Sallie Krawcheck
It was a double hit to Fortune's Most Powerful Women list last Tuesday when Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz and Bank of America's (BAC) Sallie Krawcheck got fired.
Bartz, No. 10 in our 2010 MPW rankings, went out with a bang--as my explosive interview with her, F-bombs included, shows. Meanwhile, Krawcheck, BofA's global wealth management chief and No. 24 on our list, exited without a sound.
I know both women well, and it's worth observing that they are, in certain ways, a common type: They're both fierce, sometimes defiant executives who like playing "outsider" inside organizations and proudly take the flak that comes with it. "That is really good," Bartz said of this characterization, when she called me last Wednesday night, 27 hours after getting ousted.
There are more differences, though, between Bartz, who was the tech industry's most powerful woman, and Krawcheck, who was Wall Street's woman on top--and five lessons to take away from their mishaps:
1. If you must fire someone, do it in person. Bartz, who talked to Fortune exclusively, was livid that Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock fired her her over the phone. Last Tuesday, she had arrived in Manhattan for a Citigroup (C) technology conference, and Bostock "was in New York City," she said. "There's no excuse for him not meeting with me." Same day, different style: BofA CEO Brian Moynihan booted Krawcheck in person. Rather than phone her from Charlotte, North Carolina headquarters, he wisely flew to New York.
2. If you hire an "outsider," make sure you can handle the rabblerousing. Yahoo could not--this was a case of a troubled company, an ill-fitting chief, and a board too weak to acknowledge early on that Bartz wasn't right for the turnaround challenge. As for Krawcheck, here was a financial-services star who had made the cover of Fortune as "The Last Honest Analyst" at age 37 when she was heading research firm Sanford Bernstein and the rest of Wall Street was mired in conflict-of-interest scandals. At Citigroup (C), which brought her in to help heal its damaged reputation, she clashed with top management--and was pushed out--over the issue of reimbursing clients for bad investments. Her run at BofA wasn't so acrimonious, but outside Moynihan's inner circle at a shrinking company, she was practically doomed.
Carol Bartz
3. Speak no evil. As my colleague Dan Primack reported on Friday, Bartz's Yahoo employment contract has a non-disparagement clause. And she put a $10 million pay package at risk by calling the Yahoo directors "doofuses." If she doesn't bash the board again, she may well get her money, it appears.
4. Age matters. Bartz is 63. Krawcheck is 46. Bartz, who resigned from the Yahoo board on Friday, remains Cisco's (CSCO) lead independent director. After heading two major tech companies, Autodesk (ADSK) and Yahoo--there's scant chance she'll run another, she admitted to me last week. Krawcheck, in contrast, has a long runway ahead.
5. Getting fired isn't death, necessarily. Even though Moynihan didn't want Krawcheck in his new lineup, she did a good job rebuilding the bank's wealth management operation, including Merrill Lynch. Key measures--revenues, profits, margins, morale--went up, while attrition went down during her tenure. Some who know her, like bank analyst Dick Bove on CNBC last week, think the main lesson for Krawcheck is to choose her jobs better--and maybe even go back to her roots as an analyst. Won't happen. Krawcheck isn't talking, but I know from previous conversations with her that she loves a big and messy turnaround. Failure doesn't phase her. She'll be back.
by Patricia Sellers
Ted Dimon Sr. started a new job yesterday.
Not just any job. Formerly a broker at Merrill Lynch, Dimon joined the brokerage unit of JPMorgan Chase (JPM). His son happens to be CEO of the parent company.
Word is, Jamie Dimon steered clear of the deal to hire his 78-year-old dad, who arrived with five other Merrill brokers in tow. According to people close to father and son, Ted MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 10, 2009 12:10 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Maybe it's a sign of recovery in the financial services industry: Wall Street's two most renowned women dropouts have settled on what to do next. Yesterday on Postcards, you read Sallie Krawcheck's bizarre tale of her bumpy road on the way to Bank of America (BAC). Today, news broke that former Morgan Stanley (MS) co-president Zoe Cruz is starting a hedge fund.
Cruz, who spent her entire career at MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 9, 2009 12:21 PM ET
by Jessica Shambora
If 2009 has a buzz word, it's "transparency."
The consensus is that we got into this mess because a lot of people didn't know what they were signing up for: adjustable rate mortgages, arcane investment vehicles, credit cards with hidden fees. People didn't know because the products were too complicated to understand. Or they weren't transparent. Or both.
We've written about this here on Postcards: Sallie Krawcheck, ex-Citigroup (C) and MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Aug 25, 2009 12:26 PM ET
You never know who your summer intern will turn out to be. In 1980, Ursula Burns was a summer intern in mechanical engineering at Xerox (XRX). Last month, she became CEO there. In 1985, Sallie Krawcheck was a summer intern at Fortune. She later climbed to the top tier of Citigroup (C), where she served as CFO and ran a $13 billion wealth management unit. Last week, Krawcheck moved to MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 13, 2009 1:42 PM ET
"If you spend your whole life focused on getting from here to there, then you won't enjoy the trip."
- Sallie Krawcheck, suggesting that her move to Bank of America (BAC), announced today, isn't about chasing the golden rung--the CEO job there--but rather about fulfilling a desire "to get back in the fray." I've known Krawcheck, who had an unpleasant parting with Citigroup (C) last fall, for many years. And though MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 3, 2009 6:56 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Sallie Krawcheck has landed back at another troubled bank giant. Citigroup's (C) onetime CFO, who later headed global wealth management there and clashed with Citi CEO Vikram Pandit, has accepted a job at Bank of America (BAC).
Her new position—leading BofA's global wealth and investment management business—comes as a surprise, since she has been off the radar since Pandit demoted her last September and she left Citi soon after. MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 3, 2009 5:05 PM ET
Has Wall Street regulation worked? As a landmark stock-research settlement--requiring brokerages to spend $460 million over five years on reforms--expired this week, the key man behind the deal, Eliot Spitzer, and two experts, former Citigroup (C) CFO Sallie Krawcheck and Fortune's Allan Sloan, convened at CNNMoney's studios to talk about the progress. I sat in on their conversation. You can view segments on CNNMoney by clicking the links at the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 30, 2009 2:05 PM ET
"'More' is not the answer here. 'Better' is the answer here. 'Much less' is the answer here."
-- Sallie Krawcheck, former CFO of Citigroup (C), discussing the need for simplicity in financial disclosures in a video interview with CNNMoney anchor Poppy Harlow. Krawcheck gets personal here: Six weeks ago she refinanced her home and encountered "mind-boggling" paperwork, she says. The financial-services industry, she notes, "had high returns on complexity for years." MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jul 14, 2009 4:28 PM ET
Lots of people are now seeing light at the end of the global recession, but it pays to keep the dark clouds in sight. My Fortune colleague Shawn Tully does that in his just-published story about Ireland. As he notes, Ireland's economy is suffering the deepest plunge of virtually any country outside of Iceland. And it's not over yet.
To get a broader view of global risk, I called Ian Bremmer, MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 14, 2009 11:01 AM ET
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Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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