{"id":249108,"date":"2026-01-24T06:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T06:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/249108\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T06:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T06:24:16","slug":"bank-of-americas-brian-moynihan-the-pipelines-are-full","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/249108\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank of America\u2019s Brian Moynihan: \u2018The pipelines are full\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This moment in US financial history has been called the best time in a generation<\/a> to be a banker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey keep telling me that,\u201d Brian Moynihan says with a wry smile \u2014 indeed, similar headlines appeared last year<\/a>, and even in 2009<\/a>, in the midst of the global financial crisis.<\/p>\n

Moynihan has a longer view than most of his peers. He has held the top job at Bank of America, the second-largest US bank by assets, since 2010. Doing so has required a sharp eye on economic cycles, a rapid acceleration of BofA\u2019s technology spending, and an effort to steer his 213,000-person bank through often treacherous political conditions.<\/p>\n

Speaking at Semafor Haus in Davos this week, the day before President Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum, Moynihan betrayed no anxiety about the political climate. A year earlier, he was one of a small group of peers picked to question Trump when the president beamed in from Washington during his inauguration week. Moynihan lobbed a softball about the outlook for the economy, only for Trump to shoot back with a claim that Bank of America had been \u201cdebanking\u201d conservatives.<\/p>\n

Moynihan was not at the president\u2019s post-speech meeting this year with CEOs. His absence was reported as a snub by the White House, but the event coincided with Moynihan hosting clients \u2014 and US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Bank of America declined to comment, but Moynihan said when it comes to the president, his policy is: \u201cJust listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever his standing in Washington, he remains a relentless cheerleader for the US consumer economy, and says corporate America has absorbed the geopolitical and tariff shocks of the past year, setting his bank up for a strong 2026.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how he explained the economic, political, and leadership balancing act he has pulled off for longer than any top US banker bar JPMorgan\u2019s Jamie Dimon.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: I read last week that this is the best time in a generation to be a banker? Does it feel that way to you?<\/p>\n

Brian Moynihan: Look, why is it the best time to be a banker? The theory is that the regulations are swinging back to the middle because they swung too far. That takes pressure off. But the real best time to be a banker is when the economy\u2019s decent. If the economy\u2019s in good shape, then generally the banking system will be in good shape. And then you\u2019ve got to be, in good times, able to position yourself so that when the economy\u2019s not in good shape, you remain in good shape. And that\u2019s one of the tricks.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been on the record saying you are bullish for 2026, for the US economy in particular. Can you break that down?<\/p>\n

If you think about the economy globally, we have it [growing] in the [mid-3% range] for the year. In the US, right after the [2024] election, people had the economy growing about two-and-a-half percent in 2026. Then during 2025, you had that go all the way down to about 1.5% and then all the way back up and just recently last Friday, [analysts raised their forecasts to] 2.8%. What\u2019s causing that? One is the sorting out of the major policy implementations. One was the tax bill, the second was trading tariffs, the third is the regulatory side, and the fourth is immigration. And while they\u2019re still talked about and written up a lot about, a lot of it\u2019s actually settled, in that people can predict a business plan and then go on.<\/p>\n

This time last year, there was an expectation that deal activity would be unleashed. That was set back by the tariff story, but by the end of 2025 we saw some pretty big deals. What are you expecting now when you talk to corporate clients about the level of activity?<\/p>\n

The tariff regime in the US that surprised everybody last April had settled into basically being around a 15% level for almost all activity by the end of the year. So I think corporate America absorbed all that. And as we went through the year, you saw more investment banking activity, more deals announced, the IPO market started to come to life. So, as we look at next year, our investment banking teams would look around the world and say, the pipelines are full. The activity\u2019s not only in the US; it\u2019s IPOs, it\u2019s European-based activity, it\u2019s multinationals buying. It\u2019s clear you can get a deal done now. So it\u2019s worth trying to do one.<\/p>\n

Taking on board the fact that predictions for the year made in Davos are not always proved out, what could change the picture?<\/p>\n

We still have wars going on that we are trying to sort through, whether it\u2019s more tariffs, or debate that causes people to pull back and try to figure it out again. But at the end of the day, are consumers in the two largest economic blocks, the US and Europe, going to feel they\u2019re employed and earning money and spending? Because once they do that, the economy turns.<\/p>\n

Longer-term, debt levels around the world are problematic. I think governments know that and they\u2019ve got to keep managing through. That\u2019s not a problem, necessarily, for the first quarter of 2026. But governments around the world have to make major adjustments because the amount of debt issued around the COVID crisis, to basically win that war and spackle over a huge pothole and make it more smooth, hasn\u2019t been pulled back out yet.<\/p>\n

I believe you\u2019ll be in the audience for the president\u2019s remarks [on Wednesday]. What do you want to hear?<\/p>\n

Nobody knows what he\u2019s talking about tomorrow because originally it was going to all be about US domestic policy around affordability, and then now [it\u2019s about] Greenland. So, wait and see. I think it\u2019ll be fascinating as always, and I think he\u2019ll cover what\u2019s on his mind. He was here twice before and I think what\u2019s on his mind is \u2014 there\u2019s no debate. He\u2019ll say it. So just listen. People always ask, what does he mean? Just listen. He\u2019ll say it.<\/p>\n

You spend $13 billion a year on technology. What have you done to try and create an innovation and technology culture in Bank of America?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t take rare earth magnets and put them into this and make that, or we don\u2019t take steel and make a car out of it. We basically are a one-zero processing company. It\u2019s either by this brain [he points to his head] or by the computer\u2019s brain. So we\u2019ve invested heavily in a lot of digitization, and my entire career in banking has been about technology application, despite what people think.<\/p>\n

The question is what the customer\u2019s going to do. And the mistake people make is [saying] \u201ccustomers want to do it this way.\u201d There are still people who get cash out of ATMs \u2014 that\u2019s 200 million a day \u2014 and there are people who never carry cash around, and everything in between. So the question is, how do you follow the customer, lead the customer and invent and make it work? But it\u2019s more of an integration model. It is a straight-rate model for an idea because an idea is an idea, an applied idea is money, and our job is to take the best ideas, whether invented by our people or others, and apply them in a way and a scale that other people can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

What have you learned about pointing 213,000 people in the direction you want them to go in and actually having them follow?<\/p>\n

You have to have people committed to the purpose and the mission of the company. That sounds trite, but it really is important when you have this many people and this many customers and this many things that happen a day. And part of that mission is you have to understand process. Everything has to be done through a process with controls around it. And so what seems conservative is actually enabling, because if you know the process is going to run, then you can do more and push harder.<\/p>\n

[And then it\u2019s] letting the competitive spirit and the talent of those 200,000 people bloom and that\u2019s who you hire, how you hire, how you train them, how you allow them to be who they are and be successful in the way you pay them. It\u2019s getting people to understand that they\u2019re there to serve the customers well and also create economic value and then to do it the right way [by supporting] their communities. And if you do that, then you can run a big company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This moment in US financial history has been called the best time in a generation to be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-249108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}