HIGHLIGHTS

• Gramercy is contributing 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Mexico
• Gramercy Funds Management has $5.6 billion in AUM
• Mohamed helped deliver investment performance for clients and grew PIMCO’s AUM from $1 trillion to $2 trillion

FULL COVERAGE

• Watch complete coverage of the Greenwich Economic Forum

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Mohamed El-Erian, Senior Advisor at Gramercy Funds Management with Matt Bird

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 00:00

Welcome back to the Traders Network Show broadcasting worldwide from Greenwich, Connecticut. I’m Matt Bird. We’re here at the Greenwich Economic Forum. Continuing our coverage on day two. My next guest very little introduction on the world economic scene. He is the former CEO of PIMCO and Senior Advisor to Gramercy Funds Management. He’s Dr. Mohamed El-Erian. Dr., welcome to the show. You just delivered a prolific speech on stage. Can you tell our audience a little bit some of your key takeaways from your panel session.

Mohamed El-Erian – Senior Advisor, Gramercy Funds Management: 00:36

So I think the hardest thing today, how do you balance a brighter, short term horizon with an unusually uncertain longer term one? We’re not used to having that. Normally the short term is uncertain, but the long-term, there’s some clear trends. Today is an upside down world and you have this notion of radical uncertainty. It’s not just uncertain, it’s uncertain square. So how do you deal with that and how do you avoid paralysis and how do you embrace this more uncertain world and try and navigate it?

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 00:54

Well, you know, it’s a very sophisticated, very high class, you know a problem try to grasp. Can you help us boil it down to a very simple answer?

Mohamed El-Erian – Senior Advisor, Gramercy Funds Management: 01:17

So in our daily lives, okay, we follow certain and because 99% of the time we do that, we know what the outcome is going to be. Correct? You cross at a green light, you know what the outcome is going to be. And when you go to Starbucks, what sort of coffee you’re going to get. The world we going towards is that there are no rules governing. We license red lights. Starbucks may or may not have your coffee and you don’t know, right? It’s a world of questionable globalization for example. Right? Political extremes are gaining much more traction than the political center. Brexit, a decision to dismantle something without clarity what you’re going to build instead. So if you think of it like you can no longer simply assume that the past is a good indicator of the future. And what does that do to us in our personal lives? It tends to paralyze us. We end up simply doing the same thing when we should be thinking differently. And the answer is think differently. And I think that that’s the key. Now we do it as humans. When you go through unfortunately a big negative shock and we have to react, we have to think differently. We’ve taken out of our comfort zone, but it’s much better to plan for it then to have to react.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 02:40

Well said. You know, speaking, thinking differently. You know, we’re here at a forum. We have some amazing world leaders on the economic side. We’ve had yesterday where there was the governor and the mayor of Greenwich and the governor of Connecticut that was here. How important are public private partnerships to get the message out both from an economic development standpoint and an economic standpoint.

Mohamed El-Erian – Senior Advisor, Gramercy Funds Management: 02:57

So then that’s what’s important. That absolutely crucial. You cannot solve most of the problems facing the world without public private partnerships. You just have to have smart public, private partners. Whether it’s climate change, whether it is investing in technology that empowers the less fortunate segments of society, giving opportunity labor. We retraining labor, we tune all the things we know we need infrastructure. You can’t get there without private public partnership. So it’s absolutely crucial and I think that the next stage, not that you’ve got this goal, awareness of how it is not important is how have you designed them in a way that’s acceptable to all the stakeholders involved. And I think we started to make progress towards that. And you see that the global level with the sustainable development goals and you see also at the national and certainly the municipal and local levels,

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 03:47

You know, private companies being I think the execution mechanism, the delivery mechanism for the potential outcome and the public side providing the general direction and framework. I think is a very balanced equation is corporations for all intents and purposes need to follow through.

Mohamed El-Erian – Senior Advisor, Gramercy Funds Management: 04:20

I mean, and there’s been a complete change in how corporations think. In the old days you are the house and what happened to the neighborhood wasn’t your issue. The governor would take care of that issue. Now people realize you cannot be a good house in a bad neighborhood. You have to have some stake in the neighborhood, you have to take some responsibility for the neighborhood and you have to work with others to make sure that that neighborhood improve. And I think that understanding that you cannot be a good house in an uncertain neighborhood is what’s driving people towards greater attention to public private partnership and towards greater social responsibility.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 04:44

I love it. Well said. Listen, I know you’re pressed for time and you’re being pulled by a few different directions. I got one last question. What’s next for you?

Mohamed El-Erian – Senior Advisor, Gramercy Funds Management: 05:07

So as I’ll October next year I have the privilege of heading a Cambridge college. So I’ve been elected the incoming president of the Cambridge college. For me, it’s a wonderful return to academia and I’m really excited. And the good news is that I can maintain some of my other activities at a lower level, but I can maintain them. So I’m really looking forward to that.

Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 05:28

Congratulations doctor. Thank you very much. You’re watching the Traders Network Show. Thanks so much for your time. We’ll be right back after these messages. Special thanks for our affiliate partners. ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back.