Big Weekend Plans
The Puerto Rican Day parade in New York is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend, and Popular Inc. of San Juan is sending its chairman and chief executive to rub shoulders with celebrities and launch a marketing campaign.Richard Carrion will be opening Nasdaq trading Monday, the day after the parade, with Puerto Rico's governor Anibal Acevedo-Vila, among others.
"The group of leaders … are but a sample of the incredible talent of our people and the business appeal of our island," Mr. Carrion, the parade's 2004 grand marshal, wrote Thursday in an e-mail to American Banker.
The parade's broad appeal makes it the ideal launching pad for a summerlong marketing campaign to promote Popular's mainland banking subsidiary, Banco Popular North America, said Michele Imbasciani, who heads the New York market for Popular.
Popular will spend a "significant amount" to boost new checking accounts by 15% and business checking accounts by 25% by October, Mr. Imbasciani said.
Customers will receive up to $125 in cash if they switch to Popular, and business owners can get $50.
There will also be prizes such as $3,500 for a vacation or $25,000 for a business makeover.
"We do a lot of events in conjunction with Puerto Rican Day parade," Mr. Imbasciani said, but this year Popular decided on a "fully integrated marketing and advertising program."
The "We Love Dreams" campaign plays off Banco Popular North America's "Make Dreams Happen" tag line.
One dream Popular has already delivered: an art exhibition that kicked the campaign off Wednesday. For the last six years Popular has brought a Puerto Rican artist to its New York headquarters branch near Rockefeller Center, and this year Orlando Vallejo showed a series of paintings inspired by urban nature.
Mr. Vallejo's had long wanted to exhibit in New York, Mr. Imbasciani said.
Popular may be the only bank with a "chief passion officer," whose job is to make banking a more emotional experience.
For now "We Love Dreams" is confined to New York, where Banco Popular has 47 branches and deposits of $3.2 billion, but the campaign may expand to other Popular markets, including Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Citi Strikes Out
CreditSights Ltd. analyst David Hendler reversed course this week and hopped on the break-up-Citigroup bandwagon.What happened? He couldn't find a working ATM at Shea Stadium, where Citi recently landed a cash machine deal.
OK, his 15-page analysis is more nuanced than that, but Mr. Hendler did tell his clients that he recently tried to get cash from two Citi-branded ATMs at Shea, home of the New York Mets, and both were out of service. (The baseball team's new stadium, to open in 2009, will be called Citi Field.)
After defending Citi's performance while other analysts called for a breakup, the analyst now says: "It's time for it to be done. All this nipping and tucking over the last year or so hasn't gotten anywhere."
Mr. Hendler said he would divide Citi into four parts that would be easier to sell: U.S. retail, cards, and commercial businesses; international retail, cards, and commercial businesses; investment banking; and retail brokerage and private banking. That would also make the investment bank available for a management buyout.
Full Circle
Janet Lamkin is going back to her roots.After almost three years leading the California Bankers Association, Ms. Lamkin will rejoin Bank of America Corp., where she worked for 10 years.
Ms. Lamkin will become the Charlotte company's president for California.
Ms. Lamkin was B of A's head of corporate communications and public affairs in Charlotte before leaving in August 2004 to become the president and CEO of the California trade group. She had joined BankAmerica Corp. of San Francisco in 1994 as director of state relations.
Ms. Lamkin is to return to B of A on June 25, working out of San Francisco. She will succeed Lynn Pike, who left in March to become the chief operating officer of Capital One Financial Corp.'s banking segment.
Ms. Pike was B of A's state president and president of its business banking. Laura Whitley, the president of B of A's Dallas market, succeeded Ms. Pike in March as business banking president.
Ms. Lamkin was in Washington and could not be reached for comment.
