TERRI DIAL
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CONSUMER
BANKING NORTH
AMERICA AND
GLOBAL HEAD OF
CONSUMER STRATEGY, CITIGROUP INC.
MOLLY SHEEHAN
HOUSING POLICY EXECUTIVE,
Favorite pastimes: Reading,
gardening
Children: Three
(ages 24, 27 & 29)
Last book read: The Senator’s Wife
Last movie seen: “Pride and Prejudice”
Charity most active in: United Way of
Mercer County
One thing on “bucket” list: Sailing down the Nile
Top non-business concern: Early education
Favorite pastimes: Reading,
piano
Children: Two (ages 13 & 15)
Last book read: The Money Lenders
Last movie seen: “Angels & Demons”
Charity most active in: Museum of the City of New York
One thing on “bucket” list: To leave extended family well taken care of and happy
Top non-business concerns: World peace,
education and health of children
ALBERTA CEFIS
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT & HEAD, GLOBAL
TRANSACTION BANKING,
SCOTIABANK
Favorite pastimes:
Traveling, performing arts, sports
Last book read: I Segreti di Roma
Last movie seen: “Coraline”
Charity most active in: Opera Atelier
One thing on “bucket” list: See all the countries
that I haven’t seen yet
Top non-business concern: Lack of global peace
company beefed up its loan-loss reserves to $2.8 billion, or $3.31 cents for
every dollar of loans. Around the same time, in late 2008, Fifth Third moved
the entire commercial credit function into Tuuk’s Enterprise Risk Management division. She tightened underwriting standards, cut off lending to certain segments, set new concentration limits and reduced unused credit lines.
A separate workout group, which now has 240 employees, was created and
reports to Tuuk.
Biting the bullet early helped Fifth Third build capital and line up liquidity; it passed the government’s stress test without having to raise any more
capital. Tuuk keeps her cool and comes at every problem with an analytical
objectivity. “The ability to look at a problem without getting emotional or
adding personal elements to it” is how Tuuk describes her no-nonsense style.
Greg Carmichael, Fifth Third’s chief operating officer, says it’s effective.
“She has made more progress in a year than we have in the last seven,
eight, 10 years in changing our credit organization and building a risk framework,” he says. “She is a very determined women and she is always very well-prepared with facts.” —Barbara A. Rehm
10 TERRI DIAL
It would seem almost impossible for Terri Dial to look bad as CEO of Citigroup’s North American banking operations.
If she manages to turn around the business, Dial will be a hero. And if she
doesn’t, who would blame her, given that Citigroup must offload $600 billion
in so-called “noncore” assets, many of which are troubled?
Citigroup has already shifted many of the troubled assets to Citi Holdings,
but the core business operations under Citicorp still hold a “huge stock” of
problem assets, says Joe Scott, senior director at Fitch Ratings. “They have a
very high charge-off experience in credit cards, in first mortgages and in
home-equity loans. So that’s weighing on the results for Citi as a whole.”
This could be another opportunity for Dial to dig in and affect the kind of
double-digit growth for which she was credited at Wells Fargo & Co. She
ended her nearly 30-year career there in 2001 after having worked her way
up to president and CEO of the Wells Fargo Bank subsidiary.
Relative to competitors like Wells Fargo, Citigroup is an underdog when it
comes to retail banking in the U.S., making Dial’s job more challenging.
“Citi has a relatively weak retail banking presence in the U.S. versus its
major rivals Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America,” Scott says.
“The branch network is much smaller, it’s much more concentrated, particularly in the Northeast, and the deposit share is much smaller. So these would
be key challenges competing against these much larger rivals.”
Dial left Lloyds TSB to join Citigroup in June 2008. As CEO of consumer
banking North America, she is responsible for consumer and small-business
banking, Citi-branded credit cards, commercial banking, and personal wealth
management. Dial is also the global head of consumer strategy, directing con-sumer-banking strategy worldwide in collaboration with Citi's regional CEOs.
As Citigroup continues to jettison ancillary businesses, such as Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., it’s looking more and more like the old Citicorp of decades
past, Scott says. This means more of a focus on the core banking business
that Dial oversees.
“I think at times in the past, the U.S. franchise was neglected as they pursued international growth,” Scott says. “It is a piece of the core institution going forward, but trying to reenergize U.S. retail operations and grow that
again is certainly another challenge.”—Matthew de Paula
While many policymakers were still describing the housing crisis as “
contained,” Molly Sheehan knew better.
The JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive saw the payment shock brewing as
a wave of hybrid adjustable mortgages were due to reset at higher rates, and
she was determined to get ahead of it. She worked up a loan modification
program—before that term was even in wide use—that alerted borrowers to
coming rate hikes, gauged their ability to absorb the increases and, if needed,
offered to lower rates.
Sheehan’s efforts put JPMorgan Chase at the forefront of industry efforts
to work with borrowers, and they won her a promotion to the newly created
job of Housing Policy Executive. Sheehan, a lawyer who is a mortgage-servic-ing expert, made frequent Amtrak trips to Washington to consult with officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations on efforts to stem the rising volume of foreclosures. It paid off for JPMorgan Chase.
“One of the things that did give us an advantage when the Obama plan
came out is we had a number of people already in the pipeline and we’d already been gathering documentation and other things we’d need to at least
pre-qualify them for a modification,” Sheehan says.
In August when the administration ranked lenders by the number of
modifications they had started under its Home Affordable Modification Program, JPMorgan Chase bested its peers with 79,304 modifications, or 20
percent of all its eligible delinquent loans. And under its own program, JPMorgan Chase has approved another 65,400 modifications.
Sheehan, who has testified frequently on Capitol Hill, says a major hurdle
in the loan-mod process has been a public expectation for immediate results.
“People take it for granted if they are going to get a mortgage loan it’s go-
ing to take 30 to 90 days but somehow they think they should get their mod
in a day,” she says. “The process for doing this you could paper my office with.”
Sheehan is still consulting with administration officials on ways to modify
Obama’s program including a forbearance program for the rising number of
unemployed borrowers. She attributes her foresight to 35 years in banking.
“It’s just years of experience saying you’ve got to get ahead of the problems;
you can’t put your head in the sand,” she says.—Cheyenne Hopkins
12 LESLIE GODRIDGE
They say if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere—and
Leslie Godridge’s lofty goal is to make sure that U.S. Bancorp does indeed
make it there.
Since joining U.S. Bancorp three years ago after 25 years with The Bank
of New York, Godridge and her team have been working tirelessly to build
the Midwest bank’s reputation and its account base among businesses in and
around the country’s largest city.
“We have a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on the strength of the
bank, to gain clients and build new relationships with business partners,” says
Godridge, executive vice president and head of national corporate and institutional banking at U.S. Bank.
From her office in Manhattan, Godridge and her senior team have put
themselves out front—conducting conference calls, holding face-to-face meetings and traveling—to get East Coast companies familiar with U.S. Bank. Besides the base of operations in New York, which will be staffed by more than
100 people by the end of this year, Godridge says that U.S. Bank recently set
up offices for its corporate banking and fixed-income operation in Charlotte.
