Relief Concert
CitiMortgage's summer tour might not be selling out stadiums, but many attendees are walking away with a handsome giveaway of sorts.
During the first four stops on a ten-city tour to help distressed homeowners, nearly 65% of attendees qualified for loan-modification programs, the mortgage unit of Citigroup Inc. said this week.
CitiMortgage is holding daylong events in 10 cities around the country that were hard hit by the housing crisis, including Las Vegas, Detroit and Phoenix. The "Road to Recovery" events enable homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments to meet with CitiMortgage representatives one on one. Even homeowners who aren't CitiMortgage customers are encouraged to attend.
So far, the company has made stops in Baltimore, Orlando, Cleveland and Atlanta. Of those attending, 95% were 60 days or more delinquent on their mortgage payments, Citi said. Fifty percent were already in foreclosure.
Did I Say That?
Frustrated with the trajectory of financial reform, the Center for Responsible Lending has released
Set to music on YouTube, the video is not likely to receive wide attention, but the selection of quotes provides an interesting trip down memory lane:
"Over the course of this crisis, we as an industry caused a lot of damage." — Bank of America Corp.'s Brian Moynihan.
"We ate our own cooking, and we choked on it." — former CEO of Morgan Stanley John Mack.
"Some of the mistakes we made may have contributed to the crisis. For those, of course, we are sorry … the oversight of systemwide risk must increase." — JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon.
It's not as if any CEOs have directly repudiated such comments, of course. But as a sign of how the ground has since shifted, it's worth considering that all the remarks are well over a year old. What apologies have come since have been far more limited, such as Dimon's mea culpa last week on military and other foreclosures.
Money Talks
Stephen Steinour upped his personal stake in Huntington Bancshares Inc. by nearly $250,000 this week. The CEO of the Columbus, Ohio, company now holds about 2.08 million shares worth nearly $13.4 million, after buying 39,000 shares on Monday, according to a regulatory filing.
Steinour became CEO of Huntington in January 2009, just as bank stocks were bottoming out. He's been paid mostly in stock and options the last two years, so his net worth has increased with the value of Huntington's shares, which were trading at $6.40 as of Thursday, about 40% higher than when he took over.
CEOs buy stock in their own companies because they think it is a good investment, because it looks good and because they must.
Steinour didn't have to in this case, even though Huntington, like a handful of other banks, recently upped the amount of stock top executives are required to hold onto. He must now own stock worth six times his base salary, or at least 1.053 million company shares, according to Huntington's latest proxy. The old standard was five times base salary.
Huntington said in its latest proxy that Steinour has purchased more than 1 million company shares since taking over, "thus committing a significant amount of his personal wealth" in the company.
Rotisserie Banking
Speaking of Huntington … Stephen R. Brown was named executive vice president and chief auditor, replacing Eric Sutphin, who has been put in charge of risk management for Huntington's wealth, government finance and lending divisions.
Brown joins Huntington from SunTrust Banks Inc., where he was managing director of auditing services and had worked there since 2002. He worked for Arthur Anderson LLP as technology risk manager, and as an auditor for the Federal Reserve.
Not to be outdone, SunTrust has recruited a BB&T Corp. executive to head its Treasury and payment solutions business.
Eric Brewer has joined SunTrust, to oversee Treasury management sales and services, commercial card services, merchant services, business deposit management and global trade services.
Brewer, who led the Treasury product business for BB&T, will report to Mark Chancy, SunTrust's former chief financial officer who was recently appointed wholesale banking executive.
Leveraging Talent
The executive shuffles didn't stop there, either.
Christopher Abbate, the former head of the U.S. leveraged finance group at UBS, is headed to Citigroup.
Abbate will join the firm later this year as a managing director in the leveraged finance group, a Citi spokesman said.
Abbate left UBS this week. There is no word yet on who will take over for Abbate at the Swiss bank, according to a UBS spokeswoman.
Abbate is not the first high-level U.S. departure UBS has seen recently. Mary Ann Deignan, formerly head of Americas equity capital markets, and Gary Howe, who was co-head of financial institutions in the Americas, left last week.
Indeed, UBS has seen scores of investment bankers leave in the last three years as the financial crisis hit the bank hard and forced it to place unpopular curbs on compensation. In March, UBS named well-known media banker Aryeh Bourkoff as head of Americas investment banking to help stop the exodus. UBS recently hired some senior bankers in a bid to rebuild its investment bank, wooing Thomas Langford away from Morgan Stanley to head its global energy investment banking team.
