Wilbur Ross Quotations

You cannot just keep borrowing more and more and keep spending more and more without eventually having a day of reckoning.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a bank being big. In fact, there are some good arguments about universality of geography that in theory, if you have all your eggs in one little community, and some big employer goes out, that could be your downfall.

There is no evidence that more regulation makes things better. The most highly regulated industry in America is commercial banking, and that didn't save those institutions from making terrible decisions.

Generally speaking, companies get into bankruptcy as a kind of meritocracy. Somebody made some sort of big mistake, to get into bankruptcy, and very often, a part of the mistake is too much leverage.

The one term I don't like to be called is a 'vulture.' Because to me, a vulture is a kind of asset-stripper that eats dead flesh off the bones of a dead creature. Our bird should be the phoenix, the bird that reinvents itself, recreates itself from its ashes. And that's much closer to what it is that we really do.

I think at the end of the day, the real sick man of Europe is liable to turn out to be France, not Greece, not Portugal, not Spain, not Italy. The reason is France is very uncompetitive to begin with on a global scale, and the measures that Hollande has been putting in have been very, very negative from the point of view of economic growth.

I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren't that many serious practitioners.

Shale gas, if left to flourish, could create several hundred thousand more jobs.

Banking, I would argue, is the most heavily regulated industry in the world. Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things.

The typical big Japanese company has somewhere between a third and 40 percent of its revenues coming from developing countries, and about a third of Japan's exports are also to the emerging countries, so in a strange way, Japan, which has very little internal growth, its big companies are a good way to play the emerging markets.

Each weekend I play at least one and maybe two sets of tennis a day. My doubles team was in the finals recently at my tennis club in Palm Beach and lost a tiebreaker after a three-hour match. I must confess, by the end of the three hours, I was relieved it was over.

Shipping has a great oversupply of vessels that came from over-ordering a few years back. We think 2014 may be when it turns around.

Ships are a strange kind of commodity because they're very lumpy, very big individual units, but they're commodities.

I think it's natural for any manager to want to grow his business. The question is at what rate, and in what direction, and in what format?

Between the Community Redevelopment Act, requiring banks to make what I would call very weak loans, and specific quotas that the Congress imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that created the market demand that really led to the subprime phenomenon.

If you want to do something to destroy consumer spending, just eat away at the middle class because the other problem we have is the structural problem of middle class America.

My wife Hillary sometimes accuses me of trying to reinvent the 19th century. In some ways she's right because I like things that I can understand and that aren't too complicated.

China has done many things right. The direction of change is in the right direction.

For the price of a first-class ticket to Tokyo, you can buy the whole setup.

We are looking at many of these distressed (auto parts companies) that have some kind of proprietary technology and some scale of size.

We would be interested in bidding if Collins & Aikman in the U.S. were to come up for sale,

What is worrisome about that is the U.S. standard of living. I think it is very difficult to envision our standard of living being preserved if we're in an economy where all people do is flip hamburgers, wait on people in stores and sue each other. It's not much of a basis for an economy.

We are still in the early stages here. Almost every day, there is another supplier filing for bankruptcy. We are continuing to make acquisitions.

Everybody knows that this wonderful house of cards is going to collapse at some point and everybody is nervous that this kind of situation, as we are seeing in Asia could be the precipitating event.

There will be cutting and assembly, but not by us. The cutting and sewing people will be owned by separate companies, our traditional customers.

It's a horrible freak accident. Apparently, a lightning bolt struck the mine.

I'm very much in support of it. The industrial logic of the deal is impeccable.

The increase in our positions (in the three companies) shows our conviction in the prospects for these holdings. We are delighted with our positive working relationships with each of the management teams.

The fundamentals are the U.S. is going to end up being a net exporter of natural gas. That's going to be wonderful to help our balance of payments, reduce our dependence on a lot of countries that aren't so crazy about us, and change many, many parts of what goes on here.

What is worrisome about that is the U.S. standard of living. I think it is very difficult to envision our standard of living being preserved if we are in an economy where all people do is flip hamburgers, wait on people in stores, and sue each other. It’s not much of a basis for an economy.

There is a future for the auto parts industry, but it needs a consolidation and a rationalization of geography in that most suppliers have facilities in the U.S., although most of their customers are overseas.

We're in the business not so much of being contrarians deliberately, but rather we like to take perceived risk instead of actual risk. And what I mean by that is that you get paid for taking a risk that people think is risky, you particularly don't get paid for taking actual risk.