Untitled episode

A lot of stories about survival have things in common. There's adversity, there's a threat that's overcome, and then life goes on. Survivor stories are never the same. No two people face the same danger. How to survive, how to overcome, and what you do afterwards is different for every survivor. In American business, even the bankrupt survive. I read in Bloomberg Businessweek about a zombie form of Lehman

Brothers, a decade and a half after the biggest bankruptcy in American history, a version of the firm has survived where people have still been trying to figure out who's owed what. What do survivors learn and what can they teach us? And does surviving in life have anything to do with surviving in business? We are gonna try to find out together tonight. It's The Businessweek Show Welcome

to The Businessweek Show. Tonight, survival. In the business world, if a company isn't surviving, it could go bankrupt. And if it's your company, it's gonna make you sad. If you are my guest at this table, it could make you very rich. Marc Lasry, co-founded Avenue Capital Group, and then he helped grow it into one of the world's biggest hedge funds. And he has become one of

the key figures in the world of investing in bankrupt companies and more. The nice way of describing it is distressed investing. The slightly meaner phrase is vulture investing, but whatever you wanna call it, few people have done it on this guy's scale for this long. He is here to talk to us about what he's learned about surviving over a long period of time. Marc, welcome. Thank

you. You were born in Marrakesh, Morocco. You came to the United States. I think you were seven years old. Seven. Yeah. I'm pretty sure, I don't think you spoke English. Nope. Not a word. You go, you study history at Clark University, your career, I mean, it just very quickly takes you into the world of bankruptcy, which I mean, Marc, people tend to like, fear bankruptcy. They

tend to run away from it and not into it, speaking generally. How does it become, how did it become a calling? I thought I was gonna be a physics professor, so I love physics. I was actually pretty good with numbers. My mother, however, thought I should be a lawyer or a doctor. I don't know if people have gone through this where you explain to your mother

it's your life and your mother explains to you it's not, your life begins when she tells you it does. So I went to law school. When I was in law school, I had done exceptionally well. I had the highest grade in corporate law. My teacher recommended me to his best friend, who was the Chief Bankruptcy Judge. So I clerked for the Chief Bankruptcy Judge, found it

fascinating. I could do the numbers pretty quickly. And when I got outta law school, went to work for a bankruptcy law firm, and then from there, just kept on getting involved on the investment side. Speaking of the law, after three of Donald Trump's Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. He basically switched sides in the fight over Trump Entertainment Resorts so that he could team up with you?

You were against him, and then he was like, let me get on this guy's side. I'm curious what you learned about him that can help explain how his political career has survived. You know, survived four sets of criminal charges now. You know, who knows what's gonna happen, but so far he's thriving despite everything. Did you learn anything about him when you were working with him, that

helps explain him to you? Here we were, we put his company in bankruptcy. His view was, that's fine. We're gonna be partners, we're gonna make this work. Most people would get upset that you put their company in bankruptcy. And I'm not saying he wasn't upset. He was. So I think I got to know Donald pretty well and was amazed at his ability to just constantly be

moving forward. So I tried to pick what I imagined to be the most stressful moment of your career, and I wanted to ask you about it. So there's a single week in 2021 where two of the companies you were invested in, like basically on the same day, faced like this incredible amount of stress that would've freaked me out. There's a media company, Ozy, where I think

you were chairman. It basically began shutting down in 2021. There's a scandal that's led to fraud charges. It was a mess. And then practically at the same moment, there's Amplify Energy, where Avenue is, I think the top shareholder, had a pipeline, that leaked like 25,000 gallons into the Pacific. You're such a calm guy. Like I'm just wondering like how that moment felt. You're always gonna have

stress free and not to have any issues, but that's not the way things are. You've gotta deal with it and you deal with it the best you can and in the right way. And then you move on. You bought the Bucks, the Milwaukee Bucks in 2014. They had just had, I think the worst season in their history and I think the worst record in the league.

And they go on to win as under your co-ownership, I think five division titles in a row. They win the 2021 championship. They did. This year, you agreed to sell your stake. It made me wonder if investing is like, if it's less fun or if it's less exciting for you after distress turns into success. No, I don't think so. I think it's, I think what everybody

loves is a challenge, right? To me, the challenge of the Bucks was the time we bought it, they were the best, they were the worst team. We turned it into the best team. For me, I thought accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, which is end up taking something that was very bad, turning in something that was very good, winning an NBA championship. And at that point,

you know, the value of the team had appreciated so much that thought it also made sense to sell because it turned out to be a great investment and to move on and do other things and try other things. You founded Avenue with one of your sisters, Yes. Sonia. Mm-hmm. And your other sister, I think Ruth Yeah. has worked with you for years, years and years. Mm-hmm.

What have you learned about sisters or, you know, so we can make it siblings so that those relationships have survived over a very long time now? Yeah, it's, I don't really think it's complicated. Like I grew up, I shared a room with my two sisters for about 10 years before I went to college. During that time period, you will either get along really well or utterly

despise your siblings 'cause you don't wanna share, you're fighting or whatever it is. For us, we got along really well. So because of that, we have a base and a foundation where we love working together, but we actually love being with each other. And I think that's a lot of things with siblings, like you and I both know siblings that are super close and that hardly

talk. So if you are with a sibling where you don't talk, kind of hard to be partners. If you're with a sibling where you get along exceptionally well, that's very easy. And I think for Sonia and I, we've known each other a long time. Obviously. We get along exceptionally well. And she's my partner and because of that, we have a phenomenal partnership. Marc, so glad you

were here. Thank you so much. Thank you. Pleasure. Truly enjoyed it. Nine years ago in a Yazidi village in northern Iraq called Kocho, the Islamic State murdered hundreds of men and kidnapped women and children and sold them into sex slavery. My guest at the table was one of those women, Nadia Murad, whose six brothers and mother were murdered, escaped, and survived. She began a fight to

tell the world what was happening. She started a campaign to hold militants accountable in court. In 2018, she won a Nobel Prize for her work, trying to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. And she started a nonprofit, Nadia's Initiative, to help repair communities in crisis. Nadia Murad, I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for having me Surviving that

kind of pain and trauma must be so debilitating and destabilizing. How did you turn that kind of pain into action? It was definitely not something that I planned for, but when I survived ISIS captivity, so many of my family members were still in captivity. My nieces who were younger than me were left behind. And as I made it to safety, I felt responsible. I felt guilty

of surviving while my friends, my family members didn't, and I had to do something. I was thinking that if I tell the world my story, they will act and rescue other women and children, and then I will go back to my family. But it was not like that. People were looking at me differently because of ISIS's use of sexual violence against Yazidi women. But I, you

know, despite the shame and stigma, I didn't give up. And my brother was very honest with me. He said, "I don't guarantee you that I will be able to protect you. We are displaced. We don't have anything. And you know how difficult it is to talk about sexual violence." But I also knew that silence on that subject was not a solution and that the world needed

to hear my story. And then in the year or two that came after, your life changed very, very dramatically. You started working, I think in 2016 with your lawyer, Amal Clooney, and you started working to hold the Islamic State accountable in court. My understanding, though, is that The Hague hasn't had jurisdiction over Iraq and Syria. How has your fight survived the complications of geopolitics? Well, it's

been very complicated. I remember when I was in the camp, people were talking about justice in a very traditional way. I was just thinking about an alternative. There must be something, I didn't know about The Hague or lawyers or, you know, that we can bring our case here to the United Nations. And then I met Amal and she explained many things to me, and she's so

inspiring. She has, you know, helped me to just, you know, know that there is an another chance to, like another way to have justice, to achieve justice, but also you have countries in Europe and other places that they don't want then to bring their own citizens back and hold them accountable. But we were able to create the UN team, it's called UNITAD. UNITAD has collected thousands

of evidence, testimonies, documentations, and now we've been able with survivors to hold three ISIS members accountable in Germany, which is, it's what survivors really want. Let's talk about corporations, because the work that you do is survivor centric and it's based on communities. What would you like to see big corporations do? I think they can help in so many ways because for example, with my initiative, I

started Nadia's Initiative because when I was displaced and I saw, you know, people in the camp, hundreds of thousands of people, then I was able to move to Germany with my sister. And when I started this work, I learned that no country was ready to bring millions of refugees or hundreds of thousands of Yazidis to Europe or other places, but keeping them in the camps was

not a solution. They're short term solutions. And I realized that the other sustainable solution is to help people to go back, but no one was ready to invest in Sinjar people were telling me, well, the town is destroyed, we can't really go back. So we need to work with, you know, business leaders and make sure that we add more services to the region. For example, we

are about to build, to open first ever women's center in the region. And I would love some, you know, someone to help us how to bring training projects for women. And it's not always the politicians that do the best. Do business leaders believe that they can play a role? I'm thinking maybe utilities and energy companies or real estate developers? Do you talk to them and say,

listen, we need you here? Do they seem open or skeptical or optimistic? Well, I think one of the lesson that I learned that even if you know that the work is good and it's helping and it's sustainable, it's just so hard to convince people to come and invest in a region that like that. But it's really important. It is needed and it's important. And we have

to not, you know, we can't just give up on post-conflict regions because I believe it's doable to work there, to rebuild and help people to have a dignified life. If there are people watching who have survived trauma that is different than yours or like yours, or they're worried that they're not going to be able to cope with what's happening or with what's happened with them, is

there something that you would like to tell them? I just want them to know that they've made it and that's the most important thing and that they're worth it. And they're not alone. Not alone at all. You know, so many women and girls from all over the world that are, now I feel like we are a community and we have survived different things, but we are

not alone because we have each other even if we don't know each other. I'm really grateful that you were here and that you share your story with us. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Coming up a different kind of survival with a different kind of survivor. If you want to know how to survive the restaurant business, you need to

understand critics and cooking and finance and farming and inequality, real estate and much more. If you wanna know about the guest who's sitting with me at this table, you need to understand that Kwame Onwuachi did not survive college or Top Chef or his first restaurant, which closed after 10 weeks or a second restaurant, Covid. And yet he is one of the most important young chefs working

in America today. He is a dazzling memoirist and he's helping to reshape the landscape of fine dining here in New York City at Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi. He's here to tell us about surviving, and I'm really happy he is. Chef Kwame. What's up? Tatiana has pulled off something really unusual. You know, it radiates the sense of New York, like it's very, very New Yorky, Mm-hmm. but

you know, it's, or not but, it's like, and, and it's Nigerian and it's like Creole and maybe, I think maybe Caribbean. Caribbean too. What have you learned about the way that your customers respond to like, to telling stories, to storytelling and to your personal approach? When we put a new dish on the menu, we have a menu matrix we call it, and tells a story of

the dish, the origins of the dish. And it's just for the service to know, because I feel like when a dish tells a story, it has a soul. You're not just cooking for perfect seasoning, you're cooking to share something with someone, nostalgia, a story, a memory, a feeling. And it's easier to get the team behind it when there's intentionality behind it. At age 10, your mom,

Jewel, she sends you to live with your grandfather in Nigeria for, I think it's supposed to be a summer, but it's like two years you stay, but then you come home and she's like, she's struggling. She's a caterer, but she's struggling. You write in the book, "My mother just wasn't making enough money to survive." What impact do you think that that combination, your departure, her struggle,

maybe your guilt, what impact do you think that that has had on, on your career? I think it's given me tenacity and drive to not return back to that lifestyle that I grew up in. Worrying about the lights being on, you know, worrying about where I'm gonna get my next meal, you know, it's something that I have a memory of that, so I think it pushed

me to just get as far away from that as possible. And then, and by any means possible. The moment of the book that stands out at the time, you're in a gang, you're young, you're like, you buy a gun, you're like 16 and there's a guy, I mean, he's a friend. He takes the gun, Mm-hmm. he points it at your chest, Mm-hmm. he pulls the trigger,

I think, like multiple times. Uh-huh. How does that experience and others like change you and how do you keep it with you now? It was, you know, it was scary. It was just really scary. We're kids though, so it, I don't think I felt the gravity of it, you know, until later. But yeah, it was scary, but there was a lot of scary moments growing up

where I grew up. You know, being shot at is more scary than that to me. So, I don't know. I guess it made me tougher. I wish I didn't go through that, but it is what it is. When I think back about like, the mood of the early restaurants that you worked in, like some of the best restaurants in the world per se, Eleven Madison, you

described like very cold, almost kind of like, like loud, angry, like maybe even a little bit cruel. Mm-hmm. What have you done to make your kitchen different than that? You know, I try to treat people like human beings. I try to have a lot of empathy and compassion and also, you know, I try to mentor in the best ways that I can. You know, it's, I

think it's really difficult being a leader in a kitchen for a restaurant. We get an assignment every seven minutes and we have seven minutes to deliver on that. So it's, you know, it's high stakes and you do your best. And I think with focusing on the culture of the kitchen and just trying to make, trying to think about them as individuals, changes the dynamic in the

kitchen. Speaking of your journey, your first restaurant Shaw Bijou, so it closed, then you become the Executive Chef at Kith and Kin, Mm-hmm. you win James Beard, Rising Star award. Big deal, big stuff. But you left, my understanding is that, it wasn't just Covid that you wanted, a stake in the restaurant, in equity stake, and the owners were like, "Nope." So you left. How did you

approach Tatiana differently? I mean, yeah, I came in with my terms and that was just that, you know, I didn't want to get back into the restaurant game unless I had a large equity stake in it. You know, I was gonna be pouring my culture into it and my heart and my emotions. So that was really, really important to me. It seems to me that, I

dunno, I feel like it, it might not actually be true, but I feel like what you hear when you're in New York is that like, restaurants are like, just like a terrible business to be in, like very, very hard. Can you tell us like the most powerful thing you've learned about surviving and succeeding in it? I'm thinking like, not just as a chef who makes food,

but as a businessman. Yeah. I mean, it is a terrible business. You know, they're right, it's very, very difficult. But, you know, there's a certain group of people that actually love operating them, and it's for us, you know, we bring people together. It's a gathering spot, at the end of the day. Nobody that's coming to a restaurant is starving, you know, they're not on a soup

line. They're there for an experience. They're there to meet someone for the first time. They're there to mourn. They're there for a first date. They're there to celebrate. The reviews are great, you know, when they come in and they're good. But like every single day when people are meeting and they're excited and they're happy, that's part of the magic for me. Thank you so much, Chef,

for being here. Of course, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It doesn't matter if you are an investor or an activist or a chef. Survival series are never as neat as you want them to be. Surviving life, like surviving a career, demands a little bit of courage, a little bit of clarity, and a willingness to move on into whatever comes next. Thank you so much

for watching. We will see you soon.