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Defensive Humor

KeyCorp chairman Henry Meyer was described as a "glutton," a "total failure" and "no visionary" by an angry investor during the Cleveland company's annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.Meyer agreed with part of that assessment.

"I am not a visionary," Meyer said. "We didn't see the economy going deeper" into a recession.

Meyer — whose company's shares have lost 77% of their value in the last 12 months as KeyCorp deals with mounting bad loans — was berated by a parade of angry investors during the hour-long event. One critic blasted KeyCorp for poor management decisions. The man who called Meyer a "glutton" said he did not deserve his millions of dollars in annual compensation. Some of the harshest critiques came from retirees who said they relied on the company's dividend, which was cut to a penny from 6.25 cents in April.

Meyer said he shared his investors' pain. "As the proxy shows I own quite a few shares. This has been my life's work."

Faceless in a Crowd

The well-dressed fellow with chiseled features at the hot dog cart outside American Banker's New York office on Wednesday drew a large crowd. He easily could have been one of us — our staff is a suave bunch with infamously large appetites for local street vendor fare — but it turns out he wasn't anyone at all. He was a mannequin, one of several positioned around the intersection of Whitehall and Pearl streets that morning.As tourists and office workers looked on, film crew workers redirected area foot traffic and tested out lighting equipment. One adjusted the wind-blown wig on a female mannequin standing near an office building with the Fitch Ratings nameplate above the door. It looked like the set of a music video for a band with deep knowledge of the credit markets.

In fact, according to a film crew member, it was a shoot for a Barclays Bank commercial. Stay tuned for the end product.

Classified Info

Looking for an experienced compliance officer, but don't want to sift through hundreds of applicants who have never worked in a bank? Then try a new online job board strictly for the financial industry, introduced this week by the Risk Management Association in Philadelphia. The free service, dubbed the RMA Career Center, posts both job openings and resumes from professionals seeking any type of bank post.Isn't it a little late given the state of the financial sector? "We launched this now because we're seeing a larger number of people in the financial services industry getting displaced in the current economy, yet at the same time there are lots of institutions seeking talent," RMA spokeswoman Kathleen M. Beans said in an interview Thursday.

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