The most quotable bank CEOs of 2024

January 1, 2025 12:00 PM

Bank CEOs are generally not the most quotable group. They often speak in jargon, reference inscrutable financial metrics or employ acronyms that can scare away the uninitiated.

For banking reporters, what's often the key to writing a readable story is making liberal use of paraphrases.

So when top executives do make memorable remarks, we take notice. It sometimes happens in the context of discussions about regulation, as bankers reach for colorful turns of phrase to articulate their frustrations over stricter rules.

What follows is a look at the eight most quotable bank CEOs of 2024.

Bloomberg

John “Johnny” Allison

CEO, Home BancShares

Just weeks before the Nov. 5 election, Allison used his company's quarterly earnings call to endorse Donald Trump for president.

"Whether you like Donald Trump or not, I believe he has to win the race," Allison said. "We know what he did last time, and he was business-friendly. Watching both candidates through this short campaign has been very painful for all of us, but after watching, I cannot imagine anyone voting for [Kamala] Harris."

Allison is known for his outspokenness, which made his comments less surprising than they would have been from another bank CEO.

During earnings calls, bank executives typically refrain from expressing a preference for a particular political candidate, though they do sometimes talk about how election-related uncertainty is impacting their businesses.

Marco Bello

Jamie Dimon

CEO, JPMorgan Chase

Dimon has long been a vocal critic of regulations he views as harmful, but in late October he went further, suggesting that he'd been informed he should expect retribution from regulators.

"I have been told by people at the Fed, know that because of what you have said and what you wrote about, you know they are coming after you," Dimon said at a conference on Oct. 28, according to Reuters.

The Federal Reserve reportedly declined to comment on Dimon's remarks.

As part of his commentary that day, Dimon took issue with specific rules on capital requirements, card payments and open banking.

"It is time to fight back," Dimon told the conference audience. "We are suing our regulators over and over and over because things are becoming unfair and unjust, and they are hurting companies. A lot of these rules are hurting lower-paid individuals."

"We don't want to get involved in litigation just to make a point, but I think if you're in a knife fight, you better damn well bring a knife, and that's where we are," Dimon said.

Bloomberg

Brian Moynihan

CEO, Bank of America

Like Dimon, Moynihan has been an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve's proposed Basel III endgame capital rule.

In September, following a wave of industry pressure, Fed Vice Chair of Supervision Michael Barr announced changes to the proposal that would reduce the additional capital requirements for the nation's largest banks by half.

Later the same day, Moynihan said he was encouraged that regulators were addressing the industry's concerns, and that BofA was well positioned to adapt to the new capital framework. But he also questioned whether higher capital standards were necessary.

Moynihan said that a 10% capital increase at Bank of America would reduce the company's loans by $160 billion.

"We feel good about it," Moynihan said about the revised capital proposal. "But I'd say there's an old phrase, 'Show them death, and they'll take despair.' I sometimes feel that that's what we just got."

Bloomberg

Bill Demchak

CEO, PNC Financial Services Group

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has pitched its proposed open-banking rule as a way to level the playing field for small banks, as they compete against larger institutions that hold more consumer data.

"The business opportunity is about how you can steal the lunch of your bigger competitors," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in 2023.

PNC's Demchak doesn't see it that way. This fall, he argued that the CFPB's open-banking rule, assuming it's finalized, will enable the reverse of what Chopra envisioned. Large and regional banks will be away to lure customers away from smaller competitors, Demchak said.

"We'll pull market share out of smaller banks who won't have the technology to be able to take advantage," he said at a conference on Sept. 9.

Thomas Cangemi

Then-CEO, New York Community Bancorp

The rapid decline of New York Community Bancorp — which culminated in early March, when the real estate-heavy lender got a $1 billion lifeline — began just five weeks earlier.

On Jan. 31, New York Community reported a quarterly net loss of $260 million. Perhaps more importantly, the Long Island-based company slashed its dividend by about 70%.

Investors were caught off guard, and the share price fell by 37% in a single day.

"We recognize the importance and impact of the dividend reduction on all of our stockholders and it was not made lightly," Cangemi said in a news release at the time.

Less than a month later, Cangemi was out as CEO.

Bloomberg

Joseph Otting

CEO, New York Community Bancorp/Flagstar Financial

In early March, Otting took over as CEO of the ailing New York Community Bancorp, which later changed its name to Flagstar Financial.

Otting, a former comptroller of the currency, was part of an investment group led by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that provided a $1 billion capital injection to the Long Island-based lender.

The two former Trump administration colleagues had a history of working together to turn around troubled banks. Following the failure of IndyMac Bank in 2008, Otting and Mnuchin teamed up as part of a group that bought the bank's remains from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Otting became CEO of IndyMac, which was renamed OneWest, and Mnuchin became its chairman. The purchase ended up being hugely profitable.

"We've done this before," Otting told investors two months after taking the reins at New York Community. "And we feel we can do it again."

Otting also made blunt comments about what he indicated were subpar compliance capabilities at New York Community. He said that the bank, which had switched its primary regulator to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was not ready to be regulated by that agency.

"We have a lot of catching up to do to get our standards up," Otting said at the time.

Ira Robbins

CEO, Valley National Bancorp

Valley is one of the regional banks that came under pressure this year for having a concentration in commercial real estate loans.

In April, the New Jersey bank laid out plans to reduce its CRE concentration. The goal was to bring commercial real estate loans, which had totaled 460% of the bank's risk-based capital, down below 400%. Regulatory guidance calls for scrutiny of fast-growing banks where CRE loans make up more than 300% of risk-based capital.

Valley decided to reduce its CRE concentration even as the bank's executives were saying that the amount of money they set aside each quarter to cover potential losses had peaked.

Over the summer, Robbins lamented that CRE-heavy lenders were facing pressure to look more like the rest of the industry.

"Everyone's being pushed to look the exact same," he told American Banker. "Is that really what the U.S. banking system was built off of? What are the unintended consequences of pushing everyone to look the exact same?"

Bloomberg

Bharat Masrani

CEO, TD Bank Group

In October, TD agreed to pay more than $3 billion in fines to the U.S. government after allowing hundreds of millions of dollars of dirty money to run through its channels. The Canadian company also became the first bank to plead guilty to money-laundering conspiracy.

The writing was already on the wall by mid-September, when Masrani announced plans to retire in 2025. TD's longtime CEO will be succeeded by Raymond Chun, who currently serves as the company's head of Canadian banking.

In announcing his plan to retire, Masrani was straightforward about his failure to prevent the company's historic compliance blunders.

"The anti-money-laundering challenges we face took place on my watch as CEO and I take full responsibility," Masrani said in a prepared statement.