Stand-Up Guy
Despite a dismal second quarter, FleetBoston Financial Corp.'s chief financial officer has managed to keep his sense of humor.
During Monday's earnings conference call, Gene McQuade, whose straightforward demeanor has made him a hit with analysts, said that he would rather have reported the results two weeks ago, just as everyone was leaving for the long July 4th holiday.
"Sorry to end a beautiful July weekend like this," Mr. McQuade joked in an effort to divert attention from Fleet's $386 million loss in the quarter. "I wanted to do this July 3," but John Kahwaty, the head of investor relations, had said no.
Coincidence?
While a series of banks reported their earnings on Tuesday, U.S. Bancorp made a different kind of announcement: On Dec. 31 its chief credit officer, J. Robert Hoffmann, would leave the company.
Mr. Hoffmann, age 65, joined the old U.S. Bancorp in 1972. (Firstar Corp. acquired it last year and adopted its name.)
The announcement, which was made the same day that U.S. Bancorp said nonperforming assets were expected to increase next quarter, aroused some interest when management discussed earnings with investors.
Mike Mayo, an analyst at Prudential Securities, wanted to know if Mr. Hoffmann's pending departure had anything to do with the results of the Shared National Credit Exam or the company's credit quality projections.
U.S. Bancorp's chief financial officer, David Moffett, tried to squelch attempts to draw such conclusions from the dual announcements. "At the time of the merger Bob Hoffmann had been working toward retirement," he said Tuesday. "It's totally unrelated to any exam or any other matter." Michael J. Doyle, the company's 46-year-old senior credit officer, will succeed Mr. Hoffmann.
Almost There
In November 2000 when it announced a deal to acquire Old Kent Financial Corp., Cincinnati's Fifth Third Bancorp swore off deals for two years. The deadline is coming up quickly, and analysts are getting antsy.
During the company's second-quarter earnings conference call Tuesday, George Schaefer, Fifth Third's chief executive officer, was asked about his acquisition plans. "It's not Thanksgiving yet!" Mr. Schaefer quipped, to which Neal Arnold, the company's chief financial officer added, "but the turkey is thawing."
Memorial Gifts
Ken Lewis, the chairman and CEO of Bank of America Corp., came to New York on Wednesday to present three new fire engines to the New York City Fire Department. The donation was made in honor of three Bank of America employees who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Lewis presented the keys to the fire engines at the department's headquarters in Brooklyn during a ceremony attended by Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, Department of Business Services Commissioner Robert Walsh, and the families of Liam Colhoun, Susan Clancy Conlon, and Robert Hughes.
More than 400 Bank of America employees were in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Leafy Metaphors
What is the best way to describe the outlook for the economy and for credit quality? That was the question facing bank executives as they delivered second-quarter earnings reports this week and last.
More often than not, they chose some variation on the theme of being lost in the woods.
For most of this year L. Phillip Humann, the chairman and CEO of SunTrust Banks Inc. in Atlanta, has been using that metaphor when asked about credit quality and the economy. He stuck with it during SunTrust's July 10 earnings call with analysts.
"I've been saying for several quarters that we're not out of the woods yet in this area, and that remains the case, but to be honest, and to continue the forest analogy, the trees are beginning to thin somewhat," Mr. Humann said.
KeyCorp's risk management chief, Kevin Blakely, liked the phrasing so much that he borrowed it almost verbatim during his company's conference call Tuesday. "As another bank CEO recently commented, we're not out of the woods yet, but the trees seem to be getting thinner," he said.
James H. Hance Jr., the chief financial officer at Bank of America, seemed to use the same ghostwriter. He told American Banker in an interview Monday: "We're not willing to say we're out of the woods until the markets stabilize some."
