Newcomers settle into the CFO hot seat

Since the global financial crisis that began in 2007, many of the largest banks and financial firms have replaced their chief executives. With heads rolling at Citigroup, UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and a changing of the guard at Morgan Stanley, new chief financial officers have also taken the hot seats at each of those firms. And there are other relative newcomers to the CFO role at Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. So when Euromoney asked the CFOs of a dozen of the world’s biggest banks to give their views on regulation, capital, funding and liquidity, it found that half have been in the job for less than two years. Two of these newcomers built their careers outside banking. Charles (Chuck) Noski, was CFO at AT&T and at Northrop Grumman before being appointed CFO of Bank of America in April of this year. He knows the industry from a five-year stint on the board of Morgan Stanley where he says the key lesson he learnt through the crisis was simply to imagine the unimaginable. His business experience perhaps attunes him to the thinking of the new CEO, Brian Moynihan, who early on in his tenure decided the bank would no longer allow customers to go temporarily overdrawn and face big charges for minor purchases or small ATM withdrawals. Noski argues that it is in shareholders’ long-term interest that the bank build a trusted brand and deep relationships with customers... and that charging them $35 for going overdrawn on a $3 cup of coffee is not the way to do it.