We're good? We're gonna continue this morning's festivities, coincidentally, with another trust bank. Very pleased to have BNY Mellon up with us next. The relatively new Chief Financial Officer, Dermot, thank you for joining us today.
Pleasure to be here.
If we could put up the first ARS question, as we get going. But as the audience kind of responds to this question, and obviously, we're going to discuss a broad range of topics this morning, but I thought, given this is the first time you're really talking to an audience in your current role at an investor conference, it'd be helpful to maybe start with a little bit of your background about yourself, your experiences prior to joining BNY, and just how do they apply to what you see lying ahead for the company.
Sure. Thanks, Jason, and thanks for having me. My first fireside chat, so hopefully it goes well. So for those of you that don't know me, Dermot McDonogh, originally from Ireland, and I've spent most of my career in financial markets industry, toggling between New York and London over the last roughly 30 years, 28 years at my last place. And over the course of my career there, I kind of started my career. I grew up in the finance side of the division, where over the course of a long period of time, I developed a kind of a deep understanding of capital, liquidity, resource allocation, and generally financial discipline and accountability in executing large-scale projects.
And then for the latter part of my career, I switched from a finance type into more of the COO role, where I was the COO for Europe. And then I kind of, and, you'll hear me talk about this either today or on future earnings calls, very much about connecting the dot across the organization to bring business leaders together to execute large-scale transformation. And I think kind of the COO background and the finance discipline background, I think hopefully over the course of my time at BNY Mellon, will help me add value to the enterprise.
Helpful. Let me just distill that a bit further. And I suspect this is a factor in you joining BNY after over 25 years at Goldman. But, you know, just what are your strategic priorities for the next, you know, three to five years? Or in other words, you know, what does kind of BNY Mellon look like at its best?
So the first thing I guess, you know, Robin talked about this, I talked about this. Over the next three to five years, we're very much about de-siloing BNY Mellon. BNY Mellon, over the past years, through acquisitions or otherwise, has largely run as a line of business type operation without the benefit of the enterprise. So we really want to de-silo BNY Mellon and kind of deliver for our clients more of an enterprise-wide view. And I think that will lead to a number of things. One is, it will allow us to deliver sustainably stronger underlying fee growth, which I think is quite important. And historically, you know, we've been, you know, net on that front. Second, I think it will allow us to run the company in a much better way.
When I talk to our team back at, in the company, I don't really talk efficiency. I don't talk about cost-cutting. I talk about running the company in a much better way. And third, I think, and this is really a critical component which allows the first two to happen, we need to evolve and drive cultural transformation. And with that, we're going to kind of give more transparency to our people. We're going to empower our employees to do more things. I think Robin made a very strategic decision towards the end of last year, where he made every single employee of BNY Mellon a shareholder or a stockholder in the company. And so we're about very much a cultural transformation to drive change through the organization. Up until a couple of years ago, we never really had a formalized analyst program.
Last year, we hired 500 analysts from college. This year, we hired 1,000 analysts from college, and so we're investing in the future today, and we believe it will allow us to culturally transform the company in the medium term.
You mentioned kind of de-siloing. You know, on the past earnings calls, there's been a lot of discussion about kind of bending the curve on expenses. You seem to be making, you know, good progress, this year. Just maybe talk about some of the actions you've been taking, maybe kind of what you've uncovered since January, and just comfort in your guide to the street that you expect to be, kind of even better than your prior guidance.
Okay. So again, a little bit about me. I'm a little bit of a nerdy guy at my heart. I like... I'm quite a hands-on CFO, so I'm into root cause analysis. So I spend a lot of time in the bowels of the organization, how costs happen and what we can do to take them out. So I was fortunate—I'm nearly a year at BNY Mellon now, and I was fortunate enough to kind of observe quite a lot of last year's budget cycle, which has helped me going into this budget season. And we're very much about talking to the business leaders and setting, you know, top-down KPIs, OKRs, operating targets for the business.
Every six weeks, I hold what we call management business reviews, where we really hold the business leaders to account for delivering on those, those targets. We heard from the market that, you know, expenses were a challenge for us, and we listened, and, you know, we communicated to the market in January that we were going to half—we were going to half the growth rate from last year at FX, which was 8%-4%.... like framing from the top down and how we kind of run, how we do it day in, day out.
On a bottoms-up approach predates me a little bit, but we have a project in the institution called Project Catalyst, where we went out to all our employees and asked for their ideas on what they would like to see investment dollars put to work in automation, digitizing, cleaning up manual processes, generally tactical stuff. Yeah. And we had 1,500 ideas back. We prioritized them, put money to work, and we meet every month, and I watch those expenses leave the door of the company. And that top-down, bottoms-up executing on tactical stuff has allowed us, and we're outperforming those plans. So we started the year at 4%. I think at Q2, in July, I said we were outperforming that.
As we head into closing out this quarter, you know, we're working very hard to get that number closer to 3%, and I feel very good about where the team is at and what we're doing about our ability to hit 3%.
Impressive. Okay. But, you know, no good deed goes unpunished. So as you kinda enter the 2024 budgeting process, kinda any early thoughts, are there kind of another leg of efficiencies we could expect?
So I kind of think I'm starting this year's budget season with, when I communicate with the Executive Committee, I'm committed to delivering positive operating leverage for the firm for the medium term. I think it's fair to say we will do it this year, and I'm very determined to do it next year in terms of how I'm going to set up the budget. They know that, and so I think we're going to have a very conversation about where we want the money to work. So, you know, just as an anecdote, this year we doubled the efficiency savings last year. So we're saving to invest in growth initiatives, and I think that's kind of a really important point.
The other thing that I've observed over the course of this year, a lot of our firm, how we're set up or how we kind of, I think, do things, we are effectively a platform company, but we don't operate like a platform company. If I kind of give you a small example of that, so roughly speaking, we have three segments. We have eight lines of business that roll up into those three segments. Many of those lines of business have their own KYC onboarding account opening processes. So each business runs their own stuff. We took a decision earlier this year to take all of that out of the line of business, put it in one place. That's the platform.
We're going to have more efficiency, better automation, better service to our clients, better ability to interpret and meet regulatory demands, and kind of drive down our cost to serve for the enterprise. That's working well. We're going to do that across a number of other platform opportunities, and we believe that will help us drive meaningful operational leverage, leverage into next year.
When you talk about positive operating leverage, you're including both fee income and interest income, so total revenues, but also expenses?
So I look at both. I'm conscious of NII won't be with us forever. And so I look at expenses as a percentage of fees and as a percentage of the total. And I strengthen every which way, because the last thing you want is to do it as a percentage to your growth as a percentage of the total NII to turn, and you end up with a high fixed cost base that, you know, punishes you on the operational leverage side. So I'm acutely aware of that, and I think about it really in terms of the percentage of fees.
I guess, just maybe drill a little bit more into fee income. If it's just maybe, ignoring maybe some of the external factors from the Fed's, market levels, activity for a moment, just how confident are you that the company can deliver sustainable, higher underlying growth over time? Maybe just discuss what are some of the areas in which you see the greatest potential.
Well, I've spent a lot of time studying the history of BNY Mellon, which have arrived, and I would say, you know, call it for what it is. It's been tepid. Yeah. And so we've hit 2% some years, other years we haven't. So the fact that we've done it tells me we can do it. So now I want to set the organization up way to do that in a more structured way over a longer period of time. And so we have a number of opportunities that we've kind of identified through, you know, our strategic business review process, where we've identified growth opportunities and we've put money to work. Like a classic example of that for this year really is Project X, what's now commonly known as Wove.
We launched that initiative a couple of years ago. So from employee number one to launch at the INSITE conference in June, we hit the budget on time. We executed a first-class way. Everything worked. So that gives me a lot of confidence that we can do that across the enterprise. Product was very well received, big pipeline activity. And, you know, as a CFO, I like to see the cash register ring. So, you know, we've had a couple of clients who signed, but we expect towards the latter part of 2024 into 2025 as, you know, Wove could be a decent contributor to the bottom line of Pershing. And look, that was a 1% of expensive investments that we executed on time.
So it's allowed us to—it's given us confidence that we can execute delivery of growth opportunities in an agile way for our clients. And I think the other important point, again, to come back to the de-siloing of the company, because like, you know, time will tell and our ability to execute, but we have hired recently, Cathinka Wahlstrom as our Chief Commercial Officer, the first time in BNY Mellon's history, as best I can tell, that we've had such a role. And she's really charged with the responsibility of delivery of BNY Mellon to the street and to our clients, a very de-siloed approach. And I'm—based on what I've seen so far, I'm highly confident that we can really make meaningful change here.
I guess, you mentioned Wove and being in the cash register. Maybe just help us, you know, you mentioned and cost you 1% of expenses. Maybe just talk to kind of, I don't know, how you think about ROI or payback period, or maybe just some more financial metrics around that.
So look, Wove, Wove was 1%, so not, not a meaningful amount of money, in the overall scheme of the business. We kind of set the bank up, I kind of think of the expense base, run the bank, grow the bank, transform the bank. So as we go into the budget season, it's like, what's the cost to run the bank? And then, you know, what did we do last year to automate, to digitize, to reduce the cost to serve? As a CFO, I'm very much about, you know, margin expansion, and so cost to serve is a critical ingredient. I get a lot of questions from people about decompression, but, you know, as long as your expenses are going down faster than your fees, then you can still have margin expansion.
So as I said earlier, we have eight businesses. Each business is slightly different, so I approach each business in a different way. In asset servicing, cost to serve is critically important. I work very closely with Roman and Emily to kind of drive improved margin through reducing our cost to serve in that business. If you take treasury services, which is led by Jennifer Barker, that's a very dynamic business. We're at the cutting edge of change there. We've launched a lot of new products and services this year in the real-time payment space. The turnover, the return there is much faster, and we're investing in growth initiatives there. So if you kind of take our high-margin segment, which is markets and wealth service solutions, it's 55% margin segment, so we're growing to invest there, but at the same time keeping our margin.
Whereas in security services, we have a margin that's not. We're not happy with where our margin is, so we're very much focused on reducing cost to serve, while at the same time, looking at ways to grow underlying fee revenue, like we talked about earlier.
I guess, how does, you know, M&A fit into your perspectives on kind of growth or, you know, any particular areas you're more open to lean into, anything you don't think fits well into BNY's businesses? You've kind of had the advantage of taking a fresh look?
So we've looked at every business, bottoms up, top down, feedback, feedback from a lot of bankers on what they could do for us, sell for us, et cetera, et cetera. But I think, I think we have, you know, as I've said over the last 20 minutes, we have more than enough work in our current operating environment to kind of deliver meaningful change for our shareholders and for our clients. So for me, at the moment, I would say the bar is very, very high. There's nothing really out there that I see that I would love to own that I think is a strategic fit for us. But, you know, we have a team. We're constantly looking.
We've done a couple of small things where we need software, a couple of bolt-on acquisitions, but it's not nothing meaningful, and we've sold a couple of small things. So but for now, I'm... No, I don't really see it. The bar is very high for me.
Got it. Maybe we could pivot to balance sheet management. You obviously started at an interesting time, right? Fed hiking aggressively, you know, bank turmoil, debt ceiling impasse in June. You know, despite all that, you guys have consistently guided to 20% NII growth for 2023. But, you know, obviously, how you get there probably has evolved over the past nine months or so. So I guess the first question would be, you know, is 20% still the game plan for 2023? And then, you know, my follow-up would be just, you know, how are you managing the balance sheet through all of this?
So, you know, a lot of people say, "Do you remember where you were on such and such a day?" So I, I do have a very vivid memory of March 9th. Yeah. And that was the day I realized, I was heading into my first earnings call, and I was like, "I thought it was going to be reasonably straightforward," until that particular day. So look, at the beginning of the year, we guided up 20%, and there's kind of been a zigzag around the course of the year between March and debt ceiling, and a lot of other things. But I, I, I'll kind of go back and talk about the 20% again a little bit later. But on just general balance sheet management, you know, I kind of, the intersection between-...
My treasurer, my CIO, and the person who leads Global Liquidity Solutions. And I've talked about Global Liquidity Solutions on earnings calls, where, you know, a couple of years ago, we had, we have deposits in a lot of different businesses, and they were priced separately, and they weren't thought of as one kind of deposit base with this enterprise. And we've consolidated that under one person, one leadership, a bit like a platform like I described earlier, and we, we are beginning, we are seeing this year the benefits of that approach. Those three individuals, very connected, very coordinated. And I think, you know, our CIO took the view of the rising interest rates higher for longer, and, you know, we positioned the balance sheets accordingly. So I feel very good, feel very proud about what the team has accomplished. We're humble about it.
We are in the preparedness game, constant evaluating, risk assessment, where can we go from here? And so, you know, it's not by luck we planned, we are. It's hard work, and, you know, we did that repositioning back in December. That kind of positioned us for this year. Feel very good about where it is and the work that the team has did before I came and continues to do. As it relates to the guidance, got a lot of pressure from the analyst community to hike guidance after March. Got a lot of questions on the last call as well. But from where I see and seeing how our business is performing, I have no reason to change the 20-20% guidance for the full year.
The deposits have behaved in line with what we expected. Seasonally, quiet August, and in the last couple of weeks, have started to pick up again. So I feel pretty good about where the 20% is going for the full year.
I guess, and maybe we could talk about, you know, deposits. We just kind of touched on it. You know, non-interest bearing deposits probably outperformed our expectations, kind of year to date, certainly have outperformed some of your closest competitors. Maybe just talk about why non-interest bearing deposits are better than peers, and then, you know, maybe just follow up on your kind of comments in this quarter.
So look, NIBs, I think in a nutshell, really, why have NIBs outperformed your expectations of us? It's really, I call it the portfolio effect. Like, the businesses that we have that attract non-interest-bearing deposits, it's not just one business. It's asset servicing, corporate trust, treasury services, clearance and collateral management. They all attract healthy amounts of non-interest-bearing deposits. Why is that? Clients are in our ecosystem. They're using our products and services, and we know when they're using them, how they're using them, and we have a rich history of information in order for us to determine the bottom-up forecast. We've gone back 20 years in terms of our history and analyzed what's happened over different cycles and how non-interest-bearing deposits and deposits in total, for that matter, have performed.
So we have quite a granular feel for it. And then we listen to what's going on in the marketplace and what our peers and competitors are doing, and then, you know, talking to our clients and what their expectations are for forward. So we kind of, when, when non-interest-bearing deposits were at 26%, we kind of said, like, our forecast calls for that to go down over the course of this year, and that's what's happened, and it's entirely within what we forecasted to do. And so, it's really kind of the portfolio effect of, has allowed us to outperform expectations.
I think on the earnings call, you talked about some mid to high single-digits decline on average deposits from two key levels. You talked about kind of staying within that 20%-25% NIB mix. Is that kind of still the way to think about it?
Yeah.
Got it. And I guess we talked about, you know, 20% NII growth for the year. Talked earlier about 3% expense growth for the year. I guess, is there anything in particular about the third quarter you'd care to highlight?
So I would say, expenses, I feel very good about. Yeah. I think we're executing very well. I think we're... I feel good about being closer to 3%, and so a lot of hard work day in, day out. It's a grind, it's tactical, it's execution and holding people to account, but we will get there. On NII, I think for Q3, we're coming in at around, in numbers will be about $1 billion for the quarter, which I think, Q2 of last year to this year, that's about 8%. And I think overall, that kind of informs me that, you know, I feel reasonably confident that the year will be at the 20% guidance. And, fees, look, August was seasonally quiet, summer season, holiday slowdown, particularly in FX.
So, you know, we'll see what September brings, and, you know, we'll see where the number lands for Q3. And then, I think on buybacks, we've been consistent about, you know, we guided on buybacks at the beginning of the year to 100% of buybacks, and that kind of still is in our plan and executing on that track.
Got it. I think the earlier company talked about getting this special FDIC assessment in the fourth quarter. Is that kind of your expectation or?
Yeah, look, it's that assessment, you know, it's disappointing. Just to talk numbers for a second, it's roughly $460 million. The comment period closed in July, so we'll see when it gets announced, and the amount gets announced. But if it comes as written, that'll be roughly $460 million for us pre-tax. We'll disclose it separately, be very transparent about the number. We're not happy about where it is because it doesn't reflect. All it looks at is uninsured deposits. It doesn't take account of our kind of low-risk business model, our success in, you know, managing both sides of the balance sheets, the fact that our balance sheets are highly liquid and, you know, the fact that two-thirds of our deposits are operational and sticky.
So we advocate this strongly, as you would expect us to do, and we think it doesn't reflect the reality of our business model. But it is what it is, and we'll live with whatever comes out.
Why don't we pull up the next ARS question, please? Similar question number two in our presentation, but what do you expect the impact on RWAs and the recent Basel III Endgame proposal relative to 2Q? I guess as the audience responds, which means just kind of interested in your take on the Basel III NPR. You know, I appreciate, you take very limited credit and market risk for that matter, particularly relative to maybe some of the other G-SIBs. But, you know, there is some operational risk and just how it treats some of the income-generating businesses. If adopted as proposed, you know, what would you expect the impact on BK would be?
Okay. Can everybody see the answer or-
Everyone in the audience can.
Okay. So, and the answer is, I think at this stage, as written, the 1,100 pages, we're number two, yeah? We're in the 13% category, up 5%-10% up.
A little, little bit better than the consensus.
So, look, I guess this is going to be an interesting conference. You have a lot of people here who have a lot of passion for the 1,100 pages, and will be telling you what they think. So for BNY Mellon, it's manageable for us. Yeah. Notwithstanding the fact that we will be with the rest of the pack in terms of advocating and putting what we believe our views are on some of the topics forward. But, you know, market risk, credit risk, et cetera, et cetera, it doesn't really impact us. The big impact for us is $30 billion of operational risk or RWA inflation to the advanced ratio. So that's where we are.
Look, you know, objectively speaking, I sit here, and I kind of see BNY Mellon having spent, you know, North of $1 billion over the past few years in improving the resiliency of the enterprise and reducing operational risk. And we have about the Basel III Endgame, which tells us our capital rules have to go up in this space. So on a kind of macro level, I kind of disagree with it, but we will advocate alongside everybody else on what's going to be an interesting Q4. But I think the message I'd like to leave everybody with here is, it's manageable for us. It won't cause us to reprioritize businesses or change our buyback approach or everything like that. It's, you know, but I don't agree with a lot of it. It's we can take it as it.
All right. So you don't think you'd change anything in terms of your businesses; doesn't change your buyback or capital return expectations? You know, RWA go up, so effectively capital has to go up, and does it have the potential to kind of impact your, you know, profitability targets or aspirations?
Say that again.
But just, I guess, if, you know, to the extent that, you know, RWA are going up, it does have the potential to impact on ROE-
Yeah. So we'll set about optimizing. We have some offset on the credit side, and you know, I think you know, our ROTCE is in, like, the North of the 20% ZIP code. We're a capital light business model. I don't think these rules will meaningfully change that outlook, and we will adapt and innovate around it.
Let me go to the next ARS question. What do you think is the most compelling bull case for BK shares?
Which the answer is-
Oh, yeah. That's my next question. So, it doesn't appear to be a clear consensus, but it's early organic revenue growth and additional expense efficiencies. I feel like we covered both of those.
Yeah. So I'd like... I would agree in which the order of those have been ranked. Yeah. So expense and efficiency is, we have a plan, we're on track, we're going to execute, we're going to stay the course, and I feel confident about it. So point number one, I think, is a multifaceted one, and there are a lot of, there are a lot of kind of sub, subparts to it. But the important message that I would leave with you is, you know, BNY Mellon is 239 years old, America's oldest bank. It's been around for a long time, and I was a client of BNY Mellon, so I understand the criticality of the firm in the financial markets ecosystem.
We feel strongly that by de-siloing BNY Mellon and coming at it from a more enterprise approach, that we can deliver a much better service to our clients, which over time will lead to an acceleration in revenue growth. So I think as a management team, we, we feel good about number one as well.
Maybe we'll go to the last ARS question. Looking to 2024, what do you expect, expense growth for BK to be, off of an expected 3% or so for this year?
Oof! Come on, guys. Don't be too hard on me.
So up three to four, similar to what you're going to come up with this year and then two to three. So around this year.
Yeah. So look, we're working very hard at it. I'm not looking at my IR person who's saying, "Don't say something that you're not supposed to say." But look, you know, we've delivered, we're going to deliver positive operational leverage this year. I'm determined to do it next year, and we're going to set up the budget in a way that does that, notwithstanding the fact that NII is not going to be with us forever. So, you know, we're going to be the category two, category three ZIP code and work very hard to outperform both of those things.
So why don't we pull up and see if there's any questions from the audience? I, okay, I'll ask. We talked a bit about how you're thinking about kind of 2024 expenses. We talked earlier, kind of how you managed the balance sheet this year through kind of a volatile backdrop. As you kind of begin to think about the 2024 budget season for net interest income and the balance sheet, and you kind of talked about, you know, deposits, just, you know, how do you kind of think about, you know, that plays out? You know, one of your peers presented right before you talked about net interest income potentially bottoming in, kind of like maybe early next year. Just how do you think about all that?
So look, I'm not very good on the tea leaves. Yeah. Like, I have to say, I'm a big Jay Powell fan. I think he's done a great job. I arrived in the States in November of last year, and I couldn't really understand why the market, generally speaking, wasn't listening to him. And there was a real tussle between the market and Jay Powell over the course of this year. I feel probably Jay Powell won the tussle. And everything kind of says, the U.S. economy is very resilient, soft landing higher, but at the same time, higher for longer. I guess the market is pricing cut. I think Roman is doing cuts in Q2 of next year or Q3 of next year. So, you know, I think NII is going to be reasonably with us for the most of next year.
So again, I think the important thing for us is the balance sheet management, both sides of the balance sheet working in tandem. The fact that, you know, as we roll out of our fixed-rate securities, we're going into higher-yielding assets. So I feel overall very good about how our book is set up for next year with the way the forward and currency price, but it's dynamic and it could change. So, we're mindful of that in terms of how we manage the day-to-day business.
Any questions? There we go.
Question a bit. So recognizing what you're doing on the onboarding process and overall expense management, historically, particularly in security service, a new client came in, we would tend to automatically assume that it would cost you more the first year to have that client than they would pay. Then when you got them fully installed, there would be a return. But is there a structural change in the onboarding that can shorten the period of load and negative margins as you start it up and then bring forward the period of, better returns for a relationship?
So I think that's a terrific question. So I think if you are a client of BNY Mellon Asset Servicing, generally, you're very happy because we like, we like to serve clients in a first-class way. So we end up pricing and then serving. The serving ends up with a lot of bespokeness that we don't price, which costs and then reduces the margin over time. So this year, we've kind of set about or in the process of setting about a lot more standardization. And so when we onboard you, we onboard you in a standardized way, which makes client service a lot easier. You know what you're paying for, you know what you're getting. It's like you buy an iPhone, you go into the Apple store, you buy a phone, and it is what it is, and it's advertised.
If you want a different kind of iPhone, you buy a different thing with different products and services, and you pay for that. So we're much more about streamlining what we're doing and less bespoke, and then customize product offerings that if clients want those services, they'll pay for them as opposed to doing it in a manual way. So I kind of gave you a different answer to the question you asked, but we're much more about streamlining and automating rather than bespoke, and then bespoke comes with the next rollout of product innovation. So again, to go back to my platform point, we're trying to take a platform approach to everything so that it's one platform, one set of products, one set of services.
The client knows what they're buying, and if they want to upgrade, they can upgrade, and they will pay for that upgrade.
We're at the two-minute warning. Any questions? I guess you mentioned earlier, you know, in your prior role, you were a client of BK, and now you're obviously CFO of BK. You know, in your role, maybe what's kind of your biggest surprise from an insider?
Whoa! I think it's a very proud, storied organization. Like, the interesting thing is we have a lot of people at BNY Mellon who've come from different, different walks of life and industry, different backgrounds, different companies. So I would say there's much more diversity of thought, and the, the opportunity for us is to, is to channel that into the enterprise view. So surprised to the, to the downside, has been struck by how siloed the organization has been in the past. Surprised the upside is, is the opportunity that... The opportunity is bigger than I thought it was when I went through the interview process.
About 30 seconds left. I have to ask, we were chatting earlier, you're taking a swim in the Hudson River tomorrow. What made you wanna do that?
Yes. So, I don't know. There's this. He's a good friend of mine now, kind of one of those things that happened through COVID. Lewis Pugh, he's the U.N. Ambassador for the Ocean. Very, very good guy, and I've become very good friends with him over the last couple of years. And he kind of highlights the impact of climate change is having on our ocean through very difficult swims in extreme climate. He's mostly known for doing things in very cold geographies of the world that highlight the impact of melting on the oceans.
This swim is kind of a positive one because 50 years ago, the Hudson was very polluted, and a lot of people have done a lot of work and spent billions of dollars to make the Hudson much less polluted. So he started four weeks ago, up at the source of the Hudson, Mount Marcy, and he's swimming down to the Statue of Liberty, and he will finish the swim on Wednesday ahead of UN General Assembly Week. And he'll do a lot of speaking at the UN General Assembly about the impact of polluted rivers on the ocean. So tomorrow, I'm heading up to the GW Bridge, and I'm going to swim from... I'm going to try and swim from George Washington down to Pier 25.
I was there on Saturday in Peekskill, if you know that area, so I have a little bit of a taste of it. The taste is not so good, actually, but anyway, it's all in a good cause, and you know it's leaving the world a better place for our kids and our grandkids. That's what it's all about.
We wish you luck. Please join me in thanking Dermot for his time today.
Thanks for having me.
Next up will be Truist.