John Allison on Strategy, Profits, and Self-Interest

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2007

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

John Allison, CEO of BB and T Bank, lays out his business philosophy arguing for the virtues of profits, self-interest and production. His definition of justice, one of the core values of his firm, is that those who produce more, get more. He argues that Bill Gates would do more for the world improving Microsoft than running his foundation and giving away money. Allison praises Atlas Shrugged and refuses to let his bank make loans to companies that use eminent domain to acquire property. Is this any way to run a company? Does Allison really run his company this way? How does he deal with the gap between his philosophy and our popular culture's view of business and profits? Listen as Allison and host Russ Roberts discuss BB and T's unusual business strategy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:15.0	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website
0:20.2	is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast,
0:26.9	find links and other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is
0:32.0	mailadicontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:38.2	My guest today is John Allison, Chairman and CEO of BB&T, a $121 billion financial services
0:47.0	holding company, mostly a bank that you may see on your street corner here and there. It's
0:52.3	the nation's 12th largest. I heard Mr. Allison give a very provocative speech a few months
0:56.8	ago on how respect for self-interest and property rights has helped him build B&T to what it
1:01.5	is. And I thought our listeners would find the ideas in that speech as interesting as
1:05.4	I did. John, welcome to Econ Talk.
1:07.8	Good morning. Pleasure to be here.
1:10.6	Tell us about BB&T as a bit of an introduction, how it's grown in recent years and how long
1:15.1	you've been there and what your role has been.
1:17.8	BB&T is the oldest financial services holding company headquartered in North Carolina
1:23.3	started in 1872. It started as a farm bank. And when I joined BB&T 1971, that's exactly
1:31.6	what we were. We had about $250 million in assets and about 250 employees. We've now grown
1:39.3	to a Molly State financial services holding company with $120 billion in assets and $30,000
1:44.9	employees. We're a little unique and we operate as a series of 33 community banks with
1:53.9	very decentralized decision making lots of local autonomy and the purpose of that is to
2:00.2	enable us to treat our clients on a very individualistic, very personal basis. And yet we do have
2:06.0	the resources of a larger company. So we hopefully can feel local and act in a way that provides
	...

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