By Diane Brady, Forbes Staff
Few leaders have fought on the front lines like Bruce Van Saun: working at the former Wall Street icons Kidder Peabody and Wasserstein Perella during their heydays, as CFO at Bank of New York when the 9/11 attacks decimated its main computer center, orchestrating an acquisition of Mellon before the 2008 global financial crisis and then helping the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland recover before being tapped to spin out and lead the investment-starved U.S. arm that became Citizens Financial Group in 2014.
Now chairman and CEO of America’s 12th largest bank, with about $11.8 billion in annual revenues and more than $225 billion in assets, Van Saun has faced a new set of challenges with a shaky economy and the failures of regional banking peers like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic in 2023. (Citizens bid for First Republic, which would have doubled its assets, but lost out to JPMorgan Chase.)
So is Van Saun feeling flustered as he heads into an uncertain 2024 that could increase loan losses or increase investor skittishness? No.
“You have to recognize that a financial institution is tied to the economy and the economy goes through cycles,” he says. “When things are good, you can’t get too high because you have to be looking around and say, ‘okay, where’s the next problem that’s going to hit us?’ And when things are bad, you can’t get defeated. You have say, ‘where’s the light at the end of the tunnel?’ and you have to stay upbeat so the rest of your team stays upbeat.”
“It the Fed doesn’t bring rates down, we could see the economy tip,” says Van Saun, adding that he’s also concerned about “more onerous regulations that could drive lending out of the regulated banking system into the nonbank system … which could exacerbate a slowdown by having banks reduce the supply of credit.”
But he’s bullish on the opportunities for his Rhode Island-based bank company, too. For more, click on the interview above.