Pam Joseph resigns as TSYS COO, president

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TSYS has announced the resignation of Pam Joseph, less than 17 months after she joined the company as president and chief operating officer.

M. Troy Woods, TSYS chairman and chief executive officer, will assume the additional role of president and will continue running the Columbus, Ga., company for another three years, TSYS said in a press release late last week.

The departure of Joseph, 58, was a mutual decision, according to a TSYS spokesperson.

Bard Wrisley

When TSYS hired Joseph in March 2016, she was also elected to the board of directors and it was widely expected she would someday succeed Woods as the company’s CEO. Two months later Joseph officially came on board, commuting to TSYS' headquarters from her home in Atlanta.

Before joining TSYS, Joseph, a PaymentsSource Most Influential Women in Payments honoree, was chairman and CEO of Elavon and vice chairman of U.S. Bank's payments services division. She had retired from that position in 2015, and Woods persuaded her to join TSYS last year to help lead the company through broad expansion.

Among the challenges TSYS has faced over the last two years was integrating its operations with TransFirst, the Hauppauge, N.Y.-based processor it acquired in early 2016 for $2.4 billion. TSYS also paid $1.4 billion in 2013 to acquire the prepaid card marketer NetSpend.

In April of this year TSYS, which has about 11,500 employees, confirmed plans to shutter information technology centers in Idaho and Colorado to streamline operations.

Rumors recently circulated that FIS was looking to acquire TSYS, Thomas McCrohan, a Mizuho Securities USA analyst, said in a Monday research note.

One thing that has really characterized TSYS is the long-term stability of its senior management team, said Patricia Hewitt, CEO of PG Research & Advisory Services in Savannah, Ga.

Woods, 66, was named CEO in 2014, succeeding Philip W. Tomlinson, a 40-year veteran of the company. Woods has served in various capacities at TSYS since 1987.

“TSYS has seen a great deal of reorganization recently and it’s possible that the company was not seeing a return on this activity,” Hewitt said.

The announcement that Woods will remain at the helm for the next three years also is interesting, Hewitt noted. “It sounds like they believe they need to steady the ship,” she said.