate has voted that they'd like Trump to stop the war." So Iran sees that and they go, "What's that all about?" Now, you know it's meaningless, right? But I had lunch with them. We had four Republican senators and all Democrats. Democrats, they want to lose the war because they're stupid. That's why we call them Dumocrats. I no longer use the E, I've changed the E into a U. We call them Dumocrats. They're dumb. Their policy is so bad. That's why they are opposed to the Save America Act because they don't want voter ID, they don't want proof of citizenship. You know why? Because they have to cheat. Their policy is so bad that if they don't cheat, they wouldn't win an election. They're phenomenal cheaters and they stick together. But you know the people, the Democrat people are 87% in favor of the Save American Act. Yeah, please. At the top.
Speaker 10 (28:37):
Last night, of course, as Peter pointed out, we saw the [inaudible 00:28:40] win in Jeffries and Schumer's backyard. You told me in October that Schumer was gonzo and that Mamdani was the leader of the party. The last night's results for that assessment and-
Donald Trump (28:52):
Well, Schumer's lost his way. He's become essentially a Palestinian. I think it's the greatest transformation of a political position I've ever seen. Chuck Schumer, who was a strong supporter of Israel and he's become 100% Palestinian. In fact, I've asked for a beautiful, beautiful silk outfit to be sent... In the Palestinian tradition, I'm going to send it to him as a birthday president. Now it's the greatest transformation of a political ideology I've ever seen. Chuck Schumer is Jewish and he was a strong supporter of Israel, not that strong because he let the Obama... Even though he was opposed to it, he let the JCPOA get through. He could have fought that harder with Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him? But Chuck Schumer's a Palestinian now, sad. Yeah, please.
Speaker 10 (29:50):And do Democrats have a problem on their hands now that Obama and Mamdani, they're true leaders. Neither of them can run for president in '28?
Donald Trump (29:57):
Well, Mamdani was here, as you know, twice. And he's a very nice guy. He's a charming guy, good-looking guy. We talk. But you can't raise taxes on people when you force them to leave your state or your city and they're leaving and they're going to Florida. Most of them are going down to Palm Beach in Miami. They're just leaving and they pay 90% of your taxes. And I keep wondering, "How are you going to do this?" Every day you read about somebody that's leaving for Florida, mostly Florida and other places, but they're leaving. You can't put estate taxes on that are so high that when a loving father or mother dies and they leave it to their beautiful child, the child is supposed to pay 50% tax. That's on top of federal tax, right? So basically you're leaving them nothing. What you're doing is you just ... I mean, you could be liberal, you could be anything. It's common sense. You're forcing people to leave and these are the people that pay the taxes. They pay 90% of the taxes and they're leaving New York and they're leaving California too. Yeah, this.
Speaker 3 (31:13):Thank you very much, Mr. President. You said yes to the attentions, but you're very direct, very straightforward, no-nonsense man as you've known in Turkey as well. What needs to happen for the F-35 deal to be finalized? What do you need to see?
Donald Trump (31:27):Why don't you answer that question, JD? I wanted to give you an easy.
Peter (31:31):Okay. Thank you, sir.
Donald Trump (31:32):He's done a great job over here by the way.
Peter (31:34):
Well, I know that Pete and the entire team are reviewing this right now because there are certain things that we have to certify that have happened in order to comply with American law. The president has asked us to do that. We're running the traps and confirming that's happened. This is really a congressional thing and ensuring that Turkey has complied with American law so they can get the F-35s. And of course, we'll announce that when we have that at release point.
Donald Trump (31:57):
We're going to work [inaudible 00:31:58] Yeah, we're going to work. Look, hey, he's a man who's a little controversial, but I am too. But I know him. I think he's a very good person. He's helped us a lot. Anytime I've... As an example, I said, "I'd love you to stay out of the war with Iran." That's a natural for him, right? He stayed out. I like him. A lot of times when they have a problem with [inaudible 00:32:24] they call me and they say, "Would you talk to him" They'll call me, they'll say, "Could you do me a favor and talk to him" You have a question in the back? Yeah, in the back. I love your questions, but you've asked a lot of them. You're very nice. I appreciate
Speaker 7 (32:36):Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today, you instructed your Department of Justice to do an investigation for oil companies that you said gas prices were not coming down quick enough.
Donald Trump (32:46):Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 7 (32:46):And you are concerned that there is price gouging-
Donald Trump (32:50):I am.
Speaker 7 (32:51):... taking advantage of the prices. Sir, can you elaborate on that?
Donald Trump (32:54):
So it's ExxonMobil, it's Chevron, it's Shell, it's BP, it's a lot of them. The gasoline or the oil prices have come down so much and we are not seeing anything at the pump by comparison to what it should be. We should be, in my opinion, at $2.25 right now at the pump and we're higher than that and we are doing a big investigation on it. They're not reducing the prices commensurate with what's happening. Look, we are sending out, think of it, 19 million barrels came out yesterday. That is a flood. That's like a gusher, that's an oil gusher and they should be much lower, the gasoline prices, which really is what people see more than anything else for their car. But the gasoline prices should be much lower at the pump and the oil companies are possibly gouging. I hope they're not, otherwise they're going to be in big trouble. They're going to be in big trouble. We're not going to play games.
Speaker 11 (34:04):Mr. President, have you spoken to [inaudible 00:34:07] today about this?
Donald Trump (34:09):I have. I told him, "Don't gouge our people."
Speaker 8 (34:12):President. There's a report that you're going to present the World Cup at the-
Donald Trump (34:17):I am. Well, I've been asked to by soccer, by football, by Gianni. Gianni's done a great job. By the way, how hot is this-
Speaker 12 (34:25):And the Dutch are doing very well.
Donald Trump (34:27):You're doing well with them.
Speaker 12 (34:27):We're doing very well.
Donald Trump (34:28):Maybe we'll play you in the finals.
Speaker 12 (34:29):[inaudible 00:34:31]
Donald Trump (34:30):
But how hot has it been? It's been great. They came to the United States, which isn't a big, as they would say, football, but we can't because it's too confusing. We say soccer. But it's not very big event and this is the biggest they've ever had. They've never had anything like it.
Speaker 12 (34:49):[inaudible 00:34:49]
Donald Trump (34:49):The numbers are bigger than any number. And there's great spirit is tremendous.
Speaker 12 (34:56):The Dutch [inaudible 00:34:56]
Donald Trump (34:56):I think Gianni has done a fantastic job. And yes, he has asked me to hand out the cup.
Speaker 13 (35:00):Mr. President, will the fencing Around the Reflecting Pool beat down by July 4th, or is that going to be
Donald Trump (35:06):The pool?
Speaker 13 (35:07):Yeah, is it-
Donald Trump (35:07):
It's in great shape. No, ready? Thugs, they just told me a little while ago, six have been arrested and six or seven are under... They have pictures and everything else. They went to the bottom and it's not a paint job. It's very expensive. It's not rubber, but it's like rubber. And they went down with probably a box cutter or a very sharp razor of some kind or a knife and they cut and then they started ripping it up. You know why? Because they're sick people and then the side of the pool right at water level, they took razors and they started cutting this very expensive stuff. It's incredible stuff. It's beautiful and it's still beautiful, but we have one area where they cut it, it's still holding, it's not leaking. But they hurt it, so in about probaｂbly, maybe after July 4th or maybe before, I don't know, we'll let a little water out because it's at the edge. They'll cut it, they'll replace it and it'll be as good as new. But these people should go to jail for a long time. There's a statute that I signed when I had my first term that if you do anything to hurt statues or monuments or fountains in Washington DC or federal fountain, it's actually federal all over the country. But you go to jail for 10 years and there's no shortcuts. In other words, it's not five years for good behavior. It's a very tough statute and so tough that it really hasn't been used very much over the years.
But I used it when they had a problem in Washington where they were trying to hurt... the sickos were trying to hurt things and I announced it. As soon as I announced it, read it, announced it, and I said 10 years for anybody, everybody dropped to what they had including ropes. They had ropes. They were tying ropes around Thomas Jefferson's head, Andrew Jackson right up there. They had a rope around his head on that incredible statue. As soon as I invoked it, everybody left. That's still in play. They could go to jail for 10 years. They better be careful. They have a gash on that beautiful pool. It's a reflecting pond. This is the most very expensive material.
Then on top of it, we did a much bigger job than we said we were going to do because we did all the outer areas and everything. We did a beautiful job. It's like a piece of glass. And for some reason, this disturbed the radical left lunatics. One of the guys, he's a member or a big payer to act blue. He's a big Hillary supporter. He's a big supporter of Sleepy Joe Biden. No, this is a very political thing. But as I understand it, six are under arrest. This was pure vandalism. It's an amazing thing that we did. Don't forget, it hasn't worked properly since it was built because it always leaked in 1922. So, it was built in 1922. So, that's a hundred years more ago. It's never worked properly.
(38:19)
I always say it had great potential. And I said in my first term, I'm going to do something. So, Biden and Obama between the two of them spent over a hundred million dollars. It was a disaster. Obama, because of the environment, took the water from the Potomac and it was horrible. It was bad. I don't want to have to tell you what happened, but it was really bad. You could read about it. Biden, he didn't have any idea what the hell they were doing because he didn't know what anything was happening. But they spent over a hundred million dollars. We spent 14 or 15 and a lot less than that because a lot of these people work for the parks department anyway, so you know they're going to work.
So, I would say a lot less. And we put a great surface on. This is a world-class surface and it looked beautiful. But they came in and they cut it and then they grabbed it and they pulled it up. That's why it's all ripped. And who would even think of that? They're sick people. So, I think they're in big trouble. Here's the bottom line. We temporarily patched it. It's so good that with all that damage they did, it's not leaking and it looks really beautiful. I just had pictures taken. It's reflective. It's beautiful like it did a week ago. And then we're going to let a little water up because you have to let the water out to fix it.
We're going to fix it and then the water goes back in. It won't take long. We may do it before July 4th or we may do it just after July 4th. Now we have it a little bit fenced up because we have a big fireworks display and tonight I'm making a speech and people like my speeches, but I guess we're going to have a lot of people over there, but tonight we're going to have a lot of good entertainment. One of the greatest opera singers in the world. We think he's great. Lee Greenwood's going to be singing our favorite song and we have a lot of great things, but I think I speak at about 7:00 tonight so that's over at the mall.
No, but the water looks great, but we will do the final fix up. But just remember this. They took razor blades 350 feet. Coming from where he comes, they don't do that. Maybe a little bit. They took razor blades.
Speaker 15 (40:30):Go [inaudible 00:40:30].
Donald Trump (40:30):
And knives and they cut patches like that. 350 feet long. A lot of them are like a foot, a foot, a foot. They cut the lining. And there's pictures of the guy bending over. I don't know if anybody saw that, but there are pictures of the ... And you say, who would do that? Maybe it's Trump Derangement Syndrome. We fixed over 50 fountains and monuments in the city. The city is the safest it's ever been, ever. We have virtually no crime. We're crime free. When I came here, when we came here at the beginning, it was a horrible crime ridden city. And we have no crime, virtually no crime now. Everything sticks. We have new grass. We took a miles. We took so much.
Nobody's ever seen anything like ... Everything had graffiti on it. It's all gone. The tents all over the lawns, which were terrible, are all gone. The fences are all gone because nobody goes on the lawns anymore, but we fixed those. Grass has a life just like people have a life. And we fixed the lawn and it will be fixed. Now one of the other things they did a job around the reflecting pool we have a huge field of grass. They poured acid on the grass. The same people, I guess. They poured acid. So, that's in the process. Acid kills grass quickly. So, that's being fixed. But the reflecting pool is great and it's going to look beautiful. It's so sad to see what they did.
And then the fake news tries to say, "Oh well, it didn't work." Of course, it worked. Everything I does work. What I do works. What I do best is build. And we fixed, I think it's 52 ... All over the city, they're talking about it. But you know the biggest thing is we have one of the safest cities. If you would have come here two years ago, you had a good chance of being mugged, although you're a very big guy. They would have mugged him up. They would have beat the hell out of him.
Speaker 16 (42:34):[inaudible 00:42:35].
Donald Trump (42:35):
He would have said, "I've never gone back." Now you can walk with your beautiful wife. You can walk with your friends, down to a row. We were losing all our restaurants. Nobody wanted to go out. Even if you got into the restaurant, they'd rob you when you were in. Now you can't get into a restaurant, but the restaurateurs are opening restaurants all over the city. I'm so proud of it. Also, Memphis, take a look at Memphis. Take a look at in Louisiana, take a look at what's happened. What we've done in Louisiana with New Orleans is incredible. The governor, Governor Landry called me, they just had Mardi Gras. He said, "It's the safest Mardi Gras we've had in 75 years." It's great. We've done a good job.
And you know what? In Chicago, they had many murders over the last week. Many. We could solve. I could make Chicago with this group of strong people. There's strong people. That's okay. One thing we got from the Supreme Court, we have merit. So, if you have great students, great marks, great scores, great boards, you get into a good college. If you're bad, you don't get into a good college. In other words, it's based on a tough decision for them, but that also applies to the military. We have tough, tough people in the military. And the National Guard has done an incredible job in Washington and my people have done an incredible job. So, if you look at Memphis, crime is down 78%.
I have a friend from Memphis who's going to leave and he called me, he said, "I've never seen anything like this. It's like a different city." And also in New Orleans, it's like people can't believe it. I could do that for Chicago. I'd love to do Chicago because Chicago's potentially a great city, but you're going to lose it. It's got to be done. And we do something much more than they can do because we take people out and bring them back to the country from where they came, where they came out of jails, where they're drug lords and drug dealers and people from mental institutions. And I'd love to do it in Los Angeles and I'd love to do it in New York City. I live in New York. I'd like to see it.
They had a lot of problems in New York over the last couple of weeks. If we were there, they wouldn't have any of those problems. And we removed the bad people from those cities so they never come back. Now some liberal people probably don't like the sound of that, but 92% of crime is caused in these cities. It's caused by 2% of the people. I love that number because it's easily solved. Think of that. 92% of the crime in Washington was caused by 2% of the people. We moved out almost 5,000 career criminals and people from other countries. And Washington now is one of the safest cities I could say on the planet, but let's just say in the US and it's beautiful now, the reflecting pool, but we have 52 ...
I think it's much more than that. It's going to soon be more than that. You see him opening up and my team has done an unbelievable job. Doug Burgum has been great. Department of the Interior and his people, Greg and all. I mean these people, they're phenomenal. But think of that. You work so hard. You get it open way ahead of July 4th. July 4th was the key. And then somebody's in there with a knife cutting it and ripping the flora. It's terrible. But the 350-foot gash in the side, it's a terrible thing. Ready? Here, I'm going to end on this. I'm so proud of Washington DC. It's become one of the hottest cities in the world, but what is the hottest in the world is the United States of America.
We have the hottest city and you know that. You were talking about that. Two years ago, we were laughed at. We were a joke. We were a dead country. Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. Thank you very much everybody.
Audience (46:38):Thank you guys. Thank you guys. Thank you guys. Thank you, Pres. [inaudible 00:46:42].
Donald Trump (46:38):Thank you very much.
Audience (46:46):Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys guys. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you.
And at that time I didn’t know it. And then it took me one day — I was just reading some article on some movie star being 50, you know, Sharon Stone or something like that. I looked at the blog beneath that and said, “Jesus, this is vicious.” And said, “It’s not about the issue, it’s not about the person — it’s just a lot of bullying going on on everyone,” etc.
That’s kind of when I managed to detach myself from that world. Because — and this is for everyone to remember — if you are judging yourself by what’s said about you in the press or on social media, you’re in a world of trouble. You are completely… if you do that, you have got to be your own person, your own principles. And be very careful of that world of trying to identify… and let your comparative ego — the comparative you do is always comparing you to what other people think about you.
And did you always have a feeling that you were going to bounce back? Or at that stage was it just about pure survival?
It’s just pure survival. It’s pure survival. And for me, just to do the best job at any given time. I mean, I get into a task, I try to do the task as best as I can. I try to be as innovative and say, “This is the best deal, this is the good way to do it,” etc. I didn’t expect to be back on a billionaire list. I didn’t expect that. I said, “Right, you had a great ride, and you should have stopped at 1 billion — not gone, you know, risked it again and again, gone to that.” But a man is to go very far, and I’m not seeing myself ever going to that point in those lists or anything in ranking. That’s done, and that’s no longer an objective for me.
When I was younger, I wanted to get higher and higher. That’s part of, you know, you want to do better every day. And I didn’t have a lot of peer group around me, so what did I do? I just looked at these lists and said, “Oh, you’re number this — okay, I’ve got to be higher next year, I’ve got to be better next year.” And again, you’re competing with yourself. So you’ve got to stop that as well a little bit, and try to be more cautious.
So I’ve got into a situation now where I’ve got a wonderful family, group of friends. I live in the best place in the world. I’m very happy with my life. And, you know, the financial barometer is part of it, but it’s not a really big…
After boom to bust, by 2014 you were back — you paid off all your creditors and you were back to being a billionaire again. What allowed you to have that resurgence? Did you follow exactly the same principles and magic formula which got you to the £3.5 billion point in 2007 in the first place? Or was this a fundamentally different person — a different type of investor, a different type of entrepreneur — that came out of it?
Still me. I was still doing the same things. But I had a much… let’s put it this way: I was a boxer. I was boxing the same way, but I had one hand tied behind my back. Literally meaning that I was — with my deal with the banks — I was basically working for the banks, etc. I had so little power to do anything. I had to check, and there were so many checks and balances that I was really muzzled. But what I could do, I did.
And I realized that they were very risk‑averse, and I was not. So whenever I cut a deal, I would always say, “Okay, here’s a deal. I can bring you here. This is the deal we have on our deal — you get this,” etc. “There’s a risky portion, and I’ll take all the risk. You can take all the non‑risk. And let’s trade.” And they always traded.
So I doubled up — doubled up on things that I was involved in. And that was kind of what it was. If I had been just traumatized and said, “Now I’ll take the same deal as the banks,” I would have come out with something — but a lot less. But the fact that I was willing to double up and either come out with nothing or more — I was able to fight in that ring with one hand.
But when I came out of that again and was back on the list, I said, “Let’s actually see — maybe it’s good to have a little bit of these constraints. I’m not going to go all‑in now. What’s the middle between what I was and what I could be? Don’t do personal guarantees on loans — never do that. Diversify. Listen to your intuition. Don’t bet the farm every time — sometimes, not every time.”
So that’s kind of where I’m at. And I created a system around me a little bit. I rebooted the way I work. And I had more checks and balances on myself. I just learned to… that’s good — to control myself, self‑discipline. And that’s kind of worked. So that’s kind of… I hope that answers the question.
And who were those trusted advisers around you? Was it about keeping family close? Was it lawyers, bankers, other entrepreneurs? Who were those people around you who helped you get through that really difficult period?
It was a mix. It was, of course, family — my wife and kids were there to listen and encourage, and the kids just to take your mind off and encourage you. And the other thing was just listening to friends. And, you know, it’s always good to have an older mentor. So I sought a little bit older mentors out, which were helpful in that.
And, you know, do some spiritual stuff — figure out that, learn to find your intuition, calm your mind, and do that and follow that. So it was a mixed bag. It was not — I didn’t pick up the Dale Carnegie book or the Warren Buffett book and follow that. It was a mixed bag.
But the key thing is: listen. Learn to listen. And be flexible. I keep saying that because, in the beginning, all your plans are always changing. And it’s not you changing your plan — life changes your plans. You have a well‑thought‑out plan, and you’re clever and smart, and you’ve got this roadmap and system — and then life takes over and does something completely different. That’s happening to everyone all the time. So you should just get ready for that and try to be ready for that.
In this resurgence period, you founded Novator Partners — a private equity company. You invest in lots of companies that a lot of people watching this podcast will know about — Deliveroo, Cazoo, Zwift. What was the thesis behind some of those investments? How did you spot those really exciting tech companies before other people?
Well, I mean, one thing is that there’s been a lot of disruption — businesses launched, the way we do business. I mean, when I got into, for instance, the phone business — the phone business was just like, you know, people know O2 and T‑Mobile. We were the same in different countries. And you had a market leader called Nokia and all of that. And then one disruptor comes into the market called Apple. And it thought that it didn’t sell a phone — it sold a computer. It was basically giving you a PC in your pocket. That changed the way we live today.
On top of that, you had option… and I saw through that how it’s been changing — how one disruptor had done that. And I said, “There’s going to be more industries where that’s going to happen.” And so I wanted to be in that disruption.
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
fe feeling → feeling
risk adverse → risk‑averse
noal Partners → Novator Partners（固有名詞）
deliver Kazo Swift → Deliveroo, Cazoo, Zwift（固有名詞）
noia → Nokia
option → apps? adoption?（音声誤認の可能性大）
We did something completely different — the alcopop. We disrupted it. Then, usually even in the banking, when I came, I disrupted it completely, put in a younger team. I believe in that model, and I wanted to be part of that.
So the way to do that is not to go after one company and say, “Okay, let's just pick a mix, let's go in.” We don't have to be the controlling guy or anything like that. Let's try to bet on a few others.
So we had success with that in a tech company, in a gaming company before, and we started to do more in gaming. And then Deliveroo, Monzo, and these kinds of things. Monzo is attractive because I know banking and finance, etc., and this is the disrupt — this is the way it's going. And other things. And that’s how we went into the tech companies, and still are. And we're looking for ways to see who is the next innovator and disruptor there.
And I kind of siloed in — I split my businesses into three parts. One is the VC, the entrepreneurial disrupting business class. The other one is the legacy industrial boring stuff — it's the telco company, it's the data pipes and everything that keeps your work and your smartwatch and everything functioning. We build that and run that. And then I have another thing which just deals with market situations like that.
So that’s kind of evolved, and that’s how I got into that. Because I like being in the forefront of where things are going. I'm not interested in where things are — where they have been — which is quite important to know and have an idea of where that is. It all fits together. But I am most interested in trying to see where things are going.
So you spoke a number of times during this interview about your belief in the power of intuition, and also your belief in the requirement to take risk in order to generate outsized reward. When you're investing in those very disruptive businesses — Monzo, Deliveroo — how much were you judging them based on the system, the market they were disrupting, the idea? And how much were you judging them based on your intuition about the founder, the team, the people involved?
Like, which one of those things is more important to you? If you walk into a room and you meet a founder of a business you think is really disruptive, but you think, “I don't like this person, I don't trust them,” would you still back that person? How do you weigh up the system versus the person?
No, probably not. I think the chemistry to the person is very important — the founder. And it's also not only the person but the culture of the company.
You see, what has happened to a lot of these companies is that they've been drinking the Kool‑Aid. They get a lot of praise — “These guys are amazing.” They go to all these tech conferences, and they go to all these VCs — “Man, you're amazing, can I put money into you again and again and again?” And what people don't realize is there's been more money chasing investments than investments available. Up until now it's been like 2 to 1. That's why valuations skyrocketed.
And what I've seen happen — unfortunately — in a lot of VC companies is that the founders get drunk on their own story. They're more interested in raising more capital and going out and talking about themselves as founders at conventions, etc., than actually running the business. And that’s… so I get very worried when we have good‑performing companies that say, “We should go out and raise money,” etc. Jesus, that can be — just like alcohol — good one or two glasses fine, but you give a CEO too much of that and they'll just lose it.
So you need to have a feel for the culture, is what I'm saying. Because some companies are just geared up going there and there. And I think WeWork is the best example of that. That's not only the founder — it's the culture that is created in it. There are two things you're looking for: it's the founder and the characters in the team, and the culture they're building around it.
But of course, at the end of the day, it's the business formula that matters most.
And as a young person moving into the workplace for the first time — how do you judge a company culture? How do you know if you're on a rocket ship with a really good team that's going to make things happen, or whether you're joining a dud that looks like it's on the way to glory but is actually drinking its own Kool‑Aid?
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
alcco PO → alcopop（文脈的にアルコポップ）
delu monzo → Deliveroo, Monzo
mono → Monzo
wew works → WeWork
it own Kool-Aid → its own Kool‑Aid
Forefront → forefront
I think I can only say intuition. I mean, it's like… that thing — you know it when you see it. It's that famous thing — you know, the Supreme Court in the US had to make a definition of pornography, and they said, “Hard to define, but you know it when you see it.” I mean, it's just like — you can't put a label on it. But that's the thing: when you have a culture and something which is working, you know it.
That does not always mean that company will make it, because there might be systematic stuff — they crash out because of something beyond their control. Hopefully they'll start again. But, you know, I've been in companies where they've had a great run and great model, and the culture has killed it. I've been in companies where the culture is fantastic and the opportunity is there, but other outside factors have killed it. It might be government regulation, all kinds of things — again, the universe just pops up and throws in there. But intuition is big on that.
What about the next 10 years then? So you're back on the rich list. The next 10 years — are you going to keep going, or is this a new period of your life? Are you going to head to the beach, have a good time? I know you've been creating some of your own spirit companies and stuff. What do the next 10 years look like?
Well, I decided that they should be somewhat of harvest years for me now. I'm getting more into… I want to spend a little bit more time on stuff that's rewarding in different ways than financial. Of course, my professional life rewards me not only financially — it's 90% I get a kick out of what I'm doing: meeting people, spotting opportunities, putting deals together. That's fun. But I would like to do that in other kinds of areas now.
So I think I'll keep doing what I'm doing, but I might just delegate a little bit more. And I'm evolving — let's put it that way — in terms of… yeah, I mean, I have an investment company. It's worth something today. Its mission is to grow. Whether at some point in time I've got to pivot and start sharing that back to society — but I think I can still add more value to that pot before letting that go. So that's all on the program.
I decided when I was young: make a ton, and then, before you check out of the hotel, just leave it at reception.
So you've been to billions to bust and back again. If you could speak to your 17‑year‑old self — that young boy moving from Iceland to the United States, to California — what would you tell him? What have you learned now that you didn't know when you were 17? What's your big life lesson to impart to your younger self that would have made your journey much easier?
Number one — before I say it, I can guarantee you that person would not have listened. The 17‑ or 18‑year‑old me would never have listened. Because this is an age‑old fact: what is the gift everyone wants to give but nobody wants to accept? That's experience.
And it's very hard for somebody who's headstrong and motivated, who wants to go somewhere, to accept any advice. Usually you seek advice when you're in trouble, not when you're… “No, no, I got this.”
So if I were to impart that advice to anyone wanting to listen, it's this:
Believe in yourself. Life’s unfair — get on with it.
And the other thing — the thing you need to be careful of — is your inside voice. Two inside voices:
Your comparative ego, which starts to compare you to other people, compare you to other things you should do or want to do, etc. Be careful of that, because it also becomes a self‑critic. You are your own harshest critic. You need to recognize and embrace yourself. If you're good at something, be good at something — own it. Don't say, “Well, that's just the way it is.”
The voice of vanity. Vanity and pride are the same thing — the voice that makes you think, “I'm so cool, I'm too good for this.” You can do that in all kinds of situations. You want to be the coolest guy, the smartest guy, the richest guy, etc. That's a slippery slope. Watch out for that. And there's nobody pressing it on you — that's your own brain taking you there.
So that's the kind of thing I would say.
And, you know, try to listen to your intuition. And your intuition — usually, if you want to train your intuition… if you want to train your body, you do a marathon, you run a lot, etc. If you want to train your intuition, you've got to learn to take some moments — calm and collected — and reflect on things.
You've got to reflect on what you're doing: “What am I doing now? What's my career doing now? Why am I here? What was the original plan? Where do I look next?” Reflect on it — and then your intuition will pop up.
Intuition does not pop up in the middle of going 24/7 all the time. It doesn't click in — that's when it doesn't work well. So try to be mindful. Try to be meaningful to yourself — meaning appreciate yourself, have confidence in yourself, don't be arrogant. Listen to others — but listen to yourself most importantly.
Incredibly inspiring words. Thor, you've been to billions to bust and back again. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Joe. I hope it inspires someone out there. I think Zero Gravity — the whole organization and the whole idea — is brilliant. And I think you've done a fantastic job, and I'm very happy to be part of it.
Thank you, I really appreciate that. Thanks.
Almost enough. Thanks for watching the video, guys. If you're interested in our mission and want to find out more, click the link in the description below.
It's keeping you… you're just on it 24/7. And the risk profile didn’t change — I would say it kept the same. Somebody who takes his chance in Russia rolls the dice again and again in Russia. I came out of Russia, I kept taking those big bets. I was… you know, I bet the farm again and again.
Do you think young people are too risk‑averse nowadays? Or do you think people should wait until they have some degree of stability before they increase their risk tolerance? Like, I suppose for a lot of young people watching this podcast, they don’t have any money in their bank account. The cost of failure can be catastrophic, right? If you try and start a business with no money and it fails, suddenly you’ve got liabilities to creditors, and that can send you personally bankrupt. So do you think you should wait until you have stability and financial success to start taking risks? Or do you think even a 17‑year‑old with no money in their bank account should have a more risk‑tolerant attitude than most young people do today?
It depends on people, depends on your character. But I would say one thing: people say often, “Yeah, I don’t like taking a risk.” But you are taking a risk every day if you just go, “Yeah, I'm going to go into university, study accounting, and give four years of my life to that.” So you're… you know, you're not using your earning power. Four valuable years of your life you put in. What if, when you graduate, there’s no need for accountants because AI has taken it over? Something like that. You've taken an implicit risk without realizing it.
Whereas, you know, people are always taking risk. But how much of a risk — you've got to ponder it through. I think you should follow your intuition. You should do it.
And for young people — look, what you have, the most valuable thing in life, is time. And that’s a commodity that is limited, given to everyone, distributed more or less equally in life. Money and opportunity are not, but time is. And young people don't — and it's impossible for them to — appreciate the value of time. So even if you go out, take a chance, you fail — fine, doesn’t matter. Everyone fails all the time. It's not how often you fail, it's how fast you get up again and start something new.
So if you have plenty of time — you're rich when you're young in time — you have plenty of time to use that time. Start something, it fails, all right, so be it. Start the next one, and the next one.
Only thing on personal risk I would say is that — you were saying personal liability — never take personal guarantees. That’s the lesson I learned very, very clearly. Believe in yourself, take risks, but don’t sign up to personal guarantees for people who want to back you and want to take no risk, but want you to take all the risk. Share risk — that’s fine.
So after your huge business success in Russia, you decided to move back to your home country of Iceland in 2002. What inspired you to come full circle at that point? Why move back to Iceland rather than go back to the US, for instance?
It was a mix of two things. I think it was… you know, it was easy. And I think it was also vanity and hubris. I think I felt I had a point to prove in Iceland. I had… you know, I wasn’t happy with my family history from when I was in university, and I had a chip on my shoulder. And when this opportunity came — you know, I’d made more money than anyone in Iceland — and the government approached me and said, “Would you like to privatize a bank?” And it's just like — that opportunity happens once in a lifetime. And it was like, “This is rather easy. I know what to do. I'll hire younger people to run the bank, hire the smartest and the best, and do it.” So pretty much easy in terms of dealing with the seller, the government. “It should be okay,” I said.
And the other thing — I thought, “Yeah, this would be a good way to prove myself to Iceland,” because I kept a low profile. Nobody really knew who I was during most of my time in Russia. And the other thing was, you know, America can wait. America’s been waiting for 10 years for me to go straight back in there. Let me… that can wait for two, three years while I do this. My heart was always set on going back to the international market.
And in the meantime, London was becoming an epicenter of finance. And London at that time, in the 2000s, was really the center. The European Union was coming together, they had a common currency, and there was a real big vision for the Eurozone — which was much more interesting in those days than the US was, believe it or not. And London was in a pivotal role. So I said, “All right, I can settle in London, and I can do this Icelandic thing for a few years.”
So you're involved in the privatization of Landsbanki, and then also you're one of the early investors in Actavis as well — it's an Icelandic pharmaceutical company. What inspired you to get involved in sectors like finance and pharmaceuticals — very technical, very risky sectors? If anything goes wrong… why get involved in sectors like that? Or is it a completely natural evolution of your journey?
Well, the bank was a natural evolution. I'd studied finance, so I had the background. I had the academic background and always followed it. And I’d been working with a lot of investment banks, I’d done a lot of complex transactions. So my skill set was there, but I never really had the chance to implement it in a company. So I was keen also to get into that — that was one.
The pharmaceutical one was just… it started when I was in Russia. I said to the bankers who were working for me, “Look, my next gig, I want to be the investor and look for young guys like me.” And they said, “Well, we have two entrepreneurs here in Bulgaria. They’re looking for funding.” I said, “Fine.” We met them, and I bought into that pharmaceutical factory, learned a lot about the space, then ended up buying Actavis in Iceland, merging the whole thing, and creating a big business.
But interesting — pharmaceuticals. The guy who became the CEO of Heineken asked me, “We're buying this business of yours during the closing dinner. It's a great business, super growth, you obviously know how to run it well. Why are you selling? I almost worry when somebody’s selling a good business — am I buying at the wrong time?” He said, “You know what? I'm going into pharmaceuticals.” I said, “What's the difference?” He said, “I mean, the market cap of the beer companies — the big three — is $30 billion. Pharmaceuticals is $300 billion. There's just a lot more there.” And I said, “We're building a factory here for you guys, which you're buying. It's enormous — it's like an airport. We have rail ports here, we're transporting trucks and railways, etc., transporting liquid.
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
hubis → hubris
i' → I'd
Pro last → profile?（文脈的に “kept a low profile”）
R → they’re?（音声誤認）
Factor → factory（修正済み）
hinek → Heineken（前文と同じ誤認）
adrenaline chunky → adrenaline junkie
In the pharmaceutical you build the same factory and it does, you know, pills. I like it — it's smaller and more margins. And they said, “Good answer.” And that’s what attracted me to it — that it was such a big market. You only need to capture a small part of it to have, you know, really big companies.
So when you sold Bravo Brewery, you'd made $100 million — huge success, huge amount of money. And in that period after that, by 2007, you're on the cover of Forbes magazine. Now you'd entered the Time rich list — 249th richest person in the world, £3.5 billion. Like, was it just a complete tailwind getting to that point? What did it feel like? Did you feel like you were the master of the universe and nothing could stop you? Or did that journey from $100 million to $3.5 billion — was that a difficult journey to go on?
It was difficult for a number of reasons, but not the kind you say. I mean, there was a lot of tailwind. I had a lot of luck. And it was, as I wrote about, almost too easy. My journey from 2002 to 2008 — from 100 to 3,500‑something — it was too fast and furious. It was too fast. And the deals were coming too fast, they were too good, too easy to find.
And even as my intuition said, “This is a little… maybe slow down,” the other side of me said, “No, there is an opportunity now. Take it. It's not always going to be there.” And these two voices inside me said, “This might not end well. It's going too fast. You are out of control. When you're driving a car at 250 km, nothing can go wrong.” And I said… so I was worried about the speed. And I ignored that voice and said, “Yeah, I'll figure that out later.” And then it all ended with a bang.
So even when you were riding the wave of success, you still had that feeling — you thought, “This is too good to be true. At some point something’s going to come along.”
Yeah. And that was my intuition — strong intuition — which I ignored, to my self‑harm. But there were signs of it. It was a sign of a bubble, basically. I was in the middle of the bubble. And I was in the prime position.
My colleague, who had been my partner in the nightclubs — he'd been in a bubble, the dot‑com bubble, a few years earlier than me. And it was just ridiculous that he could raise money for a company over dinner. He’d found a new company on a concept, and people would be wiring money the next day. And a couple of months later — poof — that all went.
Mine went… it changed dramatically, but in a different way. But, you know, we have these bubbles all the time. And I was in the thick of a bubble there. And bubbles are always around us — we're in the middle of one imploding right now.
In 2007, you were worth £3.5 billion. You’d been on the cover of Forbes. You were probably the most well‑known person in Iceland — heralded as a huge entrepreneurial success. You brought Iceland to the international stage. You were the biggest shareholder in Landsbanki, one of Iceland’s biggest businesses. And then the financial crisis comes along.
At what point did you start to panic and think, “Wow, I'm in big trouble here”?
I was just… I mean, I had two moments. You know, you had a Monday morning when the Prime Minister comes on TV and says, “Look, we can't support the banks. The banks are all going — just like, declare default.” And that’s… even in finance, in universities, they don't teach you about these systematic… it's not in the textbook. It's force majeure. Nobody had even thought about this.
And I said, “All right, this is completely a game‑changer.” But I also thought, “All right, I'm in banking, I'm in telecoms in Europe, I'm in pharmaceuticals in America — uncorrelated. I'll be fine.” But of course, you know, plans change. And all of a sudden, when there's a crisis, you find that uncorrelated businesses all become correlated.
So that's when I knew. And it didn’t hit the extent — it took a long, long time to sink in what it meant, because it was just such a new thing.
I mean, the same Monday — here in England, the government took over three of the big banks: HBOS, RBS, and one other. The government just took them instead of making them bankrupt. Iceland couldn’t really take it over because the central bank didn’t have the balance sheet — it had to go bankrupt. But in England, basically, the government just took them.
So you had this thing happening both in Iceland and England and other places in the world. And it was not just a wake‑up call for me — like, “I'm in trouble.” I'm thinking, “The whole world is in trouble. This is a new reality.”
And it took me a long time to figure that out. And it went to the balance sheet — just clicked — went from big plus to a minus overnight. It's like, “How can this happen?” It was difficult to fathom and get to grips with.
And on the profile side — as you said — I went from hero to zero. Because all of a sudden, everything… the bubble which I had been the poster child of — when that burst, everyone said, “So it was a bubble.” And everyone was frustrated it didn’t work out for them. And, “Okay, we had a hero — where’s the villain? Oh, probably the same guy.”
So that’s how it went. And it changed dramatically. And it wasn’t just one day — it created a period that I had to wade through over a few years.
Just to put that in context: in 2007 you were worth £3.5 billion. And by 2008, what were you looking at in terms of net worth after the collapse of Landsbanki?
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
captur → capture
Tailwind → tailwind（固有名詞でなければ小文字）
fulling → feeling（文脈的に “feeling”）
mon → one?（音声誤認）
decare → declare
Force majure → force majeure
game Chang → game‑changer
re didn’t → it didn’t?（音声誤認）
HBOS / RPS → HBOS / RBS（修正済み）
Pro last → profile（前回と同じ誤認）
Well, I think it was somewhere, you know, the gray area where it was just above that — something like, you know, 30 plus or minus 700. So that was what I was dealing with. And there was a real problem that it could have just been, you know, a big minus and everything would have been tanked.
But my point was: my problems were so big, they were not just my problems. They were problems of the banks, the institutions, and almost to a national level. It was a systematic problem. And to that extent, I needed to work with other people in the system to say, “Okay, how can we all come out of this in some way standing?”
So there was a lot of work to put that together — put together a framework. And I ended up, you know, getting back on my feet. First I had to repay all the creditors. There was an enormous amount of debt that had to be repaid to them. It was — what was it — in total about 5‑point‑something billion that needed to be repaid to them. And then I would start getting something.
So it was a lot of hard work to enter into that. A lot of parties involved in that. And, you know, I was lucky, and somehow that work paid off, and it came back.
I wrote a book called Billions to Bust about my story from here to there. And while I was writing it — it took a long time — getting all the facts together, because I thought, “This is such a crazy journey, I need to put this in context for myself, my family.” And just like — it's a good story, it needs to be put in print.
And when the book was coming out, the editor said, “Well, actually, you've just come out on the Forbes list here.” I said, “Was that expected?” I said, “No, I didn't expect that. I actually didn't expect that to happen.” He said, “Well, we’ve got to change the title.” “Well, it's up to you.” For me, it was the story of boom to bust. And then, just at the end, you know, I’d clipped that, and I said I was fortunate to make it back — to hell and back.
And now, since then, you know, it's been quite a bubble in the financial… and now, you know, we're looking at where we are now. I'm in a better position than I was before, and I've learned a lot of lessons. But it was a hard journey.
Just going back to the dark days of 2007–2008 — it really was billions to bust at that point, right? You're on the brink of personal bankruptcy after being the master of the universe. Like, what did that feel like personally? In Iceland, for instance — you're a national hero, and then suddenly you're being held responsible for the failure of Landsbanki. How did you deal with that personally at the time?
It was very hard, because it's… you know, nobody wanted to listen. It was a mob, kind of. People were scared because the government — I mean, what had happened basically is: not only had the banks failed, but the whole economic system had collapsed. Because it was based on the króna, it was based on foreign direct investment, and the króna had collapsed. And the whole system — the economic system — collapsed. And people were just freaking out.
So it was very interesting for the politicians and the people to look for bankers. And that was everywhere — also on Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, here in England. There was a lot of that happening. But nobody really wanted to talk about a systematic failure — it was more just to get heroes and villains. And it was very hard on a personal level.
So there were two things I had to deal with. Number one: I was determined not to go down. I mean, I’ve seen people go down in bankruptcy before, and I was determined — that's not going to happen to me. I'm going to fight. I'm going to throw down, kicking and fighting, never going to give up. Number two: I was also going to get my point across and not be portrayed as something I'm not. So I had to vindicate myself. And that was an arduous process, because in that period people were very hysterical, and the atmosphere in the press and social media was one of prejudice. It was just prejudice everywhere.
The word “prejudice” comes from the word “to prejudge.” So people were just judging you on something — some kind of theory that was available — but not on your actions. It took a long time for people to want to listen.
And I immediately wanted to write a book. Immediately. A good friend of mine said, “Man, nobody will listen. Nobody’s ready. Wait. Start writing it, but publish it a few years later when people are ready to listen.” And that's what I did.
But it was hard. I mean, during those things — businessmen and politicians — people picketed outside their houses, threw eggs at their houses. And, you know, I had bricks thrown through my window next to the bedroom — me and my children. It was a scary moment. This is Iceland — this is not, you know, something… and this is in the middle of the night. And politicians were booed and egged. It was just a crazy atmosphere in Iceland. They lost the plot completely.
And it was hard to have patience, because you wanted to get your story out. You wanted to say, “Well, listen, let's look at it.” But patience is a very important thing. So that's how I got through it.
It was very hard. It was very depressing. It was hard on my family, my friends. It was just a dark time. It was a dark time in Iceland. And for anyone in that — I don't know anyone in any industry, even whether it was a baker or pizza guy, saying, “Oh, that period was wonderful.” I mean, everyone was affected.
And… but it also was hard because I'd come up from, you know, as you said, from cloud nine. By the time that happened, I had a private jet, I had a yacht, I had drivers — all of that. And that all ceased to be. But I was never beholden to that. I just went back to my old days in Russia, in a little communal flat, saying, “You're back. You're back into that mode. Just salvage and work through it.”
And the other thing was just not to be irritated by your detractors. A lot of detractors. And it took me a while to do that. And this was when social media was starting. And right now, today, we know the impacts of social media. There was a lot of bullying going on — classic bullying. And at that time, I didn't know it.
And I think that, you know, I think my best moves in life have been based on my intuition, and my greatest failures have been when I actually ignored that intuition. So, lack of a scientific term, I don't know how to clarify, but intuition is very key to the decision process. And that goes back to just being mindful—you know, take a good deep breath, think things over, and your gut feel is remarkably accurate.
So you were at C, and then you moved to NYU—so West Coast to East Coast. Did you go into entrepreneurship immediately after that, or did you go into the sort of corporate, traditional stream before you dipped your toe into the water of entrepreneurship?
That was the path. I was going to go into the corporate thing, but I was always doing entrepreneurial things on the side. You know, I needed more income, and I liked it. So whenever I had a summer break from university, I would go into a startup business. I mean, I was a club promoter, doing nightclubs and stuff like that with zero investment. I'd go to an empty club with a partner of mine, and we'd say to the owner, “Look, we'll fill it every night. You keep the bar, we'll keep the door.” And that was a split that worked well—made a lot of money in two, three months, which was fuel for the rest of the winter in university.
Or when I was in university, I'd be booking bands from New York to go to a club in Iceland. I'd set the deal together, and I'd get a cut of that. And I was looking for things to import to Iceland—some cool stuff which was not there—and try to… so little bits and bobs I was always doing on the side. And that was just, you know, not like a career. It was more hustling to make more money, because the student loans I was on were paying for the basics, but they weren't enough.
So almost out of necessity, you became an entrepreneur?
Yeah, necessity. And you like the craft. I mean, it's like—you’re either… if you go traveling to a bazaar, you're either liking being in the bazaar or not. And I think it's… putting a deal together, coming up with an idea, putting it together, monetizing it, is great. Whether that's my daughter putting up a lemonade stand selling lemonade, or you putting together a whole business, or just doing a concert—these are all the same kind of things. You might fail, you might succeed, but it's all the kick of having an idea—“Okay, let's do it”—executing it, and then reaping the reward, whether it's sweet or bitter.
And in those early entrepreneurial activities, was there a standout moment where you thought, “Wow, I've made it. I can make real money out of these activities”? Was there a particular club night that sold out and made loads of money? When was the first moment you realized the extent to which your entrepreneurial activities could lead to financial success in those early days?
Well, I mean, in those early days, I saw… the last summer gig I did, we did that, it was great. We came in, and we had no capital expenditure, and we were taking out—doing more in cash, me and my partner—than the monthly salary of the top CEO in Iceland. And that was enormous at that time. But it was very fickle. It was very… you know, we would come up, do the buzz with cats, and then something else would come into fashion three months later.
So when I finished university, I said, “All right, I'm going to tap into that, get some money to go forward.” And then me and my same partner said, “Actually, let's just buy a club now. Let's take the bar and do everything.” So we borrowed some money from our parents and stuff like that, put it together, record time, did it, opened the thing, and it was great. But there was a lot of responsibility there. We had employee taxes, we had to deal with construction work, we had to do a lot of things. And all of a sudden, that was one thing, and the market was so fickle that you couldn't really project it. We were full for three, four months, and then the crowd would go elsewhere—it’d be empty.
So I realized that pretty quickly. After about five, six months of that, I said to him, “Look, we were just doing this to make money. We need to sell this business now, get out of it. Number one, because the nightlife entertainment business is not really good for the soul—you're working all night, hustling, etc., you don't see a lot of daylight. Number two, look, man, you’re a great entrepreneur, I am—we need to do bigger things.” So we sold it. We broke even, didn't make any money. It taught us that running your own business, rather than going in and doing it as a contractor, is much harder.
And the other thing is… he went on to form a software company, I went on and did my things. But it was a good lesson. In four or five months, we created the company, started everything, hired the CEO, bookkeeper, and it was a good compact lesson—straight from university, straight into the real world—saying it's not as easy as that.
In terms of your next step, you decided to move out to Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the post-communist era. Why go to Russia in a time of such massive disruption and transition?
First of all, I decided to go because I needed the money. And because when I graduated university, I had a… you know, I had a degree in finance. In my last year there, I had also been working on Wall Street with NYU, which is close to Wall Street.
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
C → USC? UCLA?（“You were C” は音声誤認の可能性大）
fin it → fill it（修正済み）
i' → I'd（修正済み）
Bobs → bits and bobs（修正済み）
CFT → craft?（文脈的に “the craft”）
bizar → bazaar
buzz with cats → buzz with acts?（“cats” は誤認の可能性大）
buy had the CEO → hired the CEO?（音声誤認）
postcommunist → post-communist（ハイフン）
So you go to lessons from, you know, 8:00 in the morning till 2:00 in the afternoon. 2:00, I'd go and work till about 6:00 with the brokers there. I was, you know, very low‑level. I was basically doing exactly the job that Leo DiCaprio does in Wolf of Wall Street when he first gets the job — he does the stack of cards, and he's cold‑calling customers, the broker takes over. And I was just trying to hustle on the phone all day, getting leads for the broker to try to close the deal.
And that was a trading floor — mad as hell. And I did that, you know, in my last year for about six to eight months, and it made me realize: wow, in finance I definitely do not want to be on the trading side. This is pretty crazy. I want to be on the constructive side, where you do corporate finance, structuring, and stuff like that.
And when I actually graduated, there were no jobs to be had on Wall Street. I’d had that job — paid me $5 an hour, probably less than it cost me to be in America per hour — but it was good experience, valuable. There were no jobs to be had, you know, for a kid fresh out of university with a degree. I sent my résumés everywhere, and people just said, “No openings, no openings.” People were getting laid off. It was just the cycle of finance there.
And, you know, I was getting pretty desperate. And then this offer came: “There’s a crew going out to Russia. We need a marketing guy. You’re pretty well‑known for your marketing. You want to go out and train the Russians for six to twelve months?” And, you know, “What is the pay?” They said, “Well, you know, it’s offshore, tax‑free,” and it was an enormous amount of pay. I was just like, “Whoa, yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll sign up for that.”
I looked at it as a tour of duty — just go into the army, buckle up, do what you have to do. And the plan was to go straight back to New York, rent for another year, and start to get back to the linear trajectory of getting into finance.
But after a year, you know, the company was not doing as well as it was. I was the marketing guy, the young guy there — 24 — and I was offered, “Listen, can you take over CEO, full rein, and try to turn this around?” And I got a bump in the salary. Another year. And I said, “All right, I’ll try to do that.”
I had one crazy idea which I went with, which was alcopops, which I had just seen in England start — you know, when you had ready‑made beverages. So I said, “All right, do that.” I pushed that through, and now all of a sudden that product was incredibly successful. And then I said, “All right, there is something here.”
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
stack of cars → stack of cards（修正済み）
Alco pops → alcopops（修正済み）
full reain → full rein（修正済み）
sent my resumes → résumés（修正済み）
mad as hell → 正しい表現だが口語的
offshore taxfree → offshore, tax‑free（ハイフン必要）
How old were you at this point? 25, 26? You became CEO of the company at 25 — like, what did that feel like? Did you feel like, “Gosh, I don't know what I'm doing here, why am I in charge?” Or did you know at that point you were ready to take the company forward and try a disruptive new approach?
No, I knew… look, I chanced it. I basically said, “I'm not ready for this, I don't know how to do it,” and people just looked at me like a kid. I was 25 or something like that. First thing I did — I grew a beard just to look older, because it's a very hierarchical society, Russia at that time, and they were not happy to take orders from a kid.
And I did that. I pushed through this idea, which I knew in my heart — intuition — this is going to be a killer product. But I was winging it. I said, “Jesus, I don't know if I'm up for this.” But equally I said, “Look, if I f*** it up here in Russia, I've done two years, I've just started school, I'll just start somewhere else.” And it was a binary choice — it will either work, it will either be successful, or it will be a complete failure.
And so I did that, and that took on, getting better. And then, you know, I ended up founding my own company on the basis of that. And I wanted to do something bigger, and I saw the beer market, and I got a good team around me, and I just kept on building, building, and building out of that.
And Russia was, yeah, a horrible place back then — meaning it was just very chaotic. People were wonderful, and the culture is wonderful, but the Soviet system had just broken down. Nothing worked, and people were totally in the dark: “Where is the society going? Do I have a pension? Do I have a job?” There was a lot of confusion and chaos in the air. And there was nothing in the shops — first months I came there, shop doors were empty.
But I also saw that as an opportunity. Young man, I said, “Jesus, somebody can make a killing out of filling all these shelves.” And so I guess basically it was: the glass was half full. And that was my attitude then, and I tried to keep that as my general attitude, and that put me through it.
So there was a lot of opportunity in that kind of post‑communist, Yeltsin era. But at the same time, it's incredibly chaotic, and now looking back, it was the start of a lot of the Mafia capitalism that people have seen in Russia. Like, what was it like operating in that business environment? Did you have scrapes with the authorities, the Russian oligarchs who were controlling different businesses? What was it like operating in that environment?
It was tricky — very tricky. So yeah, it was dangerous in a sense, but not dangerous to the point that you're worrying about it every day. But there was a dark cloud hanging over you, a sense of foreboding — if you stepped out of line, there's a danger. I mean, you're walking by a river full of crocodiles — they're not going to jump at you, but you make one misstep…
So you just had to work your way around it. And the most dangerous things were people who offered to help you and said, “Look, I know so‑and‑so, I can cut corners for you, I'll help you,” etc. You had to be very careful with them.
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
SEO → CEO（修正済み）
ortis → orders（修正済み）
fing my own company → founding my own company（修正済み）
pilling all these shelves → filling all these shelves（修正済み）
postcommunist → post‑communist（ハイフン）
yelson → Yeltsin（修正済み）
for boating → foreboding（修正済み）
And so we… yeah, I got into some weird situations there. But, you know, I just take a deep breath, keep your head down, and don't panic. And don't be too cocky, and you'll get through it. And that was kind of good. And I was fortunate to have good people around me. I took advice from good people.
And, you know, I got quite friendly — I'm a motorcycle fan — and, you know, the motorcycle thing… the coach there was one of the heads of the police. So I met him, and he gave good advice. I got some from our local congressman. And so they were good people, you know. And it's just following that advice: be very careful, don't spend too much, don't be driving a flashy car, don't be wearing a Rolex — all of those things. Keep your head down when you're in a dangerous environment.
And… but you felt it. It was ever‑present.
So you sold your first venture — the Baltic bottling plant, Pepsi — and then your second company, Bravo Brewery, you sold to Heineken.
Yeah.
But for how much?
It was, at that time, about $400 million.
$400 million?
Yeah. And that was, you know, in 2002 — it was a lot. I think it was one of the highest multiples that was paid for a brewery by a company. And whenever I see someone from behind — even today — they say, “You paid too much.” But on the flip side of it, the reason they paid so much was because this was the only startup clean from the… you know, we had taken the decision rather than to buy something, an existing business, and modernize it — we just bought a plot of land, got everything from scratch, and it was just crystal clean and new, built to their standard. So we managed to sell it.
I stayed on for a year as chairman, and it was very interesting. I learned also very well a lot from my investors, which were… you know, they were actually based in London, but it was a California venture capital fund which invested quite a lot of money in us and bought into our business plan. And they were quite good in the board meetings — not just investors hammering for results, they were also giving advice. So it was great as a young man to get all that.
And that’s also when I learned: in my next gig, I want to be those guys. I don’t want to be the guy running the company — I want to be the investor doing what they’re doing. I like their way of working.
But $400 million must have been a crazy amount of money to a young man. Like, what did your parents, your friends think about that at the time? Was it expected? Was it always going to go that way? Or was it a shock when you finally sold the company?
It was a shock. I mean, you know, when I'm selling that, what am I — I'm 35 when I'm doing that. I mean, I remember when I started in Russia, one of my best friends said, “What are you doing there?” After one and a half years. And I said, “Look, from a year into this — year and a half — I just took over CEO. I'm going to make… I'm going to have a million dollars before I'm 30.” And that was a lot. And he said, “Are you crazy?” I said, “Yeah, probably. But that's what's going to happen.”
And then, you know, flash forward — that happened. And then, you know, 35 is a hundred. So it went further, of course, than what I had initially planned. But as I keep saying, it's not about the money. The money is a derivative — it's what happens. But for me, you know, I wanted to build the best brewery. I wanted to be the first one to have a foreign investor like that. And Heineken was the Rolls‑Royce of beer, and they picked me. And my company — it was a validation. It was like: that was the ultimate. To kind of get the validation — “Yeah, you've done a fantastic job, here's your reward.”
So that got me. But that also meant that, you know, I could do the job of the other investors. I was now… you know, I needed to invest. So I set about looking for other people like myself — young entrepreneurs doing things like that.
You started to get that kind of addiction to risk‑taking and entrepreneurship. But you decided, after the acquisition by Heineken, you wanted to move on to the investor side rather than the business‑growing side.
They didn’t stop taking risk?
Stop taking risk? No, no, no. I've always been… well, the opposite of risk‑averse. I've almost been too risk‑seeking. And it's twofold — it's the thrill of it. I'm an adrenaline junkie. And, you know, my fuel has been adrenaline and stress. And stress is good — it motivates you and gets the job done. But too much of it has very bad consequences. So as a young man, you can handle a lot more of that, and you're not really mindful of the negatives.
I've almost been too risk-seeking, and I'm… it's twofold. It's the thrill of it. I'm an adrenaline junkie, and my fuel has been adrenaline and stress. But you are taking a risk every day if you just go, “Yeah, I'm going to go into university, do the accounting, and give four years of my life to that.” What if, when you graduate, there's no need for accountants because AI has taken it out? Something like that. You've taken an implicit risk without realizing it.
It was not just a wake-up call for me, like “I'm in trouble.” I'm thinking my problems were so big they were not just my problem. They were problems of the banks, the institutions, and almost to a national level. It was a systematic problem. The whole world is in trouble. This is a new… I mean, this is a new reality.
I went from, you know, hero to zero. The bubble which I had been kind of the poster child of—when that burst, everyone's saying, “Okay, we had a hero. Where's the villain? Oh, probably the same guy.”
Welcome to our “In Conversation With” series. We interview some of the most exciting figures in business today and ask them how they really did it. On today's episode, Joe is sitting down with Tor Buorgoson.
From a cultural point of view, those Scandis have a reputation for being, you know, very insular, sort of very polite, but they don't want to get in people's way. Like, how did that feel growing up in that environment? Did you always feel like someone who was a bit of an outsider, or did you feel very proudly Icelandic? Like, how did you view your identity growing up?
I pretty early on clocked the fact that I was not really, you know, part of the crowd. So I didn't really… it felt small. It was a great place to grow up, but I was always kind of looking to go out and explore the world. And, you know, Icelanders are very direct, you know, and what you see is what you get. And that was good, you know, getting those traits. But everything was so small, you know. It's very limited whatever you went to. And the older you got, you got to understand a little bit the confines of it, which some people like. But it's… do you want to live in a village, or do you want to go to the big city? That's basically it. And I clocked on early on: I want to be a small fish in a big pond, not the reverse.
And you're from a sort of line of Icelandic entrepreneurs. So your great-grandfather was a Danish-born Icelandic entrepreneur, your father as well. How did that feel growing up? Were you entrepreneurial from day one, or did you resist following the footsteps of your family? What was your relationship to entrepreneurship?
No, I mean, I was pretty on it early. I mean, I liked making money. So I just… you know, I was a paper boy. When there was an opportunity to work and make money—selling patches or something like that—and this is when I'm, you know, 9 years old, 10 years old, or doing any kind of activity that could earn you a salary or something like that, I was in for it. Mowing lawns or whatever. And that was just kind of… I think you're born with that. I mean, I have three kids, and one of them distinctly was born with that. Just at a young age—she's only 11. But the entrepreneur… you know, it was good having those role models around me. I was interested in seeing my dad build up new companies and stuff like that.
And, you know, walking in this small kind of village of Reykjavik where I grew up, there was this beautiful house that was built in the turn of the century, 1908, by my great-grandfather. It was always an inspiration. I mean, how on earth did somebody build something like that, of that scale, at that time? And, you know, I heard about him, but this is a long time ago. But it was kind of inspiring how these people came and did these grand things and created a legacy out of nothing. And that was kind of… it was in my background.
スペルが怪しい・誤記の可能性が高い箇所
以下は、文字起こしのままでは 誤記の可能性が高い単語：
adrenaline chunky → adrenaline junkie（修正済み）
bu the accounting → do the accounting?（文脈上 “do” が自然）
jobble → trouble（音声誤認）
Tor buor goson → Thor Björgólfsson（固有名詞の誤認）
rikic → Reykjavik（地名）
opport Unity → opportunity（分割誤認）
lik → like（音声誤認）
trades → traits（文脈上 traits＝性質）
birth → burst（バブルが弾ける＝burst）
It affected me in Iceland as well, because it's more… you can get a job. I mean, I was an errand boy for the physics department of the university when I was 13, and I was on a payroll. Today in Iceland, you can't get a job until you're 16. In those days it didn't matter. At 12, 13, you had a bicycle, you'd be taking all kinds of stuff, cycling downtown, going to the bank, etc.
So it's great in that respect that it gave me an opportunity to try all kinds of small jobs, and you were free. You were really free. And it is a great place for an entrepreneur to hone the ability and touch the business world from an early age.
So you were sort of the local entrepreneurial kid, borrowing money to buy Marvel Comics and selling them on.
As you got older and had to start making some of those big life decisions about where you want to go to university, where you want to live—how did you weigh that up? Did you want to stay in Iceland long term? Was that your plan, or did you always want to go to a different country? When you were 17, how were you thinking about your future?
When I was 17, I wanted to go and see the world. So I think the earliest chance I could do that… I was in the commercial college there, which was the business equivalent. I wanted to try to get a business education as fast as I could, so I went in at the earliest starting. I wanted to follow on that abroad. I was drawn to America—you know, the land of opportunity, entrepreneurs. I was fascinated by finance, Wall Street, stock trading. There wasn't a stock market existing in my country. It was just like, “What is this thing?” And I was fascinated with that.
I set my sights on going to America, and the first opportunity I got, I did. I was fortunate enough that in Iceland you had a university loan—it was a government state loan. You could borrow and pay back over 30 years. It encouraged people to study and study abroad because we had a very small university, and they didn't teach a broad range. So you could get a loan up to a limit in the university, and you could get a limited amount for rent and food if you studied something not taught in the University of Iceland specifically. Finance was definitely on that list. So that's how I embarked upon it.
But the point was: young man, I wanted to try to live in California. I wanted to see… coming from Iceland, where the weather's pretty awful all the time, I said, “I want to stay close to a beach, study, and see where it takes me.” I also had one of my brothers and one of my sisters who had lived in California before. I’d visited them for a month when I was 11, and that was hugely influential for me—just that big society, how they were working, how free it was, the weather and everything. I think I clocked it there at 11: “Yeah, I definitely want to do this, not the usual path.”
So you were quite geographically mobile growing up. You’d been to California before, you got a taste of what life was like in America, and you’d immersed yourself somewhat in the culture. You got a flavor for it. It must have still felt like a big change to go from Iceland, a country of 200,000 people, to the US. Did you worry that people wouldn’t understand your accent, or that culturally you’d be different from Americans? What was the adjustment like, moving to a completely different country?
Well, I think it was pretty just gung-ho. I just went through it like an adventure. Of course, the accent was fine, and I've always tried to keep my accent—never tried to change it, proud of that. But also, when I showed up for class and they were doing roll call, they always stopped at my name. They couldn't pronounce it. So that was the first thing.
But I didn’t know anyone in California when I went there. I just showed up on campus, moved into a dormitory with three other guys, and we stayed there. You had to get to know people—that’s how campus life is, and that’s great.
What sort of person were you at university? Were you a big boozer going out every day of the week? Were you a nerd? What was your vibe like?
I think it was a mix. One thing—I was on a mission. I wanted to get into a specialized program at some point. I needed grades and a GPA to get there. So I was quite mission-oriented. I had a three-year mission there, and I was always clocking on, getting to each milestone—doing this semester, getting these grades, and moving toward that. And that was not an easy task.
But I was a party boy at heart, and I loved to do that. So balancing them was tricky, but I think I managed reasonably well. And when you're young, you don't need a lot of recovery time—you can just get on with it.
A lot of people say university is the making of a person. Were there any beliefs you had at 17 that, by the end of university, you had completely changed? What was the biggest personal change in the way you saw the world?
I think that when I went into it, I thought it was more linear. I thought you would pick a thing to learn, get good at it, immediately get a job in that same sector, and then you'd make this much, and in two years you'd make more, and in three years more. It was more linear. Then you'd have a bigger promotion and a bigger house and all of that.
By the end of university, I said: probably not as easy as that. When I'm seeing what people actually end up doing after university, it's often not really correlated to the line they started with. So this divergence always starts.
When I came out of university, I met my current wife, who's much younger than me. She was asking me about this—“Hey, what's the philosophy?” And I said: the philosophy I've got now is that plans change. You can make all the plans in the world, but you'll end up changing them. Going in, I had one idea; coming out, nothing. So to that extent, I think one of the key traits I made sure I had was flexibility, given that plans are always changing.
And would you say that created a belief in you around the power of intuition?
Yeah, I think I'm a great believer in the power of intuition.
