At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.
When the trust is high, you get the trust dividend. Investors invest in brands people trust. Consumers buy more from companies they trust, they spend more with companies they trust, they recommend companies they trust, and they give companies they trust the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong.
I am proud of the fact that the U.K. is an open trading country. I welcome inward investment such as that of Nissan, and the takeover of struggling British companies by foreign companies who turn them around, as in the case of Jaguar Land Rover. I also accept that job losses sometimes have to occur to restore failing companies to health.
I have invested in companies. I have worked in companies. We have built companies; we have created jobs.
If you think about companies that were built in Silicon Valley, a lot of them early on were chip companies. And now the companies that are there, like Apple, are much more successful than any of the chip companies were.
Music companies are not technology companies any more than technology companies are music companies. They're really different from each other.
Every American business, from the biggest companies to small hardware companies, need money to flow through the system not only to create new jobs but to sustain existing jobs.
Companies should not have a singular view of profitability. There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility... The companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money.
Having a tax code that rewards companies that are shipping jobs overseas instead of companies that are investing here in the United States, that will not make us more competitive.
But, at the end of the day, we need to represent the taxpayers who have made enormous sacrifices. Many have lost their jobs. Many of them have seen their companies - they don't have a pension - they have seen their companies cut the match for their 401(k). They have seen their health care benefits be shredded.
When screening engineers from other companies, its smart to value engineers from great companies more than those from mediocre companies.
Trust-me companies are companies whose financial results gallop ahead of their businesses, companies with seemingly perfect control over their quarterly sales and profits. Companies whose financial statements are loaded with footnotes: companies that short-sellers often attack but rarely dent.
Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment.
There are times when you need to step back and realize that movie studios today are not necessarily the same things that they were many years ago. Many movie studios are international conglomerates now. They own everything from theme parks to toy companies to T-shirt companies to video companies. There's a lot of different wheels to be greased.
European and American companies companies do create jobs for some people but what they're mainly going to do is make an already wealthy elite wealthier, and increase its greed and strong desire to hang on to power. So immediately and in the long run, these companies - harm the democratic process a great deal.
We have to do a much better job at keeping our jobs. And we have to do a much better job at giving companies incentives to build new companies or to expand, because they're not doing it.