We're in an era of megadeals, with Goldman Sachs reporting a record year for big deal volumes as companies scramble to compete with AI. Gene Sykes has seen multiple deal cycles come and go over his multi-decade career. The co-head of mergers and acquisitions has worked on famous transactions like Comcast's purchase of Universal and Disney's buyout of Pixar.

In addition to being "the most-influential M&A banker you've never heard of," as New York magazine put it, he has also spearheaded Los Angeles's successful bid to bring the Olympic Games to the city in 2028. In this conversation, recorded live at the Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, California, we discuss how a city pays for a big event like the Olympics, and parallels between the early 2000s TMT environment and now.