So far, so good.
Barry R. Sloane figures that he's passed the six-month test and will get to keep his job at Credit Suisse, where he heads up private banking operations in the United States.
"They'll always remember what you did wrong, never what you did right" during that trial period, Mr. Sloane said with a smile.
But the Harvard-educated banker is being overly modest. Indeed, since taking on his new job, he's clearly done a few things right.
He has, for example, successfully added the capabilities of Credit Suisse affiliate BEA Associates, an institutional money management firm, to the quiver of options that the bank's U.S. private banking clients have to choose from.
Starting in September, private banking clients will be able to take advantage of an experienced money manager, which runs $28.9 billion in institutional assets and has its own family of mutual funds. Credit Suisse owns 81% of BEA.
Size is everything in the money management world, according to Mr. Sloane, who said that private clients will get the best of both worlds with the new partnership.
"I'm happy to tell my clients that you are feeding at the same buffet table with the institution that has billions of dollars at BEA," Mr. Sloane said. They're getting the "same stocks, same day, same price."
On the other hand, Mr. Sloane and the 75 other Credit Suisse executives he oversees in the United States can concentrate on the client relationship business.
Headquartered in New York, Credit Suisse Private Banking USA has branch offices in Miami and Los Angeles and representative offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco.
The unit is part of a global banking giant that has over 500 offices in 40 countries and has more than $300 billion in assets under management.
All the private banking services are for those who can invest $2 million or more, but the more typical client is someone with $20 million to $30 million in investable assets, Mr. Sloane said.
He said that the tie-in with BEA will help his group increase its $1.5 billion in total managed assets to about $5 billion.
And if there any doubts about the feasibility of such a task, just try to keep up with Mr. Sloane. He's happy to tell about the 115 business lunches he's had since joining the bank and the hundreds of air miles he's logged while on business.
This is the same man who ran his father's little bank in Salem, Mass., after graduating from college and who later served as an alderman-at-large in Beverly, Mass.
Along the way he managed to start a computer software company in the mid-1980s.
Mr. Sloane is also a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, spending some summer weekends as a search and rescue crewman in Delaware Bay. He says he would like to come back in another life as a tugboat captain.
His tenacity has served him well in the financial sector.
Upon finishing a training program during his two-year stint as a financial consultant with Shearson Lehman's private client group, he was assigned to come up with names of wealthy prospects.
After checking the latest Forbes list of billionaires, Mr. Sloane decided to place calls to those well-heeled people residing in New York.
Harry B. Helmsley, the real estate mogul and husband of Leona, was one of them.
With characteristic charm and some luck - Mr. Helmsley had just fired his lead broker - Mr. Sloane managed to get Mr. Helmsley as a client and in a short time became the largest producer on the muni desk at Shearson Lehman.
If past is prologue, Mr. Sloane shouldn't have any problems courting the wealthy.
