I’ve wondered who would win a head-to-head battle between Bobby Axelrod and Harvey Specter. They are the lead characters on two of the most popular shows on cable TV. Showtime’s “Billions” features Bobby Axelrod, portrayed by actor Damian Lewis, and USA Network’s “Suits” has Harvey Specter, portrayed by actor Gabriel Macht.
I wish the two showrunners would do a series of crossover episodes where Axelrod and Specter are on opposite sides of a billion-dollar business deal. This would be epic. Brian Koppelman and Aaron Korsh, are you reading this?
Bobby Axelrod runs a multi-billion dollar hedge fund in New York & Connecticut. Harvey Specter is a partner at a high-end New York City law firm representing clients in billion dollar deals. What Axelrod and Specter have in common is that they are both alpha males, both always playing only to win with no prize for coming in second place. Neither of them minds a win-win situation necessarily but both extensively look for and utilize leverage in order to gain an advantage on whomever happens to be on the other side of the deal they want to win.
Specter and Axelrod both are known to push ethical, moral and legal limits to gain this leverage they seek. Both have sacrificed personal relationships as a result of their relentless pursuit of success, financial gains and winning. This begs the question, what is an acceptable cost of winning? And, is winning at any cost a good win?
Big law firms, big banks , Wall Street, Bay Street, all continue to feature this alpha male environment where a big win is celebrated and a point is made of identifying who lost, or was “killed” in a business battle. But why does this attitude still prevail in 2021? A common counter attitude is that a good deal is one where both sides are happy and benefit from the transaction(s), but this win-lose approach has been around a long time and is not going away.
It seems like service providers - lawyers, bankers, advisors, accounting firms...see a win as important because they got the job done in serving their client. They got their clients what they wanted. The relationship, and these “wins” are transactional. They work on a deal, the deal is completed and then forgotten by these service providers, as they move on to the deal.
Those that lead and operate active businesses, that are developing and marketing products instead have an indefinite time horizon on those same deals. They have to live, work and deal with those on the other side of the deal for many years. When something goes awry in the ongoing operations, they have to deal with it, fix it and hopefully resume a mutually beneficial relationship. They can’t move on, like the service providers do.
Bobby Axelrod and Harvey Specter are fictional characters and their portrayals are dramatized to maximize the overall entertainment experience viewers get from watching “Billions” and “Suits”. Having acknowledged this, it’s worth examining their respective approaches in further detail to help us answer the question of what’s an acceptable cost of winning.
Bobby Axelrod manages a multi-billion dollar hedge fund that includes his own money and that of the team at “Axe Capital”, but it mostly consists of millions and billions of dollars of clients’ money. He is a service provider in this regard and all that matters is delivering a return on investment to his clients that is better than his competitors. Axe Capital’s clients can take their money to any money manager. From this perspective Axelrod’s strategies and plans and related consequences drive him to do what’s best for his clients; we don’t usually see him overstepping legal or ethical boundaries when it comes to the broader portfolio of Axe Capital. Where Bobby crosses the line is for his own interests, which may be exclusive from Axe Capital or only partially tied to the primary hedge funds of the firm. We see Bobby driven by his need to win, and to specifically see his adversary lose. This approach is driven primarily by the ego of the character.
Harvey Specter is a senior partner at a corporate law firm. He makes money from legal and advisory fees his firm generates from the clients he services. He is rarely playing with his own money. Like Bobby Axelrod, Harvey’s actions usually are in the best interests of his clients. We do see Harvey pushing legal and ethical limits in how he gains the advantage his clients need to achieve their objectives. But we don’t see him personally cross lines, as he personally gains nothing by pushing too far. He faces the opposite risk, where pushing his clients too far can cost his law firm and ultimately cost him, if uncollectible billings and lost clients. Ergo - Harvey Specter generally doesn’t get as close to the edge of the cliff of ethics and legalities as Bobby Axelrod.
This brings us back to the original question - head-to-head who wins? Harvey Specter or Bobby Axelrod? If you believe that he who pushes hardest will usually win; he who is willing to risk more and is willing to skirt “the line”, then you’d have to bet on Bobby. If you subscribe to the philosophy that winning at any cost is not a win, and that a good outcome is when both sides are happy then you’d bet on Harvey Specter; this comes with the caveat that Harvey doesn’t necessarily prioritize a win-win outcome, but rather a win is more likely with his approach.
Also coming back to the question of what is an acceptable cost of winning. Refer to a prior post on E2FI and always doing the right thing. “Winning” where ethics and morals are compromised is not my recommended way forward, ever. Crossing legal boundaries is not worth it to me. I’m not going to give up on something because I won’t cross the boundaries, I’m simply going to find another way. There is always another way; I never advise quitting, in fact quite the opposite. Keep going, and keep looking for a “clean” way to complete your objective.
Thank you for investing time in reading this post. Questions and comments are always welcome.
Shail Paliwal
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