Push Pull Podcast

From Helicopters to Lehman Brothers: Omar Dinar on Taking a Bet Before the Crash (pt. 1)

• Varun Rajan • Season 1 • Episode 8

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In this episode of the Push Pull podcast, we explore the fascinating career journey of Omar Dinar, currently a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. Omar transitioned from an engineer working on military helicopters to working in financial services, starting his finance career in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis at Lehman Brothers. Omar shares insights into the challenges he faced, the impact of the macroeconomic environment on his career path, and how he leveraged his education and networking opportunities to pivot successfully. Omar's story of resilience, adaptability, and relationship-building offers valuable takeaways for anyone navigating career transitions.

00:00 Introduction to the Push Pull Podcast
00:38 Meet Omar Dinar: From Engineering to Finance
01:55 Navigating the Financial Crisis
04:47 Early Career and Mentorship
09:49 Transitioning to Finance
19:52 Pursuing an MBA for Career Growth
24:51 Navigating Multiple Internships
25:41 Philosophy Behind the MBA Program
28:27 Choosing the Right MBA Program
30:19 Final Internship Experience
30:36 Joining Lehman Brothers
32:15 The 2008 Financial Crisis Unfolds
38:50 Life After Lehman: Transition to Barclays
41:05 Understanding Risk Management
44:09 Settling into Barclays
45:02 Conclusion and Future Insights

Welcome to the Push Pull podcast, where we interview professionals about their career transition, specifically the push and pull factors that informed their transitions. On today's episode, you're gonna hear the first part of my conversation with Omar Dinar. He is a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. Omar is actually somebody that I met through Lunch club, lunch club.com. It's a networking platform. Uh, we kind of hit it off right away. I really respected his wisdom and energy and, he was super kind enough to do me the favor of being on my podcast. He started off his career as an engineer during manufacturing for military contractors working on Black Hawk helicopters, which is. Insanely cool and ended up pivoting over into financial services where he basically graduates into the post subprime mortgage crisis economy. his first job right out of his MBA was working at Lehman Brothers. I asked him to go over some of the macro picture and how that actually impacted his work in risk management Our conversation was phenomenal, but unfortunately we ended up having some technical difficulties for the latter half of that conversation. So Omar has actually been incredibly generous with his time and we're planning to rerecord some of that stuff. But in the meantime, I did want to share some of the early parts of, of his career, which quite frankly are incredibly interesting on their own. How did he go from. Manufacturing over into financial services. What were the things that he was thinking about at the time? What were the factors of the military contractor company that did not quite give him the sense of fulfillment that he wanted? A lot of that had to do with his ambitions and being maybe mismatched with the pace or structure of advancement at that company. Um, and then, you know. Taking a bet on himself to go into finance and ending up there at quite possibly the worst time to ever be at a company like Lehman Brothers. I was really impressed with how he continued to just keep his head down and committing to his vision for himself and hi for his career in the midst of. All of this turmoil it was also really interesting to learn about how the world and the macro environment ended up impacting the trajectory of his career. If it wasn't for the financial crisis, I don't think he would be thinking about being in risk management, but because there was this entire regulatory effort that came in and changed financial services, he ended up in this part of the industry that was rapidly growing, which is essentially risk management, regulatory compliance, all that kind of stuff. unfortunately we are ending this conversation towards the very end of the entire subprime mortgage crisis and what that meant for where he ended up landing at Barclays after they acquired Lehman Brothers. but then we see his career progression and the pivots and moving from one place to another, one of the things that we're going to be diving into again, the second time we record, is to really try to understand, how. The relationship building aspect of management informed so much of his career and really also informed the likes and dislikes. and he found the ways to Do the things that he did like more over time. And so we'll revisit that part of the conversation in the next, part of the episode So huge thanks to Omar, not only for sitting with me through an entire interview, but also being willing to do another part to share with you all of his insights. He's incredibly wise. So super excited to have somebody, uh, from financial services on and, um, really hope you enjoy the conversation.

Varun Rajan

All right, we're here with Omar Dinar, who is a wealth management advisor at Merrill Lynch. Thanks for being on with us, Omar.

Omar Dinar

Thank you. Thank you for having me. my name's Omar Dinar. I'm a wealth management advisor at Merrill. I feel like I'm, I've, this is the third leg of my career and hopefully the final leg, something I really am passionate about and enjoy to do for the next 25 years. But, but I'm happy to talk about my journey starting off as an engineer in the aerospace industry, navigating my way into finance, at what I call the worst possible place in time, and then how I came to be at my current role.

Varun Rajan

let's go all the way back. If I were to ask you about where you started your career, how would you answer that question? Would you start, with your undergraduate experience? what were the kinds of things that you were looking to do? What were your motivations at the time? paint a picture for us, of what the beginning of Omar's career was like.

Omar Dinar

All right, sounds good. I was an engineering student at the University of Connecticut a long time ago. I had the opportunity to do a couple of internships at a local aerospace, company that they manufacture helicopters here in Connecticut. name is Sikorsky Aircraft. so they, they make the Black Hawk helicopter, the President's helicopters. Those are probably the two most. Public ones, I did two summer internships there, made some really great connections and ended up, ended up getting hired there after I graduated a couple months after I graduated from college. So I was very fortunate. had a, had an amazing. First manager, one of the best I've had in my career and somebody who left a very long lasting impact on me. And, and that, that started off my career first as a manufacturing engineer and a tool designer. my job was that my first job out of school was, I like to say I was crawling through half built helicopters looking at different processes and figuring out how to improve them from a efficiency, quality, safety standpoint, or all of the above.

Varun Rajan

what was the kind of engineering that you were studying in school, and did you think that the first job out of college was gonna be one where you were, crawling around helicopters and improving processes for that kind of thing?

Omar Dinar

the program I was in, it was really new at the time. It was a joint program between the engineering and business school. So I would say it was a combination of a management degree and like industrial engineering, let's call it. So it was very much around operations and process focused and, and so I knew that I was being, I was geared towards moving into manufacturing, just which manufacturing, I didn't know. there, there's a couple large manufacturers here in Connecticut. one of which not far from where I grew up was, is this helicopter manufacturer. And I just ended up being really fortunate that it ended up working out that way that I was able to, to get a job there.

Varun Rajan

That's awesome. and you mentioned the relationship that you had with your manager being incredibly valuable. was this the same person that, was managing you during your, did you say it was an internship, while you were still in school, before you came on full time? Was it the same people that you were working with? how did that kind of work out in terms of the relationships that you built there?

Omar Dinar

Yeah, absolutely. So I did two internships, so one my junior and senior years, in between. And, they were actually. Different locations. my first summer I was in a, it was a repair facility nearby for transmissions and rotor heads. So they would, those would come, those components would come in from the field. After so many flight hours, they have to get serviced. And so I was working there and and then the following summer was actually their helicopter blade repair facility. So same thing after so many hours of flights. Of service, they have to get in and get repaired. Or sometimes, sometimes they end up in, in situations where they come back because they've been damaged and they have bullet holes in them even, so that, that was the repair facility. Now the internship had a number of people who were associated with it, one of which turned out to be my manager. So he was. I was mess, weren't necessarily reporting into him, but he helped manage the, that Internship Pro, he was a component, one of the people involved with that internship program. So I got to know him fairly well during my two summer internships.

Varun Rajan

and that was the person that ended up becoming your manager

Omar Dinar

Yeah.

Varun Rajan

full-time

Omar Dinar

Yep. Exactly.

Varun Rajan

what was it about that relationship, that was so valuable and, what was it about that caused you to look back on it so fondly?

Omar Dinar

he's a very approachable manager. he always had the time to listen and he would try to find ways to bring out the best in the people he worked for. Or worked with, excuse me. And, and I think that just, he was just a, just very, extremely knowledgeable, but very humble and just, I learned a lot of lessons from him and later on in my career when I first became a manager in a different role, I. I tried to emulate him, he was who I was trying to, because it, I had such a positive experience, so I used a lot of his, what he, how he approached management. I took a lot of that when I became a manager

Varun Rajan

I would love to talk more about that when we get to that

Omar Dinar

Sure.

Varun Rajan

of you becoming a manager as well. And I think it's really cool, especially because, you've obviously made transitions from that industry, and it sounds like a lot of those things that you probably leaned on as a manager still applied.

Omar Dinar

Absolutely. a, absolutely. And even now in the job I'm in, even though I don't have report, direct reports, I feel like a lot of the skills I use in managing my clients are very, there. There's a lot of interchangeable skills between managing your, people that you report that report to you and managing your clients because you're managing the relationship and you're trying to. to get them, convince them or motivate them to do something, that you want them to do. and so I found that when I was, when I moved into this role where, which I had never had any sales experience prior, I ended up leaning heavily on my managerial skills in order to win business and to manage my clients' relationships.

Varun Rajan

Yeah. tell us a little bit about, just pros and cons, about where you were at the time in the, manufacturing engineering role. what were the things that you were thinking about at the time and how did that inform you eventually, making a decision to move out? I know when you and I talked, I think you had spoken about going to school,

Omar Dinar

Yep.

Varun Rajan

you were working, as well. paint a picture a little bit about like what you were experiencing during your time there and how that potentially informed what your ambitions were for, what came next.

Omar Dinar

Yeah, absolutely. the first pro is what you had touched on. the company at the time had. One of the most amazing education programs for their employees. I was extremely fortunate at that time where, an employee can get, they would pay a hundred percent of any degree. An employee wanted bachelor's, master's, PhD, whether it was related to your role or not. at the time that company publicly said they wanted the most educated workforce, and they were, my, my manager had two master's degrees. my, his manager had three. I knew people with multiple PhDs that were all just funded through the company. So the moment I joined in early oh three, I, I immediately looked at all the different master's programs within a reasonable distance. Of where I lived and worked and thought about, what should I, you know what? I need to take advantage of this. and oddly enough, I ended up settling in on a master's degree in finance. at the end of the day and, I thought, my initial thought was well, having a bit of a quantitative background as an engineer, maybe finance could be a good compliment, and that could be something maybe interesting for me to pivot to in my career. And if that wasn't the case, I get to learn a lot about investments and this new area that could potentially help me personally as well. on the, and then on the con side, one thing, that one thing I'd say, one thing that really stood out was, as much as I enjoyed my time, there was, I felt there, there wasn't a lot of, there, there wasn't a lot of internal movement in the firm. when I was an engineer, a lot of people were there in the same role for 10, 20, 30 years. And so there wasn't, it intended to be very much, you had a lot of job security, but on the, but you tended to stay in a role for a very long amount of time. And also it was maybe because it was a military contractor. There was a, there was very much a level around a length of service being such a huge factor in your ability to advance in your career versus your own personal, ambition and drive. Having that be more of a motivating factor. It seemed like it was a, it was just. A very slow process. And as a result of that, just, people, that I just felt like that I wasn't around the environment, just what wasn't, didn't have as much drive because of that. and that was definitely a factor. That was one of the factors on why I ended up wanting to move elsewhere. eventually.

Varun Rajan

Process. Yeah. and so it sounds like it wasn't just this particular organization that you were with, but you saw maybe some of those, some of that being a trend of kind of company that it was. Being a military contractor, did you feel like. guess one of the questions I had was like, did you talk to, did you ever get a chance to talk to other people that were working at, similar companies doing similar things and get a sense of what the cultures were like there? And if that same sense of maybe things are moving a little bit, more slowly or I don't know if that's the way that you would've categorized it. I think one of the things that you said is not as much drive, I'd be curious to know if the organization that you were with was unique in that way or if there was something, more as a through line in the industry.

Omar Dinar

Yeah, that's a great question. it's difficult to say for certain. there were some opportunities where I was at events where I had to travel and I met people from com, competing companies, and part there could be some cultural similarities with some of those firms. I can't say for sure, but it seems like that, that, it, I wouldn't, it wouldn't be surprising if. if there was a similar, if people were having similar experiences at a, at a similar at those competing firms. Yeah, it's certainly possible.

Varun Rajan

And so at this point, the company that you're working at has this incredible education reimbursement program, something that you, really, are drawn to. There's this kind of like push factor of, I don't know if this is necessarily the industry for me,

Omar Dinar

Right.

Varun Rajan

much as I love the day to day of what I'm. Doing, advancement doesn't quite work the same way as my ambition would, drive me forwards towards pursuing. So that's a push factor, whereas the pull factor is I'm interested in finance, I have a quant background. I think I could like, use these skills, to my benefit either professionally or personally. And so that's what you ended up studying and gravitating towards. is that a fair summary of push and pull?

Omar Dinar

I think, that's a great way to summarize it. Ab absolutely ver and and it brings me, there was actually a second role I ended up landing in about, around the time I was finishing my master's degree at Sikorsky. and it was a really interesting, by complete like circumstance, Kind of funny how it ended up initially starting. So my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, was still in college and she was waitressing in the evenings. And, and one of the, one of her colleagues at the restaurant that she was started to become really good friends with, turned out that her husband was also working at the same company. and she's oh, great. He worked and he actually worked in, in, in a finance department. He, and he's oh, my, my boyfriend just finished his master's degree in finance and he works at that same company. And so he is I'll tell you about, I'll talk to my husband and maybe we can get them to meet. That would be so cool. and, he wanted to meet me and it turned out he was a very senior executive. probably, a direct report into the CFO. So he was running a fairly large division in, within finance at this firm and wanted to meet me, which was really, which really ended up working out. So we, I scheduled a meeting with him and went to his office. and, and really I was blown away. he was also a fantastic manager, but he was so different in other aspects. I called him, He was, he could have been a politician. He was just such a great talker and he could just sell things so well. And by the end of that meeting, he had convinced me that I should go work for him. and I ended up doing, he ended up being, I had, there were two layers of management between where I worked to where he was. So he was fairly senior, but, I ended up taking a job and working for one of his teams. It was more of a project management role. so it was interesting that I was working still a lot with, within the, it was a research and development project to build the next one of the new products and one of the new helicopters. And so I was still working a lot with engineering and with all other aspects. I, it gave me a very unique view of the company that I hadn't seen before. previously I had my world was that process that I was focused on and improving. and now I took a step back and all of a sudden I was, look, I was able to see all the different types of engineering that goes into the helicopter. I was able to see the budgeting side, the scheduling side, the interaction with the military, throughout the process. and that was fascinating. So I ended up doing that for the, for, I the first two years of my career I was doing this engineering work. And then the next two years of my career I was in this, in this finance slash project management role. at the firm?

Varun Rajan

that's so cool. So you ended up staying at the same company, as you were like looking to make an exit. this kind of kismet, EE energy

Omar Dinar

Yes.

Varun Rajan

your life and you meet somebody else that, seems to have and maybe played another kind of like maybe mentorship, or, role in your career at that point, but convinced you to stay at the company in a completely new role that did it. Did it feel like it scratched a little bit of the itch that you maybe had when you were in the more kind of like engineering, manufacturing role, to move on and do different things?

Omar Dinar

Yeah, it did. It did. it gave me an opportunity. I was able to get a promotion through that, which was a little bit accelerated than the norm. At the company, it gave me the opportunity. He put me in a very visible, project and something that he gave me the opportunity to do, to present updates directly to the CFO, to the chief financial officer. So he was, he gave me an opportunity really to. to shine and to have me be very prompt to build up more, to understand the company and to, and he really did a great job challenging me. so that, that did help, that did help. I still had the itch though. I was in my mid twenties. I wanted to, in being in my mid twenties, I wanted to move into the big city. I wanted to, I, I still had my thoughts. Eventually I wanted to get to New York. I want to do this job, in, in one of the big financial hubs in the world. and so that was still on the back of my mind. and so I, I definitely still was planning to do that and that took a little time to be able to execute. but that, that still kept in the back of my mind and I still eventually do want to do this. But this was a nice, this definitely was a new challenge for me, at the time.

Varun Rajan

There is the aspect of it where it helps you be excited about work and moving a little bit more in the direction of things that you're excited to do. was it also helpful in your search for kind of that finance, in New York kind of career that you were really targeting from like just like a resume piece perspective?

Omar Dinar

Yeah. definitely. it, it certainly was an interesting resume piece, like when I, when, there, there aren't too many people with. Go applying to investment banks with an, with a background in aerospace and having worked on these like r and d projects for, the next, military helicopter. So it was a, I think it was a bit of a unique experience that I was able to bring in. And also having that, that additional degree, really helped me stand out. So they, I attri they, they helped me certainly. Set up, set me up for the next phase in my career. and I'm very thankful for that. not only, between the degree I was able to get that saved me thousands of dollars, but I worked with some wonderful people, some managers that really left a lasting, lasting impact on me. So I was starting to think about, that end game in New York, in mind, and having live, living in Connecticut, working in a manufacturing company, I had no network. no. no way What, no way to be able to, just, to break into that. where with what I had, I felt and so that's where I thought the most effective way for me to be able to move to New York and build a network in New York to be able to get into that industry was to do an MBA. And even though I had the opportunity to do an MBA free of charge part-time in Connecticut, I decided not to do that. Use my savings, basically bet on myself and do a full-time MBA in New York where I had the opportunity to, build a base of people within the finance industry. Alumni. They would have events with companies for us to meet people. And also,

Varun Rajan

And

Omar Dinar

I had the opportunity, the MBA program I went into, in particular structured in a way where I was able to do four internships during the two years. So essentially I had an accelerated semester do it in half the time, so that the second half of every semester I was able to do an internship. And so I was able to do four internships, two of which in financial services. One that of the company then ended up hiring me. and so it really ended up working out, and that program was great. it was more man management focused, which I really wanted that for a couple reasons. One is. My first manager had an MBA and he spoke about how that helped him so much in being more well-rounded to become a manager. And it's by developing those soft skills, being an engineer, having this finance master's okay. Very technical degrees, but I felt the MBA, especially in management would help balance things out and be able to help me build those soft skills too that I felt like I would need at some point in my career.

Varun Rajan

that's super interesting to me because I've, I've talked to a lot of folks that have done MBAs and a huge part of what they highlight. is, is the networking opportunities, right? And it sounds like you very much, took advantage of that, and that was one of the big reasons that you decided to, go all in on it, with your savings and, and, moving and all that kinda stuff. When you talk about the MBA focused on, managerial stuff, and helping you develop your soft skills there, did that work in tandem with all of the networking that you were doing? what were you getting out of the MBA itself versus the networking that you were doing when you were like constantly interacting with people and, shaking hands and all that kind of stuff?

Omar Dinar

Yeah. I feel like with an MBA you don't, I didn't learn anything pro so profound where I just thought, I've never heard of that before. But it helps reinforce certain beliefs, Empowering your employees, for example, or what are some good traits of managers and things to consider? I think certainly a huge part is the networking aspect of it, is to make sure that you're not just going to class doing your homework and that's it. You, you, you're there to meet as many people as possible because it's so competitive. the barrier of entry is so high to get into financial services, especially in New York, that you need to be out there and be able to meet people. and it can't just be purely academic. You have to do, you have to do both, essentially And, and they actually helped us with. Acquiring internships, which is also really great. And, I told them I wanted to get into finance. They said, great. the first two internships will not be in the financial services industry. We wanna, we want to give everybody a very, well-rounded perspective and what how other industries operate, which I thought was really fascinating approach. for example, the first. internship I did was with a large retailer. and it was in their logistics. there was logistics division. It was doing financial planning, but it was just outside of New York in their distribution center. They had 27 miles worth of conveyor belts in there. And, and just learning about how they manage their budgeting and their revenue and their forecasting. For retail and for, and specific to logistics, I had never seen anything like that before in my career. And so that was very different, very unique. then the second internship was in a major telecom company. they were a, a department that took the customer survey data and they crunched those numbers to see, okay, what different aspects contributed, would, for example, contribute most to overall customer satisfaction. And so it was, that was also very unique and different. You, and you realize that every, these different industries, they do have some unique aspects. There are some things that are similar across industries, but some things that are very unique that I had never seen before. and so those were very rewarding. and then, and then my third in internship, I finally got into finance. it was summer of oh seven. I did an internship and it was in a strategy department. and I loved it. And actually the manager I had there, she was amazing. And I, when I was looking to, when I was applying for jobs, I was trying to find a way to work with her again.'cause we worked so well together. I. And then my last company was a company I ended up working at. It was in a different role, but it was a major investment bank, at the time. and it was, it was more of an internal consulting role, is the way I can best describe it. And so that one I was most excited about because it was really close to what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. And so being able to just be in those organizations, even though I was only there for seven, eight weeks at a time, they would give me some, a project to do. But a lot of it also was just trying to meet people there, trying to understand what did they do, what's, and just trying to figure out my fit, for where I should end up in the next phase of my career.

Varun Rajan

I'm really curious about. A couple of different sides of this experience that you went through with the multiple internships. One, what is, to the best of your knowledge or understanding, what is the philosophy behind the MBA program? you into internships that are outside of the thing that you are targeting, and from your perspective as somebody that, had an engineering background and went into an industry and then figured out, that you wanted to pivot into something else and you had your pushing pull factors there. did you see yourself at any point saying, oh, hey, obviously you had six or seven weeks in, in each of these roles. was there any, maybe risk is the wrong word, was there any opportunity for you to rethink what you were actually, targeting, finding things that clicked in different ways as somebody that has switched a lot of jobs. And this whole podcast is focused on career transitions. you exposed yourself to a lot of things, but you stayed on track to the thing that you had been targeting over the last couple of years, moving towards finance. So yeah. Anyway, one side of it being what's the MBA philosophy behind exposing you to all of those different industries. And then the other side of it being like, what do you think kept you motivated to stay on the track that you were targeting?

Omar Dinar

Yeah, absolutely. great question. The MBA was really unique and it was a big reason why I chose that MBA, it was, it, the principles behind it were very unique. it was put together by, there was a consultant, he was like a industrial statistician and managerial consultant who was really well known in the 1970s and eighties. His name's w Edwards Deming, and he wrote a couple of. Books and he was extremely popular. he, he still has a very prestigious, quality award that's awarded in Japan. And he was actually a big pioneer in helping, Japan and their manufacturing. and, and he, as he. Went on and he was mo focused more on statistics and quality control. He realized more and more that it was management. That's what needed to change. And with a lot of these companies, and he came up with these in a couple of his books, these principles, these points to good management. and this MBA really centered around. His principles and it was run by one of his, by one of his colleagues who he, who she worked very closely with for many years. And part of it was you learn that this discipline, it, this, these different areas around management that he was very focused on, but also you take it and then you apply it right away in real life. And they, and that's why they would do the internships as well, is. take what you've learned and then apply it right away and then move on to the next. so it was that, that, that's how it was going. it was very unique in, in the way the program was run and that was a big reason why I ended up, deciding to do it.

Varun Rajan

Gotcha. that's wonderful. And this was, at Fordham, is that right? I just

Omar Dinar

That's right. This was Ford. Yep. This was Fordham University.

Varun Rajan

and just a quick question

Omar Dinar

mm-hmm.

Varun Rajan

other programs that you were considering at the time, and weighing the trade offs between this and that?

Omar Dinar

I was really considering NYU and I applied and I was waitlisted at the time there at NYU. I was, they're extremely prestigious. I was really impressed what I attended, their open house. And, and thought that, they have an amazing network of, with their alumni and with the local, with the financial services industry, and they really help people to move into roles there. Fordham maybe wasn't as high on the rankings, but locally is has a great reputation, but I just thought with this specific program can give me the skillset I was really looking for. for my career.

Varun Rajan

Love that. and then just to come back to going through these internships, applying what you learned, you understood that was the philosophy of the MBA program. There weren't any moments where you were like, oh, maybe finance is not like necessarily the thing that I want to stay in. I guess that I think you answered my question a little bit. It was

Omar Dinar

Yeah.

Varun Rajan

this was the philosophy of what they were trying to do within the context of you already had this industry you wanted to be in. is that

Omar Dinar

Yeah, that's fair. And for example, when I was doing my second internship at the telecom company. I build up a really good rapport with my boss who was running that department and we were, he was talking about that he will be looking to hire, around the time I was graduating. And if I was, there were chances for me to try to, maybe pivot and not do finance overall. But I was really fixated like that. That was what, that was my goal. and I didn't really run into anything to deter me from that. From that was to get into financial services, try to get into an investment bank in, in New York. that was my goal, all along.

Varun Rajan

Yeah. Yeah, to totally makes sense. okay. Tell me a little bit about the MBA wrapping up. you had, you had mentioned your final internship that you had was this internal consulting role at a major investment bank.

Omar Dinar

Yeah.

Varun Rajan

who were they? what was the offer like? just in terms of was it similar to the work that you were doing in the internship? yeah.

Omar Dinar

I was there in the fall of oh seven and, so this was Leman Brothers. they, this was a, they were at the time the fourth largest investment bank in the US and had been around for a very long time and really had an amazing culture. And, at that time they were also recruiting at Fordham for a position. It was a 16 month rotation program and within their capital markets group. And, and they were looking for, to hire, they were scouring the country and they were looking to bring in eight people into this program And, I applied, I went through multiple rounds of interviews and, and very fortunately, I was selected, there was, I was the only one at Fordham to get the role. there was the other seven were from a handful of other prestigious, business schools from around the country. And I signed my offer letter December of oh seven. and I thought I was, I thought I was so happy and proud. your third semester in business school, your main focus is. Interviewing, applying for jobs, interviewing, and a lot of people, they go into their fourth semester, still trying to keep applying, keep interviewing, and it's a very stressful time. And the moment you can sign that offer letter, it's a huge relief off your shoulders, I could say. and I was signing it for what I thought was my dream job. I was so impressed with Lehman and their culture and. And how passionate people were to work there that I was so excited to start. and that was my start date was August of 2008

Varun Rajan

Wow. okay. Remind, remind us of the macro picture and

Omar Dinar

Alright, so

Varun Rajan

for those of

Omar Dinar

what,

Varun Rajan

be as.

Omar Dinar

sure. So what happened at the time in oh eight? So there was a big problem. With mortgages, they were called subprime mortgages. Long story short, there was a lot of bad mortgages that were being put into these securities called mortgage backed securities, and that was starting to unravel in, in oh eight. And the first bank famous firm, that bank that went under was called Bear Stearns. they were at the point of bankruptcy in March of oh eight and got acquired by JP Morgan. Now, they were the fifth largest, investment bank at the time in the us. Number four was Lehman. So all attention turned to Lehman Brothers. all four banks, Goldman, Morgan, Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman. But the biggest attention was on Lehman. And, and a lot of the market started to question. Would we and be the next bank to fall. And that was right around the time I was joining in, in, in August of 2008. we were put in, brought in my first day. It was in orientation. There were about 400 of us from all these post grad programs from around the world that flew everybody to the headquarters in New York. for, we had about a week of training and, And of course it was in the back of all our minds. everybody's saying how excited they are to have us to start our journey at Lehman, while at the same time you can't, every time you put on the television or you open up your computer, you hear we're on. We're front and center on news, on All attention is on us, basically.

Varun Rajan

yeah, that's gotta be a stressful place to be, at what, you had seen as your dream job. You were super excited. what ended up happening,

Omar Dinar

Yeah,

Varun Rajan

during your time there?

Omar Dinar

sure.

Varun Rajan

and how long was your tenure there? guess was, is my question.

Omar Dinar

So Mike, Like I said at the very beginning, I started my career in finance in the worst possible place, which was Lehman. and at the worst possible time, August of oh eight, because, six weeks later was when Lehman filed for bankruptcy, which ended up being the largest bankruptcy in US history. I had started a couple of weeks in, my first rotation was actually in the real estate group, so I saw. all of the holdings of all of these, all the assets that everybody was so concerned about, I saw, and that we were helping manage and a result of that, that put me in a very unique experience where there was ongoing negotiations to potentially purchase for other firms to purchase Cleveland. And we were part of helping support those negotiations by providing very detailed data for that. And that the last week prior to the bankruptcy, we were working very long hours and I remember our direct, the director of our team brought us into his office late on Friday before the bankruptcy. The bankruptcy happened, got announced Sunday evening in mid-September. That Friday we were brought in saying we, we all did everything we could to support the negotiations. There were two firms. In-house, try negotiating for the acquisition. And he said Everything we can, we did everything we could do. Just we should hear something in the, within the next day. It'll probably be a similar style acquisition to what happened with Bear. Okay. Saturday, we don't hear anything. Saturday comes and goes, and Sunday morning we start hearing rumblings and that Lehman may actually declare bankruptcy Sunday evening before the Tokyo market is open. And we never thought that the word bankruptcy was never brought up at all around me within those walls at Leman. I was stunned that Sunday morning that the firm I was working, I had just started, was gonna go bankrupt and, and where we didn't think that was gonna potentially be an option. And, and I was working, I was living in Midtown, just a couple minute block, uh, walk from the headquarters. And, and after the announcement happened, I get a, I got a call from a good friend of mine that I went to business school with. He said, you should go take a walk by your building right now. And this was before Twitter and Facebook was just building up. So he didn't have this instant like newsfeed. so my, my, my fiance, my wife was now my fiance, she had actually just left her job to do her MBA full-time. So I was supporting the both of us and, And we take a walk and I'm standing across from Lehman's headquarters on seventh and 49th. And, and I could see in the first two floors there's offices and people were boxing up all their belongings and, and you could look this up and there was, there was a lot of press there taking photos and videos of all this happening. And and I was hearing some rumors that day was, our badges may not work the next day. And so a lot of people took that as well. I'm gonna box up my things and go home and take it, take them home. And actually one of my old neighbors is, was at Lehman at the time. Who did? Just that. We were talking about that when I first moved into the neighborhood here in Connecticut. And, I didn't, I barely had anything at my desk. I was six weeks in, so I thought, I'm gonna go in and see what happens. I'm going to go in with an open mind and I felt like I had nothing to lose, and I walk in and my badge worked. Okay, great. we log in, we can't do anything. We're all frozen out of all our computer systems because they had to freeze all the assets.$600 billion worth of assets, a lot of which has to get traded actively on a daily basis, was frozen. something like this has never happened before. and the whole markets were really teetering at that time, because of that. and that's where other firms famously started to need very large amounts of money very quickly, otherwise they were gonna be going bankrupt. you, there's a number of very large notable firms that nearly went bankrupt. They got acquired or received a large amount of assistance to, to survive. And, and for.

Varun Rajan

is like tarp and stuff.

Omar Dinar

Yep. exactly. So there, there was a lot of that. And then, so I would come and go each my first week. we would go in for a few hours, not a whole lot to do. And we, we knew that there was a firm that was one of the firms that was negotiating beforehand, was still negotiating to, to make the acquisition. And the following late, the following week, Barclays had announced that they were acquiring the US operations. And, and so fortunately, I never missed a paycheck. my badge always worked. and I got, I became an employee of a, of Barclays who had purchased, Lehman Brothers, in, in, in late September.

Varun Rajan

that, that is such a rollercoaster. cool.

Omar Dinar

Yes,

Varun Rajan

Barclays, acquires, acquires Lehman Brothers.

Omar Dinar

that's, right.

Varun Rajan

that's and you're, there was it a sigh of relief? What was going through your head at the time and then, tell us about what that transition was like to, to working at Barclays. You were there for quite a few years, obviously,

Omar Dinar

Yeah.

Varun Rajan

yeah. us about how you were feeling and how, and the transition into, to working there.

Omar Dinar

Yep. So I get, so I, I got moved to, I'm not really sure how, but I ended up getting moved onto the same floor as, this department called Risk Management. and, and they didn't really know what to do with me because they dissolved my program and their, the hr, some of the HR people I was working with had left. and so they're trying to figure out what, where to place me. and I say, listen, I'll do whatever you need me to do. I'm open. I'll do, I'm willing to try out and what needs to get done. And, Coincidentally, a, a number of people on my floor in risk had left to go to a competing firm and there was a large amount of openings there. And they said, what do you think about risk management? I said, sure, I will give it a try. I'm definitely open for it Now. The good thing was, being in this program, the one silver whining was they. They preserved us from, they shielded us from the, from all the layoffs that were happening afterwards because you were merging two large banks. There was a lot of redundancies that would lead to layoffs. They purposely tried to keep all of us so that we could stay in, at the company, and they helped find us roles within the company. So that was that. I was very fortunate because a lot of people lost their jobs in oh eight in finance. especially when one acquired the other and a lot of overlaps. I was shielded from that and I was, I was new to the industry. I had never really known too much about risk management, but this ended up becoming the next phase in my career for the next 11 years across three different institutions, in New York was working in risk. it ended up working out well because. After oh eight, there were a lot of new regulations in the financial services industry that got put into place, a lot of which was around risk management. And so it was a fast growing area. all the major firms were adding in huge amount of resources into building up their risk management platforms, hiring staff. So it was a huge opportunity of growth in, in the industry at the time.

Varun Rajan

Wow, that's really interesting. Okay, so a couple of, is this, are you referring to Dod Frank specifically? Were there other things going on at the time? And, also, yeah, if you could give us, overview of what risk management means and why that ends up being impacted by these kind of like banking regulations, that would be really helpful I think, for the audience, just to get some context.

Omar Dinar

Sure. what ended up ha, why did these major banks. Fail, a$600 billion asset assets of Lehman Brothers can collapse So quickly was, was frankly that these banks were taking very concentrated positions in certain types of securities and with a lot of leverage. and when those securities fell, it started a cascading fallout and some of that was. the risk management of that, of those assets, of that balance sheet. And so Dodd-Frank, that's, that you're spot on. That was a, that was one of the major pieces of legislation that got passed. The, along with the Voler rule and the base accords, which was internationally drafted and, around making sure that this doesn't happen again. That banks had. Proper levels of capital. They had better controls around monitoring of risk, and there was much greater scrutiny around that to make sure that if there's another time where the next time markets, there's a, there's some kind of crisis that's happening that the banking sector isn't vulnerable the way it was in oh eight. And so a lot of these, a lot of new legislation got passed in the next. Couple of years after 2008 and a lot of that was around risk. So what risk management. Risk management, there's certain, there's multiple areas, but the first area I worked in was called market Risk. So what that meant was, we're holding onto certain securities to facilitate transactions and. Price movements, interest rate movements, credit spreads, all these different factors can impact those, the value of those assets on a given day. and what happens if the value decreases considerably. what, how much can we potentially lose and what if there's, and or we would stress test the portfolios in case of different scenarios if all of a sudden there is another big. a recession or a market sell off, are we prepared for that? And that those risk numbers then got translated into capital. So based off of how much risk banks were taking, that would dictate how much capital, how much funds do they need to keep in reserve to, in case of those events happen, to absorb those losses to make sure they don't go bankrupt or, and solve it the way we did so quickly.

Varun Rajan

Totally. Tha thank you for that overview. I'm curious about a couple of different things. One is, I see you were here at Barclays for about six years. did your role change evolve over time? Were there promotions? Did you end up being a manager during this time? tell me a little bit about the track record in history. and then I'll dive in with other questions

Omar Dinar

Okay. Okay. initially, we had gotten absorbed by Barclay. So we were trying to work within their, the way they operated and their, within their structure. and so initially we, it was, we were, a lot of us were shuttling back and forth between the Barclays location and. At the MetLife building versus the Leman headquarters, half days between the two until they did the full integration. And so first off, it was around understanding how did they manage risk, what calculations did they use? What's what's their software platform? and how do they mod, what do they do on a day to day? that was for the first, I'd say at least for the first year or two, a big portion of it was. The development that was first integrating, Lehman and Barclays and culturally that was, there was a, that there, there were some clashes there.

hope you enjoyed the conversation so far. We've landed at the spot where things are a little bit more clear and stable for him. we will have a follow up to this where we get to talk about the progression from finally being in finance, settling into risk management post, subprime mortgage crisis, financial crisis, et cetera. what I look forward to sharing with you guys when Omar and Ivory. Record is a lot of the stuff that came up a little bit earlier in this conversation about management and what he learned from his early managers and his MBA about what good management is like, what he ended up liking and disliking about being in a managerial role as he made multiple pivots into and out of management IC roles over the course of his career, as well as how. The relationship building aspects of management informed his final pivot into, uh, wealth management. Um, super, super interesting and valuable conversation, uh, that Omar is. Fortunately doing me the kind favor of rerecording. And so really excited to get that back, uh, in front of you guys, uh, in a couple of weeks when we're able to do that. But in the meantime, hope you enjoyed the conversation so far. please give me a, like, a review, subscribe on YouTube or a, any of the podcast platforms, that you might be finding me on. if you have anything you want to reach out to me at all, slide into my dms, you can always email me at Varun. That's V-A-R-U-N, at push pull podcast.com. Thank you.

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