Career
Starting that year, Tully worked for First National City Bank (Citibank) in New York City, then for Garden State Land Co. In 1976, Tully shifted direction and became a freelance writer, contributing frequently to New Jersey Monthly . From 1979 to early 1983, Tully worked for Fortune in New York City, first as a reporter, then as Associate Editor. As an outside project, he co-authored the book Sports Illustrated Tennis with coach Doug McCurdy. [5] While a reporter, Tully assisted two veteran Fortune writers, Carol J. Loomis on ITT chief Harold Geneen’s disastrous investment in a rayon mill in Quebec, and Roy Rowan on three pieces on brothers Bunker and Herbert Hunt following the collapse in silver prices.
Among his early investigative pieces as author: accounts of the collapse of Canadian oil giant Dome Petroleum and the rise of Canadian property giant Olympia & York. [6]
In January 1983, Tully moved to France, as Paris Bureau Chief, for Fortune International. His CEO profiles while in Europe included pieces on construction titan Francis Bouygues and the prime figure in building L'Oreal, Francois Dalle. Following the indictment of commodities trader Marc Rich in the U.S.,Tully wrote three articles on Rich, while he was living and working in Switzerland as a fugitive, starting with the cover story “Secrets of Marc Rich” co-authored with Ford Worthy. [7] In the late 1980s, when the Vatican was dealing with the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, [8] Tully wrote the cover story "The Vatican's Finances." [9] An examination of pay for European versus U.S. CEOs revealed that the chiefs of such companies as Peugeot (Stellantis) and Rhône-Poulenc (Hoechst AG) earned far less than their American counterparts. [10]
In 1989, Tully became European Editor. That year, he wrote “The Coming Boom in Europe,” predicting that new, free market reforms would lift the EU’s growth rate. His forecast proved incorrect, as the EU’s GDP declined in the early 1990s.
Tully returned to New York City in 1991 and continued writing for Fortune, as Associate Editor. Pursuing his focus on c-suite profiles, he wrote “The Super CFOs” on Stephen Bollenbach of Disney, Dennis Dammerman of General Electric Co. (GE), and several other prominent CFOs, followed in 1993 by an examination of how CEOs including Roberto Goizueta of Coca-Cola had adopted Economic Value Added (EVA) as a key metric for measuring profitability. [11] That year, Tully contributed an account of Donald Trump’s comeback from near bankruptcy several years earlier, [12] the: disastrous partnership between Northwest Airlines and KLM of the Netherlands in “The Alliance from Hell”, [13] and first of several articles examining America’s chronic shortage of doctors. [14] A 1995 story predicted that Lehman Bros. would have difficulty surviving as an independent company. [15]
In September 1996, Tully left Fortune to work as an on-air reporter for CNBC, returning to Fortune in January 1998 as Associate Editor.
He continued his concentration on investigative subjects by examining the deep problems at insurer Conseco caused by its failed merger with Green Tree Financial. [16] An artilcle on index fund pioneer Dimensional Fund Advisors described how a number of Nobel Prize winners, inlcuding Merton Miller and Myron Scholes, as well as future laureate Eugene Fama worked with DFA to craft its investment approach. [11] Two of Tully’s stories in early 2000 asserted that the NASDAQ index had risen to a bubble valuation, due largely to the excessive prices for "dot.com" stocks. From the spring 2001 to mid-2002, the NASDAQ fell over 80%. [17] Columnist George Will cited Tully's skepticism about the stock market valuations in an article published in April of 2000. [18] A look into the NYSE trading rules concluded that those rules significantly increased costs to customers. [19] The following year, Tully asserted that Wall Street banks were failing to act in their customers' best interests, citing as a notable example the systematic underpricing of Initial Publlic Offerings. In that piece, veteran investment banker Felix Rohatyn criticized the banks for diverging from the former practice of putting their clients' interests first. [20]
Immediately following Jamie Dimon’s return to banking as CEO of Bank One, Tully wrote an article on Dimon, as well as a followup profile when he became CEO of JP Morgan Chase in 2006. [21]
In “Blood Feud” (2004) Tully examined the battle between Boston Scientic and Johnson & Johnson for the purchase of Guidant, [22] and followed-up in 2006 with a piece asserting that the winner, Boston Scientific, had vastly overpaid for Guidant in “The (second) worst deal ever”. [23]
Between 2002 and 2007, Tully wrote three stories predicting that a bubble was building in the housing market that would eventually cause prices to drop sharply. [24] [25] He also took that position in a debate with Fortune writer Jon Birger. [26] The cover of the September 2004 Fortune issue in which 'Is the Housing Boom Over?" appeared pictured a drawing of a house falling off a cliff. [27] The articles attracted attention in the press, including coverage after housing values declined substantially in 2008 and 2009. [28] [29]
In January 2010, Tully wrote a story questioning why President Barack Obama did not make a course adjustment similar to the one taken by French President Francois Mitterrand starting in 1983, after voters appeared to be rejecting Obama's economic agenda following the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusetts. [30] [31]
Tully was promoted to Senior Editor-at-Large in 2010.
In 2011, Tully wrote a favorable profile Brian Moynihan, who had recently become Bank of America’s CEO following the Great Financial Crisis. [32] In a two day interview, former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos explained her plans for addressing the energy crisis by mining deuterium from the ocean floor. [33] A feature co-authored with Katie Benner explored the sudden departure of CEO Robert Kelly from BNY Mellon. [34] When Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago's Booth School won the Nobel Prize in 2013, Tully interviewd Fama on his contributions to the "efficient market" theory, and recalled his tennis rivalry with the professor when he was a student at the Business School. [35]
He predicted in a piece examining the outcome of Time Warner’s (WarnerMedia) spinoff of the Time Inc. magazine group, (parent of Fortune) that Time Inc. would have excessive debt and prove unprofitable. [36] Time Inc. was later purchased by Meredith Corp. in early 2018. Time Inc.’s share price fell during its period as an independent company.
Tully returned to examining the Vatican’s finances in “This Pope Means Business,” (2014) a look at Pope Francis’ efforts at financial reform. [8] An investigative piece examined the takeover battle in the dollar store industry involving activist Carl Icahn. [37]
During Donald Trump's first presidential campaign, Tully asserted in Fortune that Trump had significantly overstated his income in federal election disclosures, and exaggerated his net worth in public statements. [38] The next year, Tully wrote a critique of President Trump's economic policies predicting that his recommendations for higher tariffs and other restrictions on free trade could curb economic growth. [39]
That same year, Tullly also profiled Hunter Harrison, the 72-year old, newly named CEO of railroad giant CSX, [40] and wrote an investigative piece on how the board of the Weinstein Co. supported co-CEO Harvey Weinstein prior to the onset of the Weinstein sex scandal. [41] A follow-up recounted how director Tarak Ben Ammar, the Tunisian film producer, sought Weinstein’s ouster well before the scandal began. [42] On the passing of Bobby Riggs, Tully recalled that he played the tennis champion-promoter while a Princeton student, and lost in a close match. [43]
In 2018, Tully examined Carl Icahn’s successful efforts to change the board and management of Xerox in “Paper Jam”. [44] The year after, he made the case that bonds were extremely expensive and likely to provide poor returns in future and in “The Man Who Nailed Madoff Got GE Wrong,” disagreed with the prediction by investigative accountant Harry Markopolos, who forecasted the Madoff scandal, that its long-term care reinsurance portfolio would bankrupt the General Electric Co. [45] A collaboration with venture capitalist Bill Gurley criticized Wall Street's practice of underpricing IPO offerings. [46]
In 2021, Tully concluded that the “payment for order flow” model used by Robinhood raised rather than lowered trading costs for customers. [47] and reported on a strategy deployed by Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly to expand the airline’s destinations during the pandemic, a second story related what Kelly learned from his predecessor Herb Kelleher that’s helped Kelly, as executive chairman, in working with his own successor in the CEO job, Bob Jordan. [48] Tully has argued in several stories in the early 2020s that Tesla's stock is highly overvalued. [49]
In mid-2022, Tully detailed the career of controversial MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor [50] and recounted his interview with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who predicted a long battle to curb inflation, and asserted that mega-billionaires are under-taxed. He traced the rise of real estate platform Fundrise, exploring how its co-founder Ben Miller created a vehicle for retail investors to gain access to multi-family rental projects and other types of private real estate. Just after the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, Tully interviewed Nobel laureate Douglas Diamond, who explained the mistakes that that caused the collapse. In a follow-up piece, Tully examined how weaknesses in the Fed’s “stress test” methodology led to the central bank’s failure to identify the extreme vulnerability at SVP. [51] In April 2023, Tully looked at the career and business practices of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, and in May, investigated how Binance’s little-known affiliate network (in a piece co-authored with Alexandra Sternlicht). [52]
In July 2023, Tully suggested that Apple’s stock was significantly over-valued, stating that the rise in its earnings during the pandemic was unsustainable, and that its elevated price-to-earnings multiple made the stock highly expensive. Tully’s analysis attracted criticism in the financial press. As of January 12, 2024, Apple’s stock price had declined roughly 4% from the time Tully’s story appeared. [53] A profile of Matt Swain, the 28 year old CEO) of investment banking and placement agent boutique Triago looked at how Swain is attracting large investments from family offices looking for an opportunity to own major portions or alll of entire companies, as opposed to shares in pools of holding multiple companies provided by private equity firms.
In September that same year, Tully explored CEO Marc Rowan’s strategy for building alternative asset manager Apollo as powerhouse in private debt. [54] Tully assessed the strength of Elon Musk's standing in negotiating with his creditors at Twitter - now known as: "X", and a follow-up disclosing that creditors at X had agreed to a so-called “sell-down” agreement to protect their positions. [55] In November, he once again examined Musk’s distinctive approach to running his companies in “Elon Musk’s 10 Laws of Management”. [56] An interview with economist Steve Hanke asserted that President Biden's embrace of industrial policy marked a major shift for U.S. economic policy. [57] His piece exploring CEO Larry Culp’s strategy for reviving the General Electric Co. appeared in January 2024. [58]
Following the disaster on Air Alaska flight 1282 over Portland on January 5, 2024, where a panel blew off a Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft, Tully explored the its impact of the catastrophe on Boeing's business, and the missteps made by four previous CEOs that led to Boeing's chronic safety issues. [59] The article first appeared online, then as the cover story for Fortune’s issue for April-May 2024. Six weeks later Nvidia's one-day gain of $270 billion in market cap became major global story that drew Tully's scrutiny. He presented calculations on how fast Nvidia's profits would need to grow over the next decade to justify its current, almost $2 trillion market cap, and found that the amounts Nvidia must add in annual earnings so large that it's unlikely to reward investors going forward. In August of 2023, when Nvidia's market cap was $1.2 trillion, Tully took the position that Nvidia shares were overvalued. Nvidia's share are now almost 70% higher as of late February than when Tully made that appraisal. [60]
Fortune published Tully's narrative of the final days of John Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who died of gunshot wound in his car, in mid-March of 2024, followed by an account from Barnett’s mother and brother of the stress the late whistleblower suffered in bringing his longstanding lawsuit versus Boeing. [61] Tully continued to follow the whistleblower story with an exclusive account of the twelve hours of depositions that Barnett gave in the two days before his death. [62]
Birth of the HENRYs
Tully coined "The HENRYs" in an article in the June 23, 2003, issue of Fortune. [2] He predicted that the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) could claw back a large portion of the cuts in federal income tax rates enacted that year, which included reductions for individuals and families with high incomes. In an October 2008 Fortune story, Tully returned to the HENRYs theme, describing the HENRYs as families and individuals earning, at that time, between $250,000 and $500,000 a year. In outside articles characterizing the HENRYs, that bracket has been changed. Tully stated that the HENRYs devote the vast bulk of their incomes to three expenses: taxes, housing and savings towards a private college education for their children. The size of those expenses, he says, leaves relatively modest amounts for retirement savings. Hence, he concluded that by retirement, the HENRYs are unlikely to accumulate sufficient net worth to be considered "rich". The group includes such professions as doctors, lawyers, consultants, small business owners, and corporate executives. Tully called the HENRYs "the bulk of the professional and entrepreneurial class that drives the economy". [63] In 2019, the New York Post described its version “millennial HENRYs” as living “paycheck to paycheck.” [64]
The term "HENRYs" has appeared in a number of articles and reference sources that discuss the characteristics of this cohort, which earns mid-six-figure incomes but struggles to accumulate high savings. [65]
