Women in Motion
Several high-profile women joined or left boards this week.
Sallie L. Krawcheck resigned Wednesday from the Dell Inc. board to "focus more fully" on her responsibilities as president of the global wealth and investment management business at Bank of America Corp. Krawcheck had been a Dell director since July 2006. She is one of six B of A executives considered to have a shot at succeeding CEO Ken Lewis when he retires at yearend.
"Sallie's guidance has been important to the board and to Dell, especially in her work on the board's finance committee," chairman and CEO Michael Dell said.
Meanwhile, Regions Financial Corp. recruited former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice as a senior adviser to its board. The Birmingham, Ala., native will help "us navigate through today's rapidly changing environment and uncertain times," Dowd Ritter, Regions' chairman and CEO, said in a press release.
Finally, Laura Schulte, who runs Wells Fargo & Co.'s East Coast community banking operation, is joining the board of trustees at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Settlement Day
Thursday was an unofficial "Resolve-Your-Beef-with-a-Megabank" Day.
Robert McCann settled his lawsuit with his former employer, B of A, clearing the way for him to possibly head up the U.S. brokerage arm of UBS AG.
Announcements came from the company and from McCann's lawyer, Steven G. Eckhaus, a partner in the New York law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman. McCann "can return to the financial services industry at the end of" October, Eckhaus told On Wall Street magazine. He would not discuss any monetary figures.
McCann, the former head of wealth management at Merrill Lynch, had sued Bank of America in state supreme court in Manhattan, demanding to be released from a noncompete clause. The lawsuit was filed amid persistent media rumors that McCann, 51, was planning to head up the wealth management unit at UBS.
Elsewhere, Citigroup Inc. said it had settled a dispute with Oei Hong Leong, a Singapore businessman who sued it, alleging he incurred trading losses of more than $708 million after getting unreliable information about his margin surplus. Terms were not disclosed.
Key Raises
A handful of KeyCorp executives got raises this week, mostly in the form of company stock.
Henry Meyer, the chairman and chief executive, is getting a salary increase of $2.3 million. For 2009, his compensation package includes $1.02 million in cash and $2.6 million in company stock.
His entire pay bump is in the form of KeyCorp common stock that Meyer cannot transfer until after the Cleveland company repays its $2.5 billion in federal aid.
