l.a. of an m&a boutique and then the opportunity to talk to mark back in 2021 about bringing amp under the fold and having exposure to some great sectors of innovation around overall technology emerging tech companies, healthcare companies, fintech companies to plan a nice big flag and give broader capabilities around equities and equities research to the rest of citizens. so that was really the start of it. i'd like to joke with mark that his timing was impeccable or not so much since we did that deal we haven't seen a whole lot of deal flow in terms of ipos but that's coming i assume every year this time of year you say this is the year so hopefully this actually is the year but you know you have to be opportunistic and then when first your public failed we try to get involved.

we were invited in to bid on the whole bank. we saw that as a great opportunity for us to take on all of first republic but in particular the wealth and private banking expertise that they had become famous for. jpmorgan is a little bigger than us so they won the bidding but actually the talent didn't really fit into that jpmorgan model very well. so we were successful in securing a lot of the talent here in san francisco and out on the peninsula along with three big teams on the east coast in boston, new york and florida. and so that was another augmentation of the presence to the point now where we have over 300 people in california and we're i think really well positioned to serve the innovation economy, to serve entrepreneurs, business owners, middle market companies. we really want to be the bank of choice because i don't think the big banks do it so well

here and i think the banks that were doing it well didn't make it ultimately. so there's a void. there's some white space for somebody like citizens to come and bring our brand of banking and really serve the market well. >> i'll just quickly follow up, mayor, what makes san francisco a great place to do business? >> well, i mean there's no more beautiful place in the world. there's no better place in terms of that being the ai hub we got cal, we got stanford, we have one of the great medical institutions in ucsf. you know we have such an educated workforce here and when we're at our best this is the greatest city in the world. you know? don't get me started on our restaurants and our museums and our just our cultural brand is better than anywhere else in the world. and so if we can once again sorry to sound like a broken record if we can have safe

streets, if we can have our behavioral health crisis under control if we can we announced permit s.f. where you can have permitting reform to make it easier for small businesses to get up and running for housing to get built we have to make it more affordable so we have our challenges. >> but if government does its job, if we do what we know we are capable of doing with some common sense approaches then the business world can take off our our restaurant tours, our bars or restaurants are small businesses can thrive and we can invite business back to san francisco and say we're open for business again which we are. that flywheel starts going and there's no better place to be. >> well i'll point out within a ten minute walk of here some of the company's champions taken public over the last 2425 years uber, crowdstrike, snowflake airbnb workday docusign all companies we use every single day are within a ten minute walk up here that the mission

district there was some stanford study showed like 267 unicorns were created in the mission district over the last ten years. i mean literally there is no better place to start a company on the face of this planet. and so once again we lost some of that. we took it for granted over the last six seven years. i do not take it for granted. my administration does not take it for granted. people can pick up and move. we we lost, you know, stripe and square not to texas or to new york or to florida. we lost them, you know, one mile south of our border. and so we get not none of those taxes and so we have to be smarter about it and we will we'll get there. >> so bruce, i'll use that tech theme about the private bank and why you chose that opportunity and why we really leaned in here at citizens so say that tell me about the tech economy in here.

>> oh yeah we at the private bank are doing well we need to do to promote that and be part of the growth of ai and also the tech innovation hub. >> so we have great relationships with all the companies. witness the turnout today from different companies and investors and so you know, i think there's a there's a huge amount of interest in the innovation that's occurring and it's pretty widespread. >> it's so you've got ai, you've got data management, you've got cyber, you've got cloud. i have my head of it right here. am i missing something embedded fintech that we're talking to some companies that we can embed into our offerings to our customers and so you know, that really has been the driver of huge wealth creation in the region and so we want to have services that we can serve the entrepreneur as are seeking access to capital or liquidity events and then but also to manage their affairs and structure their assets to the

next generation appropriately. >> so there's you know the effort here has been to be able to bundle all that together and take a holistic view of the customer. >> well now that we are in new space at one on cal and i have the private bank right next to me i'm seeing that every day and the coordination with the private bank and the investment bank and a big bank like citizens is real. what i'll also say is we're investing in the city so i guess my question for you is what do you need from us and what do you think tech can do? i was here for the semiconductor revolution. i was here for the internet revolution. we've been here for the cloud revolution again all within walking distance of this building. so i guess my question for you, mayor, is how do we help promote that with the framework that you're trying to create? >> well, i just i would just ask all of you to be engaged and you know, your customers and your clients to get engaged in san francisco's, you know, renaissance or rebirth or whatever term you want to use. we are a city on the rise. the more you can tell people

hey, the streets are getting better, you have an administration and a board of supervisors that's focused on getting results for the people of san francisco again making sure that you get engaged in our local schools, our libraries, our arts and culture institutions making sure that your clients know about opportunities. i mean as simple as you know joining a neighborhood clean up on saturday mornings i'm doing them like once a month. we had 100 people join us and we went up and down van street two weeks. >> so i know that sounds small but it starts with doing one little thing if each of us do our little part there's the sky's the limit for our city. and so just making sure and then the companies you know i'm talking to ceos every day about how do we get their employees and their workforce engaged in san francisco again, you know, in the 20 tens you know, i talked to companies like visa and it became a recruitment

tool that their employees could get involved in the community. it keeps you grounded in what's going on in your neighborhoods and in your communities and that helps your workforce. so i'm going to push your ceo to do the same with all of you and you all push that down to your clients and then once again it becomes a virtuous cycle. >> yeah. bruce i was really impressed when i joined a little over three years ago. it's not just lip service services and we we invest in communities and we invest in people and i guess maybe you can lay out a little bit about that framework. >> so at citizens our credo is focused on what we refer to as the three c's some really doing a great job for our customers, being a great place to work and build your career for colleagues and positively impacting the communities that we serve. last year we volunteered 250,000 hours as citizens colleagues we volunteer on serve on over a thousand

nonprofit boards. >> we give treasure as well. we gave about $10 million to workforce development in particular has been something we think banks are very well-suited to do in terms of convening you know, the companies and understanding what their needs are in terms of skilled labor and working with community partners and government agencies to try to bring people up the economic ladder and get them the skills they need to be successful. so lots of things that we do we've just we're going to we're going to build that into our dna here in california as well. i think our champions and action program comes to each of our markets and looks for who are the tippy top nonprofits that are making an impact in the geography and bay area creative is somebody we selected as our first partner. they're going to provide mentoring and mental health services and reach about 14,000

people in 2025. so that will be the first of many grants. and then as you know, mark, we also sponsor a lot of arts and different types of events that is so important to the culture of this city. >> right? and it's true and i can say honestly as somebody who's experience that it's not just lip service. it's something we really live that credo every day. >> so that's why i'm here. that's right. there was just lip service, right? >> yeah. and that's a really important point here. i mean when i called top to net and i called a couple of months ago and i just said there was no hesitation there was no and that said like you said what do we need to help you thrive? >> and i've been here 30 years. >> i've never heard that. yeah, what i've heard is well you know yeah, it's a new day and it's a new day like we want you here we want all of you and we want your customers doing well but that that the city needs to do well for and it's it's it's symbiotic yeah yeah

what i what i enjoy about your remarks too is the sense of urgency so there's a moment in time when we got to get after it and you've got a lot of tailwinds from the tech sector and ai and things that if you can capture those and then improve the quality of life issues it can be very, very powerful where we're closer to to being back than most people realize. and the one thing i'm going around it there's there's a narrative out there about our city that is propagate by people that haven't been here for years and that just want to hate on our city and i'm tired of that. the people who live and work in this city are going to be the ones that determine our future and it's bright and it's on the rise. >> and you're right, i like like there's 14 minutes 42 seconds and when i leave this room we got to go rush and get back to work. >> yeah. yeah. there's challenging times i

often say nobody goes into politics like nobody goes into banking who's a pessimist. >> those are two bad jobs to be a pessimist. so we sell hope every day as a banker and bruce says it well and and i'll quote him here without him knowing he says it's a noble profession and then there's snickers and there's little giggles and all that. but no, we're taking little company and we're making big companies and we're endowing you know, making resources available. so my question with all those challenges that we both face and i'll get to both of you what makes you optimistic but as well realistic about the challenges we all face because big cities face challenges. >> me first start with you mayor. >> you just you just have to go to one of our small restaurants and see these entrepreneurs knowing that you know, we just sat down with a bunch of restaurant owners all of you of if you're from san francisco you've all even if their restaurants and before covid

they were the medium profit was 6% now it's like point 1% and you still see people starting restaurants because they their whole heart and soul is into it. >> so you can go to, you know, a place like four kings like in chinatown and you just there's this great vibe like north beach i was there a couple of days ago and the vibe is is the vibe is good in our city and and that's what gives me hope and optimism and then you flip it and we have a $140 million budget deficit and it's more like a $1.1 billion budget deficit because we're owed $260,000,000,260 million by fema for money that we spent and i don't think we're getting that. so we have to be realistic. but you're right. there's i'm an optimist and i believe that san francisco is the greatest city in the world when we're at our best. we've been through downtimes

before and we've always come back and this time will be no exception. i just want to get there quicker. >> bruce yeah, elevate a little bit and kind of look at the whole country and then come back to san francisco. >> but you know the big cities have had their challenges over the last 5 or 10 years new york is one of those cities as well. >> but we you know, as a northeastern bank we did not have a big presence in new york city and we need to solve that . so four years ago we acquired two banks, hsbc's east coast branches and then also investors bank to get 200 branches in new york and a million people there with the expectation as tough as that things were in new york that this city's don't stay down forever they have great romita morial and people step into the void and ultimately there's

course correction. >> so similarly when we looked at california huge economy you know san francisco not doing so great but ultimately that'll settle itself out and so there's these sign always things go up and things go down if you make the investment when things are down you just expect things will improve. so very great to see you here. i haven't totally sorted in new york yet but i think that's also going to be on the mend and you know, we're also look down at florida and as another big state and a big economy and a lot of our northeastern customers have second homes down there. >> so we're making a big investment there. so we need to kind of elevate and look at who we were historically and then where's the action across the country? where's the dynamism and you know, california and san francisco just being the innovation center of the country is a place you can't miss. you've got to be here. so i'm optimistic that under your leadership and kind of the

power of the forces that pushed things to self-correct that our timing is good. >> yeah, right. you just said he just said you got to be here. yeah. and that that people say what are your goals for four years and i say by the end of our first term everybody around the world is going to say you got to be in san francisco. >> yeah, right now it's not so sure for years they'll be saying what you're saying. i think you have a really good point mayor. the most of the people who criticize have not set foot in san francisco and like you said, big cities do have problems and even that small example driving to work and seeing somebody and making them feel that the city cares. so it starts with that. it starts with our kids and it starts with our block by block and community by community. i have time for a question or two and i did want to save a little time for that in the back salesforce. mr. eric can you give us a quick update on police hiring and the morale in the

department at this point since you've been on the ground? >> i i police hiring and morale i think we you'd have to ask them i think it's has has really increased you know we are focused on fully staffing our police department we should be around 2000 officers we're below 1500 but we did have an academy class that started in january 55th recruits. it was the largest class in six years or seven years. now we got to make sure that the attrition rate is stronger so we're working on that. we got to hire faster. we got to use technology to in between because it's going to take us a few years to get back to full staffing. >> but here's what i will say our crime stats are at like ten, 15, 20 year lows right now we are doing well. it is the feeling of safety that we have to attack and that's where the behavioral health crisis comes in. we have to get people off the

streets and into more mental health and drug treatment beds. we just pass this fentanyl state of emergency ordinance a 10 to 1 vote by the way, that allows us to go stand up 1500 shelter beds, more mental health, more drug treatment beds, higher police officers and first responders more quickly. i think the morale has vastly improved over the last couple of months and we're focused on making sure that we allow police to do their job always with police oversight. but we want to enforce the law . and if you are dealing drugs in this city, we are coming after you and if you are using drugs we're not going to allow you to use drugs on our streets anymore. we're going to get you the help that you need and get you into mental health and drug treatment. that's we have a long way to go on police recruitment but we have we're off to a good start but it's going to take us some time. >> question please. on the topic of sense of urgency, how much control does the mayor have versus the

supervisors? >> what is in your control versus having to work? >> so it's a great question. i got this on the campaign. there was a lot of people that said all the board of supervisors have all the power. i was never one that believed that you have this is a strong mayor system. the power has been chipped away over the last 20 years for sure. but this is why i walked in. there's 11 supervisors or 11 city council people here in san francisco and i stated from the beginning that i wanted to work with all 11. i didn't want to just try to get six five votes and so i asked for more power around the central state of emergency issue and we got 10 to 1 unusual we just had a a new bill that was passed to convert office space into residential. we got a92 vote to make it easier to do that. so we've changed the narrative in terms of how we work with them. >> but the mayor has power. i'm going to lean into it.

>> the supervisors have oversight and we have 130 commissions and we got to get commission reform under control or we have to have commission reform. but you're not going to hear me 2 or 3 years from now saying oh, the supervisors you all can point the finger at me but i may have a good working relationship with the supervisors the first time you've seen that in six years and i don't remember a lot of ten 192 in the last number of years in san francisco the sky is blue would have been six five. >> yeah that's right. >> that's right so it is and it is a new day. yeah i got time for one more question if anybody has a question if not ally group yeah exactly. >> i you know i'm going to have one more question and i'll leave you some time to say we hear a lot about i you've had a lot of people in the air world support you and they've been very supportive of back to work back at your office.

can you talk a little bit about again we saw the semiconductor revolution show the software revolution which are the internet right here. tell me a little bit about how you think about that, how you think about that, how that helps san francisco. >> well, actually the ai companies have been back to work. you know, whether it's anthropic or open ai or salesforce i mean they they are either in for or five days a week. we just came out with a back to office requirement of four days a week that will be instituted in april to be fair to our our great city hall employees and departments who work tirelessly each and every day you we have 32,000 employees. 70% of them are in five days a week. so let's let's have that out there. but the other 8 to 10,000 are back one to maybe three days a week. so we're upping that to four. we're in talks with all of them. i think it's important for us to have, you know, forward facing people at government delivering services to people.

it's i'm not talking about you know, i don't think it's my job to impose that on the private sector. you all get to make those decisions. but i believe that we need to lead by example and that was the reasoning behind the office the return to work policy. >> and bruce, we you spent a lot of time i know you're going back with michael but can you talk a little bit about our investment in technology and our investment in ai and how we see that changing our bank? >> yeah. so it's very exciting and people say wonder is it overhyped or is it real? i certainly think it's real the potential to be game changing in terms of how work is organized and how productive your colleague base can be. so i think though in a heavily regulated space like banks it's a little bit kind of walk before you run and make sure that you're kind of got the right governance and oversight on this. but we've already last year we had three very powerful use cases that have yielded some

real benefits and i think we're going to we're going to push that up to about ten more this year. we've got really good data organization and we've got a team that's working with the businesses to prioritize the things that will have the biggest impact. beyond that we're trying to push out licenses like copilot to the kind of broader companies so people can start to get familiar with the tools and start to benefit in their daily kind of work life. so anyway, it's very exciting and i think again a lot of the companies now that are here at this conference are involved in that whole effort and helping to organize data. there's lots of subsectors within the big ai umbrella that companies can kind of find their niches and really grow very successful companies place there. >> how would you like the tech community to engage with you?

how would i like the tech community to engage with us? this is a good start. we have, you know, roundtables. we want to know what you know our employers need in terms of clean streets, safety and security, public transportation muni is a huge issue in terms of we have a huge budget deficit with muni. we need to get that under control because we need all of these companies to be able to have their workforce move efficiently on public transit and call us. we are open i would give out my cell phone number. >> this is a big group but we are very easy to get a hold of. he knows how to get a hold of me any time and we want we want feedback. we want open lines of communication. if there's an issue that a company is facing we want to hear about it. and so don't hesitate to pick up the phone. we got members of my team here . we want you to know that

san francisco is open for business and that means that you all can get in touch with us and and we're open. >> that's great. so i think we've heard a lot, mayor and i appreciate about why san francisco i want to close with bruce and i spent every day thinking about why citizens in california why citizens in san francisco but i'd love to hear from you, bruce, about that and about what we're building and trying to build something special out here. >> yeah, well thanks for going to me last but again i just that the caliber of people that we have here the entrepreneurial wisdom from our jmp folks and from our private bankers matches the whole dynamism in the california economy. so i just think we're we're doing it in a really joined up way where we can provide total solutions for folks with the best caliber folks and we're still working on some of the build out of white glove

service levels and things that first republic spent years perfecting. but i think we're making good progress on that. and so if you have the talent and you're committed, i think we're going to meet success and help push this economy and benefit from it. >> and i'll let you close i will say i say it all the time nobody americans love to kind of hit hard on things that are going wrong but nothing america loves more than a resurrection story. >> nothing more. >> no talk about that. oh, everybody you know around the world people love san francisco and they want it to succeed. and so let's start with that and then we're going to do the basics on our end and i'm telling you san francisco is on the rise. there's no better place to do business and i look forward to working with all of you and your clients and your customers because we're coming back. >> thank you both. this is great. thank you all. thank you for

four of the 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. weeknight newscasts at nbc bay area. she's been awarded three emmys for her live anchor coverage of breaking news. please give it up for janelle wang of nbc news bay area. okay. joining me now.

hi everyone. good morning. oh, our nbc bay area photographer is here. >> yay. hi, ethan. how are you? we're going to put this on the news tonight because it is a big day here in san francisco. an exciting day. i'm janelle wang, your host and emcee for today's city breakfast brought to you by the chamber of commerce, the san francisco chamber of commerce. it's a beautiful day here at pier 27. i spoke to one of our meteorologists at nbc bay area and she confirmed today will be the best day of the week weather wise here in san francisco. it will be seven hitting 80 degrees in some parts of the city. if you're inland more not by the coast. that's the forecast. so it's going to be a great day here in the city. a perfect way to celebrate 175 years legacy here in san francisco a truly remarkable milestone for our city and the chamber of

commerce. and as we look around we are reminded of the resilience it's the innovation and diversity that have defied, said san francisco for nearly two centuries. it's incredible to think about all the progress that we've made and to be part of today's celebration is truly an honor. and we have an exciting lineup today including unveiling poll results by united airlines. yes, i got a sneak peek. very fascinating. an address from mayor daniel luria. >> he's here. economic insights from chief economist jeff krzanich at fifth third bank and a special guest brady stewart, a ceo of bay fc which is about to start their second season. so we're going to get started and to start our day let's

welcome the president and ceo of the san francisco chamber of commerce rodney fong. good morning everybody and welcome to the san francisco chamber of commerce 2025 city beat breakfast. i'm so delighted to have everybody here this morning as we celebrate 175 years in this beautiful space here in san francisco. this is not just an anniversary reflects the history but it's really an opportunity for us to look ahead at the exciting future of san francisco. now things to you may look a little bit different the lapel pins, some coffee mugs on your table, maybe some of this backdrop. we've taken this opportunity to have a transformational moment and rebrand the san francisco chamber of commerce for its 175th anniversary. i want to quickly kind of go back to a couple of things and want to point out a company called general creative