Harassing Harrison
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and conservationists continue to mix like oil and water.
On Saturday three members of the Rainforest Action Network posted fliers near the Greenwich, Conn., home of JPMorgan chairman Bill Harrison saying "WANTED - William 'Billy the Kid' Harrison."
This was less than three months after the rainforest group organized a field trip to the banking company's Park Avenue headquarters to have children from two Fairfield, Conn., schools deliver 700 posters imploring JPM to adopt environment-friendly policies. (JPMorgan Chase has said it plans to unveil its environmental program in April.)
According to the Associated Press, in Saturday's incident the three activists were charged by Greenwich police with creating a public disturbance.
The rainforest group contacted Annette Lamoreaux, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Connecticut affiliate. Ms. Lamoreaux said in an e-mail sent Wednesday to American Banker that the arrests were "constitutionally problematic."
Tarheel Connection
Bank of America Corp. has nominated two men with strong North Carolina ties to its board of directors, including one whose salary B of A chief executive Ken Lewis once helped to set.
Up for election will be Robert Tillman, who retired in January as chairman and CEO at Lowe's Cos. Inc. of Mooresville, N.C., the nation's No. 2 home improvement retailer; and Steve Jones, dean of the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mr. Lewis was a board member from February 2000 until January 2004 at Lowe's, included a stint on its compensation committee. For that reason, B of A is not listing Mr. Tillman as an independent director.
Mr. Jones became UNC-Chapel Hill's dean in August 2003 after a long career as a business leader in Australia. He had been the CEO of Suncorp Metway Ltd., which is one of Australia's largest companies and was created through a three-way merger Mr. Jones helped engineer. He also was a senior executive at ANZ, a major Australian bank.
Shareholders are to vote on the nominees April 27.
Buyers Beware
Executive departures keep hitting several big banks that recently completed mergers.
SunTrust Banks Inc. has lost a couple of top executives who had joined the Atlanta company after it bought National Commerce Financial Corp. Memphis on Oct. 1.
Chris Holmes, a SunTrust executive vice president who had overseen bank consulting and supermarket banking for National Commerce, left in February to become a regional president at Trustmark Corp. of Jackson, Miss. Mr. Holmes oversees Trustmark's northern region, which includes Memphis and north Mississippi.
Bill Menkel, who had been named SunTrust's president in Memphis after the National Commerce acquisition, resigned in January. Mr. Menkel previously had overseen the Memphis and Nashville markets for National Commerce.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group's U.S. unit, Citizens Financial Group, has hired Kenneth Colloton, a spokeswoman said.
Mr. Colloton was a longtime executive at FleetBoston Financial Corp., which was bought by Bank of America in April 2004. Until leaving in January he had been B of A's Albany, N.Y., market chief and the head of its New York State government banking unit. At Citizens he is a senior vice president and director of government banking for New York State.
Meanwhile, AmSouth Bancorp of Birmingham, Ala., continues to pick up former SouthTrust Corp. executives in the wake of SouthTrust's sale to Wachovia Corp. in November.
AmSouth said this week that it had hired Larry Hamilton as head of its mortgage business. Mr. Hamilton had been a senior executive vice president at SouthTrust. And it hired Wade King, formerly SouthTrust Mortgage's CEO, as its national mortgage sales manager.
