Content area
Full text
Jerry Grundhofer has a knack for making people see things his way. Lauded for building one of the best bank management teams around, U.S. Bancorp's chief executive has used his operational skills and his salesmanship to meld four different institutions together in three years-giving shareholders a total return of 45 percent in 2003.
Richard Davis remembers the Sunday morning 10 years ago when he got a call at home from his former mentor, Jerry Grundhofer. As president of security Pacific National Bank, Grundhofer had put the promising young Davis in charge of some retail banking operations. After being swept up by a 1992 buyout, the high-energy Grundhofer spent more than a year as vice chairman of Bank of America before heading east to run Star Banc, a $7 billion disappointment in Cincinnati. Star's board, shaken by a recent takeover skirmish with rival Fifth Third, was hungry for change. And now Grundhofer was courting Davis, head of BofA's southern California retail operations, to join him there.
"He said, 'You know how we always talked about building something from scratch and doing things right? This is it. ...a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put all those best practices in place,'" Davis recalls. "I said, 'Jerry, slow down. I don't even know where you are.'" A week later, Davis not only could place Cincinnati on the map, he owned a house there. "There's no better salesperson than Jerry," Davis chuckles.
It turned out to be a good move. A decade later, Grundhofer is chairman and CEO of U.S. Bancorp, a $190 billion franchise with branches in 24 states stretching from Ohio to California. Davis, well-respected for his operational abilities and vision, is both vice chairman in charge of retail banking and, by most accounts, heir apparent to the throne of the nation's eighth-largest banking company. The duo, together with another early Grundhofer recruit, Security Pacific alum and present CFO David Moffett, has been at the core of one of the more successful bank leadership teams of the modern era. "They're one of the most passionate managements in the industry, and they operate one of the best banks in the country," says Tom Brown, who runs hedge fund Second Curve Capital.
The numbers bear out. Despite the recent recession...