EQT's Jean Eric Salata - reflections on leadership, culture, and values from one of the world's largest investment firms

It all comes back to the DNA. The firms that know who they are will know who to be. You can learn a lot without an investment firm by listening to what they say. Alco's mainstreams, AGM Originals, the DNA Capturing Culture is dedicated to capturing the DNA of a firm by listening to what they say. The first season of the DNA stars EQT, a global investment firm started in Stockholm in 1994 that has over €270,000,000,000 in AUM. I sat down for conversations with nine EQT executives in Stockholm during the summer at their annual investor meeting. Each executive came from different parts of the firm and different parts of the world. Each had fascinating backgrounds and stories about how they ended up in private markets and working to build EQT. But there was a single through line threaded throughout all the discussions. The consistency, the frequency that each executive talked about the firm's mission, vision, culture, and values. Episode two of season one of the DNA stars John Salata, chairperson of QT Asia and head of private capital. John, welcome to the show. Michael, great to be here. So much to talk about in terms of the business you've built, how you've thought about integrating with EQT, everything that's happening in Asia. First, I wanna start with your background. You have a fascinating background. You ended up in Asia very early, so I'd love to hear the how and the why behind that. I guess I've always felt a little bit like an outsider generally throughout my life having grown up, started my life in South America and Chile and then moved to The US when I was five or six years old. Didn't speak any English. Arrived in Erie, Pennsylvania, small town in Pennsylvania, and saw snow for the first time in my life and kinda started life there. And then one of my first jobs as a newspaper delivery boy, I thought, wow. You can actually make money when you're an 11 year old kid. You can make $20 a month delivering newspapers. It's amazing. And then kind of just always felt a little bit different than everyone else in school and in my classes and things. But, yeah, I worked hard at school and got into Japan, UPenn, went to Wharton. And then when I was at school, I was always just, I guess, naturally interested in international business, and I studied international business at Wharton as an undergraduate. And then when I graduated, I went to work for Bain and Company at a consulting firm, but I had met my girlfriend in college who was from Hong Kong. And, this is pre Internet days, pre email days. And the only way to stay in touch was either to write letters or to make very expensive phone calls. We were talking something like she was actually she went gone to China to study Chinese. So calling from Boston to China in the nineteen eighties …