Moelis' Incoming CEO  Navid Mahmoodzadegan Talks Deals
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After founding an investment bank that has catapulted to one of the world's most well-known, Ken Mollis is stepping down as CEO of his namesake firm. The incoming CEO joins Bloomberg's global finance correspondent, Shonali Basick, for his first interview since that announcement. Shonali? Scarlett, thank you so very much. I am joined now by Navid Mamouzadehgan. Of course, he's the incoming CEO of Mollis & Company. We'll take over on October 1st. Congratulations, first of all, on the new role. Thank you very much, Shonali. I appreciate it.

So your founder, Ken Mollis, has told me that this isn't the end of an era, it's the start of a new one. What does that mean?

Well, look, first of all, I'm really honored and excited to take over as CEO. The firm is in an incredible spot, given our talent base, a lot of the investments we've made in making sure we're staying cutting edge, the culture, which is phenomenal at the firm. And I think Ken looked at it and said, this is a great time to invest.

to hand over the firm to the next generation of leaders. And I know there's a lot of excitement throughout our company about all the opportunities that's going to present for me and for many of the people within the company. To the extent that there's something new about the way you're going to run the company, what should investors be looking out for? What should incoming talent be looking out for? Well, look, I've been with Ken for 30 years. We founded the company together, and the strategy was

uh... that and then the building blocks of the firm uh... have been very consistent throughout the founding of the company uh... a lot of that's going to continue with the core of what we do putting clients first uh... hiring and developing the best bankers in the world

and creating a culture that supports those bankers is not going to change. I'll bring obviously a different energy to it and a different leadership style to it, but the core of our strategy is going to very much stay intact. The reality of it too is that you're taking over at a very complicated time both in markets and in the world.

As we sit here today, there have been four days of missile strikes between Israel and Iran, and Molotov Company has a big presence in the Middle East. What are your clients saying about the uncertainty that's building around this regional conflict? Well, first of all, Shonali, we have...

MOLUS employees, parts of our MOLUS family in the Middle East. And our first priority and our first area of focus is making sure they're safe and sound. And thankfully, we're in constant contact with them and they're doing well so far. So that's our number one priority. Look, we're in a world that's changing rapidly all the time. I've been bullish on the return of M&A and the steady improvement that we've seen since April.

the Middle East conflict, the latest Middle East conflict is early days and is fluid and so we'll have to monitor that really carefully. But I continue to be optimistic that the forces that are driving M&A are still very much intact. You'll see how it plays out but that's still my perspective. Do you think that the geopolitical tension has the opportunity to really throw a wrench in some of the activity that's been coming back? Well sure, look, geopolitical risk and things like wars always have the potential to create bad outcomes.

But again, it's really early days. We're monitoring the situation carefully, and we're obviously hoping for the best. At the same time, here in the U.S., investors have been responding to tariffs as well. CEOs have been changing their business lines around the president's plans. How concerned are you and your clients about the impact of tariffs? So when you look at the companies and financial sponsors and capital providers, look, there's a whole swath of those companies.

of industries and areas and companies that have very little to do, are very little impacted by things like trade and tariffs. We're seeing still a lot of activity in those areas.

As you get closer and closer to manufacturing and companies that are in the heart of some of the trade impacted areas, clearly that's more difficult to do M&A today. And look, I'm hoping that we'll reach an equilibrium here on the tariff issue soon so that CEOs and capital providers can kind of gear into what that new world looks like. And so that uncertainty comes out of their thought process. I hear a lot from deal makers that there's this pent up energy.

under the surface for some people even record pipelines. What does that look like? We're seeing it in our business. We're at or near record highs as well. When you talk to our bankers, there's activity all across the firm. There's lots of client dialogue and I agree with you. I think clients, private equity clients, corporate clients really do want to do transactions. They see transactions as a useful tool.

to supercharge growth, to get efficiencies, to improve their market positions, and to deal with innovation. We have a massive wave coming in terms of the impact on things like AI in our economy, and people want to be well positioned for that.

M&A this year isn't what everybody hoped it would be, but you yourself have been on transformative transactions. For example, Paramount Skydance is one I know that you've been involved in. What does the deal activity that we've seen so far say about the deal activity that might still be to come? Look, as I said, I think there's just a lot of demand to do transactions. The environment hopefully will get more conducive to doing even more and having a wider aperture on the kinds of transactions that could happen.

Again, hard to predict all of those things, but what I can tell you in our conversations are people want to transact. They want to lean into deals. There's lots of capital available to do that, and if the conditions improve, I think you're going to see a big pickup in announced transaction activity. What about restructuring activity in particular? You see kind of both sides of the economy in that way. When things go well, people might want to do deals. When things go wrong, they might have to look at either restructuring or even bankruptcies. Do you see any...

trouble under the surface? Look, we have a top franchise in this part of the world restructuring liability management, capital solutions. There's generally a pretty steady stream of activity in that space if you have a top franchise. Clearly there are spikes when you get

periods of economic turmoil or turmoil in industries or high default rates. We're not in one of those periods today. But generally, there are companies that need solutions either to over-levered balance sheets. We had a bunch of over-levered balance sheets created post-COVID. A lot of the work that our teams have been doing over the last couple of years has been dealing with pushing out maturities and giving companies more breathing room.

And for the people who don't know, you were a huge part of what had pushed Mollis & Company into private capital in a bigger way. A big part of advisory work during COVID era financings when private capital stepped in to help companies out. Is this anything like COVID? Are there echoes of it where you could see private capital step in for big rescue financings? Look, one of the big revolutions that I've seen over the last 10 years is just the huge number of

of alternative asset managers who are there raising big pools of money, very flexible pools of money to invest up and down the capital structure. We welcome that. We think that's great for the economy. It's great for business. And it's great for firms like ours because there's now many more sources of money and we're there to help advise clients tap into those sources of money.

You know, another interesting thing about your focuses here on restructuring, M&A, private capital, is that it's also taking you into new areas. And you've hired during times of, frankly, crisis for others. You hired from Credit Suisse. You hired out of Silicon Valley banks, Demise as well. And now is another moment where global banks are in the process of cutting hundreds of jobs. Do you see an opportunity to bring people on?

One of the foundational philosophies that we've had from the beginning is to be opportunistic and to hire great talent even when times were a little murky. So the firm was really built through the global financial crisis.

We've generally been contrarian when talent is available even if it's not the best market. You have to seize that opportunity. It's one of the reasons why we keep a pristine balance sheet to give us the financial flexibility to do that. And yes, once again, when the regional banking crisis hit, we used that as an opportunity to really bulk up and hire teams in technology and in oil and gas.

And we're doing that again now with the build we have in a business we're calling PSA, Private Solutions for the private equity world. So what does that mean in terms of the new teams you're willing to bring on at MOLUS? Yeah, well look, we've made some major hires in this space. You know, private equity firms have evolved. We've always been in the business of buying and selling companies to and from private equity firms.

But now we're getting into the business in a big way in terms of primary fundraising for their vehicles and then as well as also being able to service them in GP led secondaries, LP led secondaries, continuation vehicles. Those are major growth areas for us, major market opportunities for us. And the recent hires we've announced will enable us to have a top franchise in those areas, we hope.

interesting area that Mollis has really been forging into is sports. You yourself have been personally involved in the stake sale that is ongoing of the New York Giants as well as the Phoenix Suns in recent years. So how big of an opportunity is this company-wide? You yourself have been on deals, but is this something that is going to be a massive area for Mollis? We have a major effort in a big franchise in sports.

The velocity of transactions has really been astounding, not just with teams, but also in the ecosystem of sports. Companies that are providing services into the sports space, whether that's sports betting or facilities management and things of that nature. You're right, we've been lucky to work on some landmark transactions. I spent a lot of time on it myself.

And one of the things that's driving a lot of the number of transactions is not just the increase in valuations, but these big pools of money, many of which are private equity focused, that understand that sports is a beautiful way to invest in non-correlated growth assets. And so we're seeing a lot of money flock to the space and we're there to hopefully help put transactions together for our clients. Certainly been a very interesting one to watch. Now, all

Almost a decade ago, I wrote a story for Bloomberg Businessweek called How to Automate an Investment Banker. At that time, I talked to your firm about what's possible and what's not possible. And at that time, there were some things possible, but a lot that was not. How far have we come? What role is AI going to be as you start to, let's say, build out MOLUS 2.0? Look, it's very critical for us to be on the cutting edge of technology and to innovate and to adopt technologies that will help us serve our clients.

AI has massive potential to help us be more efficient. It has massive potential to give us tools to be able to present better ideas to our clients and help us execute those ideas on their behalf. Again, it's all about the clients and one of the things I'm excited about is to make sure within our organization we're staying on our front foot.

to incorporate those tools in our work to make sure that we're doing the very best job servicing our client base.

Navid, we thank you so much for joining us here today. That is, of course, Navid Mamouzadeh again of Moles & Company, the incoming CEO of Scarlett in his first interview since the role was announced. Thank you, Shanalee Basik, for that exclusive interview. Switch to Verizon Business and get more from your internet without paying more for your internet. Get LTE Business Internet starting at $39 a month when paired with select business mobile plans. That's unlimited data.

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