Scott Eells/Bloomberg NewsWilbur Ross Jr., chairman and chief executive of W.L. Ross & Company.Wilbur L. Ross Jr. still plans to run his show.
Mr. Ross, 74, who has been batting away questions about a successor lately, said on Tuesday that he recently signed a contract to stay on as head of his private equity firm, W.L. Ross & Company.
“I just came back from a one-day trip to Norway,” Mr. Ross said during an informal lunch hosted by Bloomberg Markets magazine in Midtown Manhattan. “That should give you an idea I don’t have immediate plans” to step down.
He referred to another famous investor, Warren E. Buffett, 81, who faced similar questions last weekend during the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.
“I don’t know why everybody picks on me, when Warren is older and richer,” he quipped.
As Julie Creswell reported in The New York Times, Mr. Ross, who has been trying to raise a new fund, recently put two longtime lieutenants, Stephen J. Toy and David H. Storper, into positions of more power. Mr. Ross said on Tuesday he was preparing for a “gradual evolution” at the firm.
Mr. Ross offered his thoughts on the European crisis, saying that of the Continent’s more troubled countries, Ireland was the only one where his firm had dared to invest, keeping Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece at arm’s length. His said his investment in the Bank of Ireland was a “play on the recovery of Ireland.”
Mr. Ross, who has been investing in distressed banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, criticized rating agencies on Tuesday, saying they were overcompensating after being criticized for being too soft before the crash. Moody’s has warned that it could downgrade big banks, including Morgan Stanley, by several notches.
“The rating agencies have more or less lost confidence in their ability to evaluate complicated transactions,” Mr. Ross said.
A supporter of Mitt Romney’s run for the presidency, Mr. Ross also had some choice words for President Obama.
“A very bad thing he’s done is to run against success in business,” he said. “We used to be an aspirational society, and we need to get back to being one.”