Richard Vague, the former head of Bank One Corp.’s credit card operation, was in Chicago last week to talk about Internet banking and his new venture, Juniper Bank.
Like Bank One’s WingspanBank, which Vague helped to launch, Juniper will be a stand-alone Internet bank when it goes live in the next month or so.
Plans for Wingspan still are being worked out by new management at Bank One, which came aboard after problems in Vague’s credit card area severely damaged the company’s overall earnings and stock price. Vague resigned from the bank last fall.
Vague neatly sidestepped audience questions about Wingspan following his speech to bankers at Thomson Financial Media’s Financial Services in Cyberspace conference.
Asked about good and bad decisions at Wingspan, Vague praised Bank One for putting Michael Cleary–who was in the audience–at the helm.
“The less-than-fabulous things were things I did when I was there,” he said.
And how will Juniper differ from Wingspan?
“Our tagline is going to be `Almost as good as Wingspan,'” Vague joked.
That should come as good news to Jamie Dimon, who in March took on the challenge of turning around the country’s fourth-largest bank.
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In Dimon’s keynote speech to the conference Thursday, he acknowledged that Wingspan competes with Bank One for customers.
“It’s fine to cannibalize ourselves. It’s better than having someone else do it,” Dimon said.
Bank notes: Federal bank regulators said last week that losses on syndicated bank loans–large loans that banks share–more than tripled over the year-earlier period. An annual review of such loans is conducted each summer.
– The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. recently warned banks to be careful about rapidly expanding their construction-and-development loan portfolios in 13 markets that the regulator considers at-risk of overbuilding.
The markets are Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Ft. Worth, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Sacramento, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
– The Treasury Department awarded Chicago-based First Bank of the Americas $935,000 for its community-development efforts. The bank serves the city’s Back of the Yards, Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods.
– Toronto-based Spectra Securities Software Inc. is opening a Chicago office. The firm provides wealth-management technology to the brokerage, banking and insurance industries. Its other offices are in New York, London and Sydney.
– Bank One hired Bobbie Gregg for its newly created position of senior vice president and compliance director. Gregg had been vice president and deputy general counsel of Sears, Roebuck and Co.