CHICAGO - Bank One Corp. chairman and chief executive James Dimon continues to raid his former employer Citigroup for management talent, this time reaching for one of Sanford I. Weill's top advisers.
The onetime Citi president has chosen Alison Deans, 39, who is director of development for strategic projects at Citigroup, to take over as chief financial officer of the Chicago company's corporate banking business.
In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Deans confirmed that her last day working at Citi is today. She begins her new job with Bank One on Aug. 14.
In her position at Citigroup, which she has held since the start of the year, she reported to Mr. Weill, the company's chairman and chief executive, and Robert Rubin, a member of the office of the chairman and a key adviser to Mr. Weill.
Last fall Ms. Deans began working for the office of the chairman and reported to Heidi Miller, then chief financial officer, until Ms. Miller left to become chief financial officer of Priceline.com.
Sources familiar with Bank One say Mr. Dimon is getting close to naming a new head of capital markets - the last open position on his senior management team.
Mr. Dimon was named CEO of the banking company in March and has taken some aggressive steps to regain the confidence of Wall Street and Bank One's customers. In addition to overhauling the executive ranks, Mr. Dimon last month announced a sweeping restructuring he said was designed to eliminate waste and focus Bank One's resources on improving customer service.
Bank One's problems began last year, when its credit card unit, First USA Inc. of Wilmington, Del., stumbled over revenue growth problems and customer defections. A series of profit warnings in the summer and the fall led to the resignation in December of the company's chairman, John B. McCoy.
Observers expected Mr. Dimon to make big changes, and he has not disappointed. He brought in former Citigroup colleagues Charles Scharf, who is Bank One's chief financial officer, William I. Campbell, who is a senior adviser working on e-commerce issues, and Michael Cavanaugh, who joined the company as senior vice president in charge of planning and strategy.
Another former Citi banker, Michael Welborn, who most recently ran middle-market banking in Bank One's Arizona, California, Colorado, and Utah region, was named head of the company's entire middle-market banking group. Before joining Bank One he was chief executive of Citibank, Arizona, from 1988 to 1993.
Ms. Deans began her career with Salomon Smith Barney in 1990, working as a securities analyst. She left briefly in 1997 to work for a hedge fund, then came back to Salomon and stayed with the company, now a Citigroup unit, until joining Bank One.
Though Mr. Dimon did not directly recruit her for the corporate banking job, she said she had known him well since the late 1980s.
The fact that Mr. Dimon was Bank One's top executive was a factor in prompting her to apply for the job. She said the challenge she expected to find in helping turn around the company's fortunes also intrigued her.
"When I was a securities analyst, I loved figuring out the turnaround stories," she said. When she learned of the Bank One job, she "just thought it would be a great opportunity."
