WHEN: Today, Thursday, January 22nd
WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of CNBC interviews on CNBC's "Squawk Box" this morning live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. For a roundup of all the interviews on CNBC's "Squawk Box" today, go to squawkbox.cnbc.com.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Co-Founder
HOFFMAN ON BITCOIN
The thing I think is least interesting about bitcoin is what its current price is. Whether it's $200 or $1000, that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing about bitcoin is how it is actually a trustless system that preserves trust without any central node and the fact that you can do any kind of e-asset issuance off the blockchain.
HOFFMAN ON BUYING BITCOIN
The advice I give my friends is, don't buy any bitcoin that you wouldn't be comfortable losing, rather like a seed investment in a technology company.
Becky Quick: Well wait a second, I don't feel comfortable losing any of it.
Reid: Well then don't buy bitcoin.
HOFFMAN ON BITCOIN USES
It can bank the unbanked, in a lot of the markets where the banking system is too expensive in order to have digital participation in the capital system. The second thing is you can create machine to machine commerce which could do all kinds of different things in terms of enabling services. But the simplest one would be, you think of your car becoming a software vehicle. It could automatically handle parking, bridge tolls, all the rest of it if it had a machine to machine currency.
HOFFMAN ON PAYPAL & ICAHN LONG
The thing I was opposing in Icahn's view was to say well the management team should simply split the companies and we have no plans, it's just a financial transaction. I was like no, no you're building long-term value. So the fact that the management team said we have a plan, we're splitting them, we know how to create more value with that, is something I support.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: But doesn't that mean that Carl Icahn was right the first time?
Hoffman: Well he didn't have a management team with a plan.
Sorkin: But the idea was right.
Hoffman: I think the question is, look, what I said specifically in my piece was you could go either way. When I actually wrote the very first piece I said you can go either splitting or staying together if you have a strategic plan for what you're doing.
HOFFMAN ON AIRBNB
If you say, does this shrink the actual number of dollars in a system? That's actually part of how an economy grows. Because if less dollars go to this, it can go to other things. So it may ultimately reduce the amount spent on staying at overnight in hotels. That's okay. That's part of what progress is.
HOFFMAN ON FROTHY VALUATIONS
It's clearly frothy. The valuations are very high. There's a ton of capital going into the system. The problem is, well what does it look like retrospectively, what do the exits look like? A lot of times you sit out an investment because you think oh that's too high, and then it actually goes a lot higher. So you try to play intelligently. I think there are still very good investments to be made, we've made a couple this year. But you have to be much more careful when you have frothy valuations.
Robert Diamond, Former Barclays CEO
DIAMOND ON EUROPE
The longer term objective for Europe, which is really about jobs and economy, is going to take more than what Governor Draghi can do in terms of bond buying. I think a focus on the real structural issues around labor reform, financial reform, bank reform, and particularly capital markets reform.
DIAMOND ON OUTLOOK
I think one of the things we're going to see in 2015 is a continued dichotomy and divergence between the U.S. economy and its outperformance, and the European economy and its underperformance.
DIAMOND ON EURO
With the introduction of the euro in 1999 there was such incredible promise for a European government market that could compete with the US Treasury market. And I remember almost immediately being part of the team that issued 30 year euro corporate bonds for British telecom, a UK company in the euro. And that kind of promise has not delivered as much on the depth of the capital markets.
DIAMOND ON FINANCIALS
I think 2015 will be as seminal period for investing in financials. If you look at the last decade in the stock markets, not just since the crisis, but in the last decade, the S&P is up 60%, financials are down 20%, banks are down 30% and just this year banks are down 15%.
James Gorman, Morgan Stanley CEO
GORMAN ON ECB
What I want him to do is to show a little leg. I think it's time, to be honest, that we move forward here with the QE program. We've seen it operate in the U.S., I believe successfully, not without its critics, we're seeing it in Japan, confronting deflation in Europe. It's not the be all and the end all, but it's a necessary step.
GORMAN ON ASSAULT FROM REGULATORS
We're not under assault from regulators. There's obviously been more regulatory change in the last 5 years than there's been in probably the last 50. And all of us are adjusting our businesses to reflect that.
GORMAN ON US ECONOMY
The U.S. is doing terrifically. The problem is we have so much scar tissue from the crisis we just don't like admitting it. So if you look at unemployment under 6 percent, you look at the strength in the dollar, you look at the return of the housing markets, you look at the appreciation of 401k plans, cheap energy, the list goes on and on and on.
GORMAN ON PERFORMANCE
We had a number, Joe, of unusual things that occurred in the quarter, some positive to the P&L, some negative, all positive in terms of getting them behind us and sort of getting further distance from the crisis. Separate from that, the backdrop as you said, the trading environment was very tough- October, back half of December very tough, came through it okay. Good news is the core businesses that are non-trading did very well in this environment.
GORMAN ON GOLDMAN
Goldman's a great competitor, great company. We run our business based on our business model. We've made some strategic choices, which are very clear and we made them over the last several years. They've changed our model, they've changed our profile. And it will take a couple of years to get to our full performance level. But we're confident, and obviously the market and how the stock as performed- three years in a row, last two years the stock has been number one in our sector.
GORMAN ON VOLATILITY
Volatility is obviously a good thing in a trading business. But also client flow- you don't want so much volatility that clients aren't active. So there's a tension and a balance. Listen the fixed income markets and commodities were very tough. We had oil last 6 months has dropped 50 percent of its value. Obviously the markets were tough, but equities did just fine. So we had very strong, world leading equities sales and trading franchise.
Michael Dell, Founder and CEO of Dell Inc.
DELL ON RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
I think if you dial back and look at what was going on when Dell was a public company there was bit of a debate going on about should Dell go off and acquire all these new customers, should Dell invest in the R&D projects it was investing in? We know who won the debate and we're still investing. It's working.
DELL ON IBM
They were in the hardware business, they're not so much in the hardware business anymore. We are growing where they're exiting and I think we all have to pay attention to these lessons of how do companies change and evolve. Certainly, they've made massive investments in the new areas, but right now it's kind of stalled.
Glenn Hutchins, Co-Founder of Silver Lake Partners
HUTCHINS ON POST SOTU
I think post-State of the Union United States right now a lot of rhetoric, but it sounds to me like we have a real good opportunity to get some trade deals done and to get after corporate tax reform. I think both of those things would be highly growth accretive and would help.
HUTCHINS ON INCREASING JOBS
I'm personally more in the Simpson-Bowles tax approach, which is get all the preferences out, get the rates down as a result of which and then you don't have to have a difference between ordinary income and capital gains because they're all relatively low and then let the market allocate the capital. I think that will increase jobs and reduce unemployment and inequality.
HUTCHINS ON CHANGING WORK
Right now, we're in a process where work is I believe fundamentally changing and work is going to go less from an industrial age concept of having a job where you punch a clock and more where you have projects that you work on and objects that you own like your car, your home; Airbnb, Lyft that you share where you gather income.
Rosalind Brewer, Sam's Club CEO
BREWER ON FUEL PRICES
We are benefiting from the fuel prices right now. It's been great for us. Fuel is usually a great traffic driver and we do everything we can to deliver the best prices on fuel as we do our goods and everything else.
BREWER ON TRAFFIC
We saw the turn just before the holiday. So we saw the oil prices moving and the gas prices moving at the same time. We saw traffic tick up and it's part of some of the benefits and pleasures of the holiday added in there.
BREWER ON AMAZON PRIME
We are redefining our competitive landscape at Sam's and there are some online membership concepts that you wouldn't traditionally think were competitors. I do view Amazon Prime as a competitor.
Penny Pritzker, U.S. Commerce Secretary
PRITZKER ON FEEDBACK
This is the biggest change in Cuba policy in the last 50 years, and it's been extraordinarily well received. Whether it's among Latin American country leaders. In fact I was with the Vice Premier of China the day we announced and he turned to me and he said great, bold move, really exciting. So lot of positive feedback, but a lot of work to be done.
PRITZKER ON OPPORTUNITY
Only 5% of Cubans today have access to broadband. And about 2 million out of 11 and a half million Cubans have a cell phone. So just getting telecommunications infrastructure and the ability to get access to cell phones, to personal computers, to the television, creating that kind of communication and connectivity is going to have a huge impact.
PRITZKER ON VALUES
We're not abandoning our values. And we're certainly not abandoning our commitment to human rights. And that's why obviously diplomatic relations are so important so that we can open that dialogue up and begin to address these issues.
PRITZKER ON TAX REFORM
The president is very committed to trying to get business tax reform. And has been looking for, as you heard Secretary Lew say yesterday, we're looking for where is the overlap in policy so that we can actually get something accomplished. And I think given the new Congress and given their commitment, I think there's a real opportunity.
PRITZKER ON FAST TRACK
I've been talking to dozens of our Democratic leaders both in the House and the Senate who have an open mind, and understand the reason that we need Fast Track and we need these trade agreement is to get market access for our businesses, to continue to be able to export into all these countries and this is about American leadership. If we don't set the rules for trade in the 21st century, our competitors are.
PRITZKER ON ANTONIO WEISS
I think Antonio is a terrific executive and the fact that we can get him in as soon as possible I think is a real win for the administration and a win for our economy.
Vitali Klitschko, Kiev Mayor
KLITSCHKO ON DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY
We Ukrainian don't want back to USSR. It's our main goal, after revolution of dignity, our main goal to build European country. Modern, European, democratic country.
KLITSCHKO ON ENERGY
We try to be modern and to make reform in Ukraine and also energy direction. And to be independent from Russia from energy resources. It's a very important point for our country.
KLITSCHKO ON FIGHT
To be modern, democratic country. that's our main goal. We are fighting for that, and I know better than anyone the rules. No fight, no win. We are fighting for our region, for our dream.
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