Sandie O'Connor
Treasurer, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Sandie O'Connor ran the prime brokerage business of JPMorgan Chase before being named treasurer in March 2012 just prior to revelations about the now-infamous multibillion-dollar "London Whale" trading loss. A member of the senior management team, she is responsible for the company's relationships with regulators. The role has taken on new significance, given JPMorgan's involvement in dustups on assorted regulatory fronts, but the drama hasn't prevented O'Connor from addressing more workaday concerns, such as deploying technology to automate daily reporting and management of liquidity risk with improved speed and accuracy.
As treasurer of an institution whose operations are part of the global financial system's backbone, O'Connor needs to be well versed in all the rules being written by regulators around the world. She is especially focused now on Basel III, which will require the company to hold specific types of high-quality assets to meet assumed levels of cash outflows following a stress event. (She says it's on target to meet the requirement by the end of 2013, five years ahead of the mandated compliance date.)
Work done by O'Connor and her team also is key to JPMorgan's market share goals. The office of the corporate treasurer is a clearinghouse for interest-rate and liquidity risk, coordinating with business lines to manage funding, liquidity and capital-the foundation of the company's $2.4 trillion balance sheet.
