Black Lives Matter

“I Could Easily Be George Floyd”: Wall Street’s Senior Black Banker Talks About Biggie and the Hope of BLM

Citigroup’s Raymond McGuire insists that Wall Street has to invest in this moment to bring real change. And oh, by the way: he may run for mayor.
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Raymond McGuire has been a Wall Street investment banker for nearly 36 years. Currently, he is a vice chairman at Citigroup, the Wall Street behemoth, and the chairman of the firm’s banking, capital markets, and advisory businesses. For 13 years, he ran Citigroup’s corporate and investment banking division. Prior to Citigroup, McGuire worked at Merrill Lynch, Wasserstein Perella, and at First Boston (I have known McGuire since 1997, when we worked together in Merrill’s M&A group.) He has advised on some of the largest M&A deals of all time, including advising Time Warner on its $108 billion acquisition by AT&T and Wyeth on its $68 billion sale to Pfizer.

Now 63 years old, he may well be the longest serving, and most senior, Black investment banker on Wall Street. He is reportedly thinking about running for mayor of New York City to succeed Bill de Blasio when he leaves office next year. Last week, McGuire and Marie-Josée Kravis, the chair of the Economic Club of New York and the wife of billionaire buyout mogul Henry Kravis, took to Zoom to discuss a variety of issues, but mostly they focused on the growing Black Lives Matter movement, the insidiousness of systemic racism in America’s Black communities, and what can be done to make sure Black Americans have greater economic opportunity and a greater chance of creating real wealth.

The key, McGuire said, is education. “Sixty-six years ago, in 1954, the great Thurgood Marshall argued Brown v. Board of Education, and the Supreme Court said that the educational system was ‘separate’ and ‘inherently unequal,’ and it decreed that we should, ‘with all deliberate speed,’ change that,” McGuire said. He then cited New York State testing statistics from 2019 for public school students in grades three through eight. Only 35% of Black students in those grades tested “proficient,” while 51% of the white students tested at that level. “How does this demographic ever, ever have the opportunity?” he said. “What the demographic wants is the same opportunity that you offer your children or that any participants on this phone want for their children. Give me the opportunity to get an education, so that I can be trained, so that I can then get access to capital, so I can then put food on the table, so I can get a job, so I can have a level of dignity, so I can do more than just get minimum wage.”

He said he wishes the Black Lives Matter protesters, whom he supports, were also agitating to change the education system to give more disadvantaged Americans a fighting chance, as he was fortunate to have in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from Hotchkiss, the prestigious Connecticut boarding school, and then Harvard College, as well as Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. “What about education? he asked. “I got here through education. You were kind enough to cite my educational background. I’ve been on scholarships since sixth grade. I was raised by a single mother. I got bused. I walked a mile and a half to school.… I was on scholarship from sixth grade until I finished graduate school at Harvard.” Kravis probed further. “We often talk about racial issues or it’s often said that racial issues are really an issue of class, not race, and that it’s because these poor children don’t have the opportunities,“ she said. “There is some truth to that, but my experience is that racism or racial prejudice exists at every level.” She told McGuire that she had been listening recently to a podcast with Ken Chenault, the former longtime chairman and CEO of American Express and one of only a small handful of Black CEOs in corporate America—at the moment there are five Black CEOs in the Fortune 500—and he was in the lobby of the executive floor during his early years at the company when another executive came up to him and asked, “What are you doing here?”

The problem of systemic racism transcends all levels of American society, doesn’t it? Kravis asked. “This is all about race,” McGuire replied. “Let me be bright, clear, and unequivocal. I am really proud to be one of the only members, the sole, S-O-L-E and then the S-O-U-L member of the 4H Club, that is Hotchkiss and three Harvards. If I go into a major department store, I’m one of three things: I’m security. I’m men’s room. I’m men’s suits. And that’s if I’m dressed up. If I walk in any neighborhood, including my own, they have no idea that which I do for a living. They see a 6’4”, 200-pound Black man, and I can easily be George Floyd. I can easily be George Floyd. So people fail to recognize that because I’ve been given an opportunity, and because I have been from the bricks to the boardroom, from the bottom up. As the great philosopher of the 21st century, Biggie, says, ‘If you don’t know, now you know.’ Remember”—and here he cited some Biggie lyrics, probably for the first time in the 113-year history of the Economic Club of New York—“‘We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us / No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us / Birthdays was the worst days.‘ That is every Black person out there. We celebrate those who had the opportunity, and we hope for those who have not had the opportunity. I could easily be George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery, and the list goes on and on, Trayvon Martin. I could be Emmett Till. Just because I have those degrees and I have benefitted from all of the great education, greatest institutions that exist on the planet, I’m still Black.”

McGuire is hoping for real change this time. “Today, we have the opportunity,” he said. “This can be a moment. I see all the relatable messages and a lot of investment dollars, and I think that is commendable. But we need to move from a moment to a movement, and a movement is going to require all of us to invest and invest significantly, invest to the point where we’re uncomfortable investing, recognizing that long-term it will generate a return. In the long-term, if we don’t invest, it will be to our collective peril.”

He wants this moment to be more meaningful and lasting. “We have the potential for it to be different,” he said. “There is potential, in large part because the George Floyd situation showed America its face, and it showed America that this is the ugliest moment that we can all witness, eight minutes and 46 seconds, the ugliest time that any of us have ever experienced, some of the ugliest times. We are hard pressed to tell our children why there is that eight minutes and 46 seconds this policeman had his knee on the neck of a Black man, with no one helping him. We saw that. We witnessed that. And each of us has a challenge in telling our children: How it is that we allow that to happen, and what are we going to do to change that? Are we going to witness it and be a bystander like those other three policemen? Or are we going to do something to change the fundamental course of history? Each of us has to challenge ourselves. For some, we’ll check the box and that will be okay. The issue will have moved past this moment. It shouldn’t be just another funeral. It shouldn’t just be another ceremony. Each of us has the opportunity to change the course of history. I’ve been on Wall Street for 36 years, the longest head of an investment bank in the history of Wall Street, who happens to be Black. It is through prayer, preparation, performance, and paranoia that I’m here. Others need to have the same opportunity, and each of us can make certain that we’ve given someone who doesn’t look like us, or maybe it might be someone who does, the opportunity. We can change the course of history.”

Such exhortations give rise to whether McGuire’s political aspirations are real or merely trial balloons. Kravis couldn’t resist asking him. He was impressively evasive, most un-McGuire-like. “Service is something [important to me], especially at this time in our history,” he replied. “We have the opportunity to change the course of history, to change the course of 400 years of history, and I will continue to do my part. Service is an important and necessary part of my journey, which is an important and necessary part of all of our journeys. Wherever I think I can be best and most highly effective, that’s the path I will follow. It is a journey of service and I’ve been fortunate through opportunities and through sponsorship to be here and to be able to chat with you. I’m honored to be here.” Must be running.

This article has been updated.

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