Zions Bancorp. of Salt Lake City has made chief financial officer Doyle L. Arnold its vice chairman as well and given him wider duties.
Mr. Arnold will take on oversight of technology operations, an important business line for the $31 billion-asset company, and human resources. The changes were announced Wednesday.
Over the past 12 months several other banking companies have enlarged their CFOs’ duties or reassigned them to provide experience running other parts of the company.
Analysts say such reshuffles can sometimes be part of a grooming process for the top job — but Zions said that is not the case this time. “It’s just the realigning of some responsibilities. It just makes for a little more efficient operations,” said Clark Hinckley, a company spokesman.
At 56, Mr. Arnold is six years older than Harris H. Simmons, Zions’ chief executive, president, and chairman.
Mr. Arnold has been the CFO since December 2001, when he succeeded Dale M. Gibbons, who left following his involvement in a scandal unrelated to banking.
“We’re pleased to recognize the tremendous administrative and strategic contributions Doyle has made to Zions Bancorp.,” Mr. Simmons said in a press release. “Doyle’s extensive banking background, his good judgment, and his leadership skills will all be put to greater use in his expanded role.”
Mr. Arnold presided over solid fourth-quarter earnings results. On Jan. 26 the company reported that net income rose 10% from a year earlier, to $105 million. Earnings per share rose 9.5%, to $1.15, and met Wall Street expectations.
Mr. Arnold said loan growth, improving margins, and solid credit quality helped fuel the profit increase. The report prompted Joe Morford, an analyst at Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Capital Markets, to write that day, “It was the sort of clean quarter, free of noise, that investors wanted to see.”
Mr. Arnold’s jobs before joining Zions included group executive vice president for corporate strategy and development at BankAmerica Corp., a San Francisco predecessor of the Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp.
He also worked at Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco; was senior deputy comptroller of the currency and executive assistant to the deputy secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration; and has been the chief financial and administrative officer of BankServ, an electronic payments company in San Francisco.
