Vietta Grinberg: I am Vietta Grinberg. I run global sales product within markets at J.P. Morgan, and I'm joined today by Brad Tully. Brad runs our corporate derivatives and private side sales, and Brad is also head of America sales. Welcome, Brad.

Brad Tully: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Vietta Grinberg: Absolutely. So Brad, before we get into the complexities and your role in running the global franchise across corporates and private sales, perhaps get us started with your career. How did you get started in this business and what has this journey been like?

Brad Tully: I started... so I've been at J.P. Morgan for 22 years. I went to school at the University of Scranton, which is a small liberal arts school, Jesuit school in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I was a finance and economics... finance major, economics minor. At the time, J.P. Morgan recruited from the school for a rotational program, which had me rotate throughout the bank for about a year and a half to two years.

I did a number of different rotations including in retail, financial services, emerging markets, finance, as well as structured trade finance at the time. After that year and a half, two years, I decided to move into what was at the time just the investment bank into a group that was called Structured Products and Derivatives Marketing, which was effectively an interest rate and currency derivative marketing group that had focused on corporations, private side situations and the like, and spent some time doing that for a number of years, got into commodities at one point, equities at some point, and then through the years had the opportunity and privilege to lead those various businesses, particularly in North America. If you move forward to the last five years or so, I had a fantastic partner where we ran the global corporate derivatives and private side business for the last five years and here we are today.

Vietta Grinberg: Yeah, no, that's great. Sounds like quite the spectrum of products and a very interesting career. When you reflect back, when you look back to when you were started or even 10 years ago, would you say your side of the market, the markets have changed drastically? Do you feel that you changed how you recruit based on the changes that you've seen or has it been similar?

Brad Tully: I think that there's some similarities, but there's also some differences that we can touch on. So I think the pace of technology and what technology has brought to whether it's our own organization or our client's organizations has been tremendous. And so certainly when you're pulling in talent, whether you're recruiting from schools or you're pulling in talent that's already experienced hires, you're looking certainly for folks who have an understanding and appreciation and adaptability with respect to technology, but also can use it very much still in a human aspect and connecting with our clients, certainly from an interpersonal standpoint. So the interpersonal skills, the communication skills, the ability to get along with your teammates, the team atmosphere certainly is paramount and I think that has been consistent and gotten more important as we've gone on. But the technology aspect, the interest and the ability to change and appreciate change I think has really gotten accelerated.

Vietta Grinberg: No, that obviously makes a lot of sense. We have been speaking with some of your colleagues within the markets side of the business. A lot of them have interesting stories in terms of how they have to collaborate obviously with clients, with trading, with the product teams. I've been very keen to specifically talk to you because I think the intersection of working with markets and banking is very unique to your role specifically. What is that like? How does it work? How has it evolved?

Brad Tully: It is an interesting aspect of the role and it's a great one. So currently I sit on the global investment banking executive committee as well as our sales management committee here within the markets franchise. And so I have this hybrid role, if you will, relative to some of the traditional sales and trading or traditional banking roles. And so one, you meet a lot more people and you understand a lot more about the institution overall because there's a tremendous amount of interaction, teamwork internally and ensuring that we're connecting with the right folks internally on the banking franchise and partnering with them so that we're delivering the full franchise, whether that's markets, payments, investment banking.

The like capital markets to our clients in a fulsome manner. The transactions can be high profile, which is exciting. It's an exciting part of why people like to be a part of the team. It's across all of the asset classes. And so we have the ability on any situation that our banking partners may be working on with our corporate clients to deliver equity solutions, credit solutions, currencies, commodities or FX. And so we really try to come with a full franchise to bear in that sense. We also have a fair bit of markets related activity in the traditional sense, so we work on various private side situations that may emerge, and so we have the ability to kind of go in and out of these two worlds.

Vietta Grinberg: We also touched a little bit on the size and the complexity of our franchise, global business distributed across time zones, jurisdictions, geographies. How are you managing it? What are some of the differences that you're seeing in terms of geographies both with your own team and with the clients?

Brad Tully: It's a great question. It's one of the more fascinating parts of the role to be able to one, visit and spend time with so many different parts of the world and people and cultures and backgrounds. It makes the job super interesting and I think a real joy to be around. It also brings, as you say, a number of complexities, and so making sure that we have the right people in the right locations matched off against the right type of clients is really important.

So I spend sometimes too much time flying around, which can be challenging at times to balance the family aspect of it. At the same time, it does present an opportunity to get to know people from all over the world and we feel like we have a fantastic management team that keeps the pulse of the local markets. And I think one of the things that we do at J.P. Morgan, despite being the size of who we are, is try to make sure that it feels really local. And one of the challenges and opportunities that we have is making our organization even to the largest organizations or the smallest clients that we may have, feel really small and holistic. And that's something that I think the rest of the senior management team really strives for.

Vietta Grinberg: That's cool. No, that makes a lot of sense. Reflecting on some of our competitive advantage, do you think the size of our franchise, the complexity of our business is a overall net positive? What makes it easier to compete? What makes it harder to compete? And what are some of the differentiating factors when you guys go out or your team goes out to win business, what are some of those differentiating factors versus our competitors?

Brad Tully: Depending on the situation, it's the fact that we are a complete franchise and in everything that we have chosen to operate in, we're a top franchise player. And so the ability to bring that type of breadth and also depth to a client's situation is tremendously powerful and value add for our clients. We hear it all the time and across the world from clients. The ability to deliver J.P. Morgan is of tremendous value.

And so when we think about what's our challenges in that aspect is we are large and making sure that we make clients feel like it's a small place as well, that's important. They want to know who their banker is, they want to know who their markets individual is, they want to know who they can call when there's an issue. They want to know who they can call when they have a problem that they know we can solve, and they want us to do that, deliver that with the best execution, speed, technology at competitive levels. And so it's a high mark to hit and we think we do it better than most, and I think that's demonstrated in terms of the power of our overall franchise.

Vietta Grinberg: Brad, you manage a diverse global team. What are some of the things that you most proud of and if you were to overhear a conversation, what might that sound like?

Brad Tully: So first off, we have a fantastic team. It's been a team that we've had in place for a number of years. It's been a team that we've continuously recruited what we think are the best and brightest folks, and whether that's from our undergraduate programs, graduate programs, or experienced hires, we really think we have a talented team. I think one of the characteristics that sets the team apart is their partnership first type focus where they understand that they're going to be put in situations from a banking standpoint, from a market standpoint where they may be the subject matter expert, but if they're not the subject matter expert, they're likely to know who that subject matter expert is. And if you don't know the answer that a client is looking for, you don't have the solution, the next best thing is knowing who within the organization has that.

Vietta Grinberg: Yeah, it's really connecting the organization.

Brad Tully: And so the team very much understands and appreciates that. And because of that, you have a team that is multidimensional in their skillsets. And so a number of them truly are cross asset sales individuals. And if they're not fully cross asset, they're certainly very competent in multiple asset class disciplines. It's a powerful tool for the franchise. It's one that is valuable to our clients. It's one that we constantly hear from clients that your sales individuals, your marketing individuals, the folks on your team, they're able to answer the questions that are within their domain and they're able to get the right people on to answer the questions that may not be in their domain and the speed of which they can do that. And we know that it's coming from one voice from J.P. Morgan is powerful and differentiated versus the rest of the competition.

Vietta Grinberg: Looking to the future, what do you think is the future for your team? What are some of the trends that you think are impacting your business and what does a future salesperson look like in your organization?

Brad Tully: So one of the trends that continue over time is a salesperson working at J.P. Morgan trying to make J.P. Morgan feel small, yet very holistic to our clients. And when we speak to our corporate clients all over the world, they're looking for differentiated guidance, perspective. They're looking for senior individuals that can help them across multi-asset classes, multiple situations. And so ensuring that we have that team that delivers that is of utmost importance.

In terms of the interpersonal skills that we look for and will continue to look for, a lot of it is about teamwork. It's about recognizing that the individuals you spend time with most in your working day are your teammates and being able to collaborate to partner and to recognize that you're there for the client is of utmost importance as well. When we think about what else is out in the future, I think the rise of alternatives, the rise of private side situations has continuing to grow. And whether that is corporate accounts, financial sponsors, diversified asset managers, they're all looking for private alternatives that exist and sitting at the nexus between banking and markets puts us in a fairly competitive situation to help originate those situations as well as risk manage them.

Vietta Grinberg: Makes sense. Brad, can you talk a little bit about the spectrum of the clients that you focus on and your team focuses on?

Brad Tully: One of the real benefits of the franchise that we have is that we cover all size types of companies. So from the smallest startup companies that are just emerging and may have currency implications in their business or trying to understand how to go into a country or how to risk manage a particular currency, we service them to the largest corporations in the world who may have needs in commodities hedging, they may need to buy back shares, they may have interest rate hedging and they may have large currency portfolios and everyone in between. So what means is we see the full spectrum across the globe in terms of scale of companies and we need to match that in terms of our skillsets. And so the skillset in order to service one type of company may be different than the skillset needed to service some other type of company. We get involved in situations across the banking franchise, and so it may be a loan that we're helping to risk manage for a client and that may be the first loan they ever have, or it could be part of a large acquisition financing that we're looking to risk manage.

Vietta Grinberg: Brad, what role has technology been playing in your business? Where is it in terms of the spectrum and what are some of the investments that you have been making to leverage technology to help you work with your clients in a more efficient manner?

Brad Tully: So one of the things that we always try to do within the franchise is making sure we're being proactive with our clients around their potential concerns and their potential concerns or problems. And that may be a public company may have made a number of statements in their investor day, their earnings calls that we need to ensure that one, we're up to speed on what their most pressing issues are, and then two, proactive in different ideas that may help them in that aspect. And so we like to use technology to help source and understand some of their more challenging situations or the direction to which these companies are headed. We also have invested heavily and built the tool J.P. Morgan Transact, which is an end-to-end solution across payments, FX, and hedging for our corporate clients. And it enables them to do pre-trade, trade, and post-trade on an end-to-end basis that's integrated within their system franchise.

Vietta Grinberg: All right. Let's go to some fun questions. If you had an opportunity to swap places with somebody just for a day, who would it be?

Brad Tully: It would be my 2nd grader or my 3rd grader.

Vietta Grinberg: All right.

Brad Tully: Both girls.

Vietta Grinberg: Excellent.

Brad Tully: They seem like they have a lot of fun at school and generally have no concerns.

Vietta Grinberg: Yeah, that's the luxury I suppose. Okay, that's cool. If you had an opportunity to have lunch with anyone present at J.P. Morgan, who would it be?

Brad Tully: There's a world-class ping pong player who's a security guard at the front desk at J.P. Morgan in New York.

Vietta Grinberg: So Brad, you talked a little bit about your early starts in your career, you went to school, studied finance and economics, and started at J.P. Morgan. Is this what you envisioned this journey would be like?

Brad Tully: I think when I first came to J.P. Morgan over 20 years ago into New York City over 20 years ago, in my mind I always had this, maybe it was a two to three year rolling out look of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to get. And J.P. Morgan's been a place that I owe a lot to in terms of my career and everything that's come around. And so no, I didn't think this is where I would end up. I love where I am and it's been a great journey. I think every few years I've been asked to do something different, sometimes a bit similar, sometimes very different, and that opportunity to grow and learn has been great and it's a competitive environment, it's a fun environment.

There's a great amount of team aspect and growing up playing sports, you can see the joy that people get that I get, that our team gets around the team culture and spending time with our clients. I mean, it's ultimately why we're here. Some of my closest friends at this point are clients as well, and it really makes a difference. I never imagined that I'd be here and certainly on set, but now that I am, it's been a real journey. It's been a privilege, it's been challenging along the way. We have a fantastic team. The culture of the team is great. It's something that I think a lot of us, myself included, are proud of. I had a rolling two-year outlook when I first got to the city. At some point that probably changed to our rolling five-year outlook. And as I've gone through the journey at J.P. Morgan my entire career, I've been met with opportunities, with challenges, with meeting new people, with doing different things, with spending more and more time with our clients, which at the end is some of the most rewarding experiences that you can have.