By David Wighton
LONDON--The last time an American investment banker headed a
British bank, it didn't end well. Bob Diamond was ousted as chief
executive of Barclays PLC under pressure from regulators in
2012.
Bill Winters, an American investment banker, was named Thursday
to replace Peter Sands as CEO of Standard Chartered PLC. An
Anglophile who has lived in London for 23 years, Mr. Winters has a
much more cautious image than the swashbuckling Mr. Diamond.
During a 26-year career in J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s
investment bank, Mr. Winters developed a reputation as a savvy
markets practitioner and a conservative risk manager. Obsessed
about the bank's vulnerability to bad loans, he would boast about
how little the bank lent, rather than how much.
During the Russian debt crisis in the late 1990s, this approach
helped limit J.P. Morgan's losses. And his stewardship of the
investment bank was viewed as one of the reasons that J.P. Morgan
Chase weathered the financial crisis better than many of its
rivals. He played a central role in the acquisition and integration
of ailing investment bank Bear Stearns in early 2008.
Mr. Winters, who is now 53, came to be regarded as a strong
contender to eventually succeed James Dimon as the overall bank's
CEO. But Mr. Winters was abruptly ousted in 2009. He told friends
that one reason Mr. Dimon sacked him was that Mr. Winters did not
believe in the universal-banking model, where institutions combined
large investment banking operations with big retail banks.
Former colleagues say Mr. Winters can at times be blunt and
hot-tempered. But he also has a lighter side. In a promotional
video last year for London's Young Vic theater, of which Mr.
Winters is on the board, the banker participated in a skit that
featured him and other financiers ripping open their shirts and
belting out a show tune.
After leaving J.P. Morgan, Mr. Winters was considered for a
number of bank CEO jobs, including roles at UBS AG, Barclays and
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, according to people familiar with
the matter. Instead he set up an asset-management business, Renshaw
Bay, to buy assets that were expected to be sold by downsizing
banks. But the opportunities were scarcer than expected, prompting
renewed speculation that Mr. Winters might be tempted to take a big
bank job.
His reputation was enhanced by his role as a member of the
U.K.'s Independent Commission on Banking that, in 2011, advised the
government to force British banks to ring-fence their retail
operations from their investment banking businesses.
Mr. Winters is a surprising choice for the Standard Chartered
job because he has no direct experience of Asia, where most of the
bank's operations are based, or of retail and commercial
banking.
One large Standard Chartered shareholder said that there was "no
superman" in the world who ticked every single box for the job. But
Mr. Winters had an excellent reputation for building good teams and
would likely bring in executives "to cater to the areas where he
has a perceived weakness", the investor said.
Write to David Wighton at david.wighton@wsj.com
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