General Motors Wants to Power More Than Cars (ft. CFO Paul Jacobson)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Timing the market, fighting inflation, managing risk? Financial decisions can be tricky. Investing isn't just math, it's psychology. Your neurons are playing favorites and the market doesn't care. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help.
Join host Mark Reapy as he breaks down practical strategies to help overcome the mental traps that may affect your investing decisions.
Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.

**Ann Berry** (0:31)
For Thursday, August 13th, it's Brew Markets Daily and I'm Ann Berry.
General Motors, ticker GM, the 117-year-old automobile OG. Currently in a moment where it's creating options for where to drive its business next. From subscription software services to insurance products, defense applications to energy storage systems, GM has a lot more to it than just its famous internal combustion engine cars. To break it all down, we invited onto the show Paul Jacobson, GM's Chief Financial Officer. Well, Paul knows a thing or two about navigating industries that are prone to shifting global forces. Before joining GM in 2020, he spent over 20 years at Delta Airlines, weathering everything from the financial crisis to COVID.
Well, now Paul is helping to steer GM through another period of enormous change. From a reversal in EV tax credit policy in the core US market, to managing the supply chain through new tariffs. We dig into all of that, plus GM's growth vectors, Paul's approach to breaking the CFNO stereotype, and what he's learned from working alongside legendary CEO, Mary Barra. It's a conversation you won't want to miss, and that I absolutely loved having, and it's coming up in just a moment. But first, this episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:47)
Is recency bias skewing your potential stock picks? Is attribution bias messing with your retirement plan? Overconfidence describes our tendency to overestimate our abilities. Loss aversion helps explain why losing a dollar hurts more than gaining a dollar. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, explains how these cognitive and emotional biases can affect the decisions you make about your financial life.

**Ann Berry** (2:09)
Host Mark Reapy, head of the Schwab Center for Financial Research, and his guests, offer actionable insights on what you can do to help fight off these decision-making biases.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:18)
Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com/financialdecoder, or wherever you listen.

**Ann Berry** (2:24)
Now, my conversation with Paul Jacobson, Chief Financial Officer at General Motors. Paul, thank you for joining me on a very warm, slightly stuffy New York day here in studio. I'd want to touch before we get into the numbers and the good stuff. I want to talk about your background. You joined General Motors as CFO in December of 2020 So we're talking about COVID.
And you've joined a company that has since gone through tax credits for EVs being reversed and tariffs. Before that, before joining GM, you were the Chief Financial Officer of Delta Airlines. And you were there through the worst of COVID. Don't you want an easier life than being in the auto industry and in the airline industries, two notoriously difficult industries for eking out margin?

**Paul Jacobson** (3:12)
Yeah, well, for sure. And thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And I live in Atlanta, so don't worry about the heat. It's still pretty mild. But, you know, the idea of leaving Delta, where I spent 24 years, I joined there as an analyst out of business school, was a tough one. I love Delta. I love the people of Delta. And had an amazing time there. But, you know, I, from the earliest stages of my career in that airline industry, it seemed like it was crisis after crisis, because it was 9-11, then it was bankruptcy, then it was a merger, then it was a financial crisis, then ultimately in COVID, you know, it was very much a labor of love, but it taught me a lot about resiliency. And, you know, I am, you know, as a CFO, I think, you know, CFOs tend to be very skeptical, but I've tried to coin the term of I'm an optimistic skeptic.
And that is, I've been through enough to see that it works out in the end and, you know, try to be a little bit of a calming force in the midst of all that change. So when the GM opportunity came, you know, I remember, actually, I have a TV in my bathroom and I always tune in to business news as I'm getting ready in the morning. And it was August 11th, 2020 I remember it like it was yesterday that I saw that the GM CFO had left. And I, by that time, had enough of a network of CFOs that I remember thinking, that's a great job. I wonder which of my friends is going to get it.