Over his diverse coast-to-coast career, Western Alliance Bancorp. CEO Ken Vecchione has continuously moved toward bigger challenges, and some of those were major economic downturns.
"The Silicon Valley Bank crisis was rough, but the 2008 economic downturn was far worse, and you learn strategies to survive," Vecchione said. "What we learned in March 2023 was how to do it all faster."
Business strategy is second nature to Vecchione.
Growing up in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, his father was a truck driver-turned-entrepreneur who bought and sold retail operations, including dry cleaners, a liquor store, a car rental outlet and a messenger service.
His mother paved the way for other women working at a local office-furniture store by first asking to work flexible hours, then negotiating to receive equal pay when she became the top salesperson at the store.
"It was all business at dinner every night. My parents would talk about what happened that day and analyze how external events like the weather affected sales," Vecchione said.
With the distant goal of running a business himself, Vecchione majored in accounting at the State University of New York at Albany, working first as an auditor at Chemical Bank in Manhattan, then at a small accounting firm that handled finances for Broadway productions.
He spent another year as an accountant for a garment manufacturer before Citibank's merchant credit card services unit hired him as a financial analyst. Vecchione spent the next 17 years advancing up the ladder at Citi, eventually becoming chief financial officer of Citigroup credit cards for Europe and North America, as credit cards and payments became a bigger factor on banks' balance sheets.
Credit card processing firm First Data Corp. next hired Vecchione in 1994 as CFO of its merchant payments group, where he led acquisitions of independent sales organizations, selling credit card acceptance services to small businesses.
First Data's share of the ISO market went from about 2% to 50% during his tenure there, according to Vecchione.
Two years later Vecchione was recruited to be CFO for the AT&T Universal credit card, which was fading after a splashy launch in 1990 as the first major rewards-based credit card with no annual fee. Vecchione's team rejuvenated the business and in 1997 AT&T Universal sold it to Citi for $3.5 billion.
Credit card marketing giant MBNA Corp. promptly hired Vecchione in its finance department. Between 1998 and 2006, he rose to vice chairman and CFO at MBNA, staying through Bank of America's purchase of the firm in 1997 for $35 billion. Vecchione's next gig was CFO at private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and in 2006 Western Alliance asked him to join its board for his expertise in credit cards and payments.
"I joined Western Alliance's board in January 2007, and we soon found ourselves in the middle of the great financial crisis. This was a $5 billion bank, and I was used to bigger banks," he said.
"But I got to know [Western Alliance CFO] Dale Gibbons, who had been CFO at Zions Bank. The two of us bonded over our joint experiences and our desire to create and grow things at banks," Vecchione added.
Western Alliance named Vecchione president and chief operating officer in 2010. He left in 2013 to become president and CEO at Encore Capital Group in San Diego, also serving as chairman of the firm's Cabot Credit Management arm. Vecchione returned to Western Alliance in July 2017 as president and in early 2018 the board also appointed him CEO.
"You have to know everything to be a CFO," Vecchione said. "But I'm happier having a hands-on role in running a company as CEO."
