Anthem Update
It turns out Kool & The Gang isn't so cool, at least not to the twentysomethings in the marketing department at Wells Fargo & Co.
Michele Clay, regional sales and marketing director for Wells in the Northeast and a 37-year veteran of the banking industry, said the younger folks on her staff were not down with the bank's frequent use of Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" as a theme song at its special events, and given the recent conversion of the Wachovia brand in the New York metro area, Clay's team has been working on lots of special events lately.
Speaking Tuesday on a panel at the New Jersey Bankers Association's inaugural conference on women in banking, Clay, who is based in Summit, N.J., offered up the Kool anecdote as an example of how the generation gap in the workplace can sometimes yield positive results.
"Now we use Katy Perry's 'Firework,' " Clay said. "I liked it!"
Watch Out, J.S.
At the same New Jersey Bankers event, Michelle Y. Lee of Wells Fargo, who was there to introduce her boss and the conference's keynote speaker, Laura Schulte, served up a great example of the strides that female bankers have made in the corporate hierarchy.
Lee, the regional president of community banking in the Northeast for Wells, noted that 11 of the 15 people who work for her are women, and that she herself reports to a woman — Schulte, the president of community banking for the eastern U.S. — who in turn reports to Carrie Tolstedt, the Wells executive who was ranked No. 1 on American Banker's 2010 list of the most powerful women in banking.
"Carrie reports to the CEO [John Stumpf], who is not a woman," Schulte observed when she took the podium. "But there's time."
Bye-Bye, M&I
BMO Financial Group (aka Bank of Montreal) faced a thorny challenge in picking a new name for its U.S. franchise, as it had three brands to reconcile.
The Canadian company agreed to buy Marshall & Ilsley Corp. of Milwaukee for $4.1 billion in December. The plan was to merge M&I with its Chicago-based U.S. subsidiary, Harris Bank.
In the end, it picked two.
This week, BMO, which likes to sound out its initials, informally calling itself "Bee-mo," unveiled the new name of its U.S. unit: BMO Harris Bank.
The company's goal was a name that "unifies" its work force and reflects its business model and the "integrated support" the parent company and affiliates will provide, Harris Bank spokesman Jim Kappel said in an email. "That framework guided us through a process that involved one-on-one interviews and focus group testing across the Harris and M&I footprint. We tested options with customers and employees of both Harris and M&I. BMO Harris Bank resonated well."
Some branding experts thought the name was a little clunky.
"All these combined names get people confused," said Jim Marous, senior director of marketing services at Harland Clarke, a payments, marketing and security services firm. "Go BMO or go Harris. … I just wonder why. Why not just stick with one name?"
(To be fair, the irony of the fact that he works for a company that is the combination of two names was not lost on Marous.)
Jeffry Pilcher, publisher of The Financial Brand, an online publication, was more sympathetic.
"Naming's a really complicated thing," he said. When companies merge, Pilcher said, they often just marry the two names, as to not make the deal so disruptive. "But in this case, you have such a mash-up of initials. … BMO M&I. It would be pretty ugly."
A Fine Point
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been grumbling a lot lately about the devastating impact the Durbin rule would have on its rewards program for debit customers. But its Chase credit card customers, meanwhile, are relinquishing their rewards benefits voluntarily — for a good cause.
In the past three weeks, Chase credit card customers have donated more than 100 million of their rewards points to the American Red Cross. Combined with contributions made directly from their credit cards, the donations have translated into more than $1.3 million raised for Red Cross relief efforts in Japan. The program, at www.ultimaterewards.com, is scheduled to run through June 30.
After then, if the Durbin interchange rule goes through as proposed, maybe the company can ask its cardholders to contribute points to Chase debit customers?
Chief Plumber
After committing to separate its executive and board leadership last year, Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. has named a new chairman. On April 19, former E-Trade Financial Corp. Chairman Robert Druskin will assume the role from Donald Donahue, who will remain DTCC's chief executive.
Druskin's appointment comes after a career spent wrangling the infrastructure of trading markets. He worked as chief financial officer at Shearson Lehman Brothers, chief administrative officer at Salomon Smith Barney and chief operations and technology officer at Citigroup Inc. At E-Trade he was a long-standing director and, in the first quarter of 2010, the company's interim CEO.
DTCC, which provides custody and servicing for more than $35 trillion of securities, said it welcomed Druskin "as we face heightened industry requirements" for clearing infrastructure. DTCC settled more than $1.6 quadrillion in transactions in 2010.
"This is certainly an exciting time to join DTCC, as market participants are relying even more heavily on the infrastructure to mitigate risk for the industry," Druskin said.
