Satisfied customers are one key to higher profits, and few bankers have embraced the equation as effectively as Ken Thompson at Wachovia Corp.
The Charlotte giant has topped the University of Michigan's customer satisfaction index for four consecutive years, most recently nailing the highest score for a bank in the survey's 11-year history. Wachovia pays the Gallup Organization to poll 60,000 customers a quarter.
Mr. Thompson, chairman and CEO since 2000, has also honed the art of saying no to deals, including the tempting chance to make a splash in credit cards with MBNA Corp.
While determined to convince Wall Street that the days of dilutive deals at Wachovia are long over, Mr. Thompson has shown creativity on the M&A front from the low-premium 2001 deal First Union did to create today's Wachovia to the 2003 joint venture with Prudential Securities to this year's expansion into select business lines like international trade finance, subprime auto lending, and wholesale mortgages.
His success and leadership earned Mr. Thompson American Banker's Banker of the Year Award for 2005. He and five other bankers will be honored at a Nov. 30 black-tie dinner in New York.
Bob Wilmers, the chairman and former CEO at M&T Bank of Buffalo, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Joe Reid, the chairman and CEO of Capitol Bancorp Ltd. of Lansing, Mich., will be honored as Innovator of the Year.
For the first time, three bankers - Jim Hudson, Chevis Swetman, and Guy Williams - were selected for the Community Banker of the Year Award. The three, and by extension many other community bankers in the Gulf States, are being recognized for their extraordinary efforts to aid the recovery in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.
Mr. Hudson, the president and CEO of Omnibank in Metairie, La., established shared bank branches to improve customer access to services.
Mr. Swetman, the president and CEO of Peoples Bank in Biloxi, Miss., lost six of 16 branches to the storm, as well as his own home. He brought in mobile offices to serve as temporary branches and moved his family into a conference room in the bank's headquarters.
Mr. Williams, the chairman, president, and CEO of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust in New Orleans, spent his days trying to secure new office space for the bank and housing for its staff while crossing Lake Pontchartrain in his own boat each night to rescue people trapped by the floodwaters.
Lifetime Achievement winner Wilmers is the chairman of the board of M&T Bank, where he served as CEO for 22 years. Mr. Wilmers led a dramatic turnaround with a string of successful deals that helped make M&T one of the best-performing banks for nearly two decades. He also earned the award for contributions to the arts, schools and hospitals of western New York.
Mr. Reid, of Capitol, is being honored for his unique approach to expansion: putting up about 51% of the capital an investor group needs to open a new bank and then, after a few years, buying out the minority interest.
Capitol has founded 38 banks in 10 states, and 2005 was its busiest yet in terms of bank development. It launched five banks this year and acquired a sixth, in Jeffersonville, Ga. It expects to open two more banks before yearend and five more in the first quarter of 2006, bringing its total to 45.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at the awards dinner. The event will benefit Working in Support of Education, a nonprofit based in New York that trains public school educators to teach personal finance skills in the classroom.
