At the bank, CEOs’ waltzes are danced at an ever-faster pace, signaling that the music has changed since CEOs reigned virtually undisturbed for years. The recent exit from British Barclays of Jes Staley, who rose to the top at the end of 2015, is explained by the investigation into his relationship with the financier accused of sexual harassment, Jeffrey Epstein. While the step backwards of last April, after less than two years, by Chris Vogelzang from the Danish Danske Bank can be traced back to his involvement in a money laundering investigation. In February 2020, however, Tidjane Thiam resigned from Credit Suisse over criticism of the stalking scandal.
According to Bloomberg, half of the CEOs of Europe’s 20 largest banks have been in the lead for two years or less. And the remaining ten have held the position of CEO for over six and a half years on average. At the basis of the acceleration in the turnover in top management there are, in addition to the scandals that can occur quite randomly (although there is now greater sensitivity on some issues), the crisis situations, accelerated by the pandemic that has often worsened the budgets , and mergers and acquisitions.
Among the big banks of our house, in February the then CEO of Unicredit, Jean Pierre Mustier, left the field free to Andrea Orcel, not for a scandal but for the breaking of the agreement with the board of directors. It seems that “fatal” was his approach, unconvinced, to an acquisition of Monte dei Paschi, an operation that has so far been skipped under the management of Orcel.
Mps, thanks to the troubled waters in which it has been sailing for at least a decade, has registered a continuous turnover of “helmsmen”: the CEO Guido Bastianini, now in the balance according to some observers, was appointed in 2020 in place of Marco Morelli, who had risen to the top in 2016 to replace Fabrizio Viola, who in turn arrived at the head of the Sienese institute in 2012. Similar script for another bank looking for a buyer, Carige, where the current ad Francesco Guido took over the reins after the extraordinary administration phase started when in the role of CEO there was Fabio Innocenzi, who arrived in the place of Paolo Fiorentino, who succeeded Bastianini (the same today at the helm of Mps), who in turn had taken the place of Piero Montani, first CEO of the “after Berneschi”.
The plots are not finished, because Montani has recently risen to the top of Bper to replace Alessandro Vandelli, who managed the transfer to the Modena bank of most of the branches sold by Intesa Sanpaolo for the acquisition of Ubi. Operation, the latter, which “cut” the chair of the group’s CEO based in Bergamo, Victor Massiah, at the helm since 2008. While the CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo, Carlo Messina, at the top since 2013, buying Ubi seems to have become even more powerful.