Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates founder and co-chairman, discusses the firm’s plan to change its partnership to give more employees ownership. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker on “Bloomberg Markets.”
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Ray Dalio Says Bridgewater Going To Broader, More Formalized Partnership
Transcript
Let's begin with the obvious. A memo went out to your employees and your clients today about a restructuring at Bridgewater. Tell me about it. Well what we want to do is formalize a partnership structure so that they're able to be there's actual rules about partnership a designated group that is partnership wanted to formalize that because we're going from a company in which I led the company in this way our idea of meritocratic way and now we're going to something that might needs broader and more formalized partnership. So it would be like if you were going to have McKinsey has a partnership. Goldman Sachs has a partnership once upon a time they were a partnership and then it's a good example because when they have a partnership they still have to maintain that partnership way of being and yet they're a public company. We're not going to be a public company. Never. No never never never. But that notion of creating a structure so that there is a partnership structure and plays a greater role needs to have some formalization and so that's why we're real excited about how will it work. Well we're in the process process of figuring out how it works but the way it is mostly is there's been a group of designated preliminary partners. There are partners that are called six seed partners and 50 other partners and these are the senior people at the firms senior people generally speaking. But you know people who you know have been there a certain number of years all the things that you would think would represent partnership in terms of decision making capabilities and the like.
And we Bob Gragg me and have established that group and then they have to decide how it's going to work. So we're not part of it so that we have the total freedom. There is a board there are going to be there that will have board representation because there are you know there are the owners and so on. Just like in the Goldman sense with these partners we'll have equity in the firm or have equity in the firm lot of them already do but they'll continue to have more equity in the future. And then they'll and then they'll have their board representations on the board and then the CEOs really will have to they'll valuate the CEOs. And know so that's how it's going to work. DAVID And finally David and Eileen so that the process will operate by the partners who report that and then there's a board that is overseeing that representing also the owners and as there's a transition that's part of a transition process in which or what period of time. Well we you know we've done most of the transition in terms of equity and the like. And a lot of that. And so I think that probably over the next three years or so we're going to do a lot more. But most of that most of it's been done and we need to just to formalize their decision making.
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