Sallie Krawcheck Biography

Sallie L. Krawcheck is the former president of the Global Wealth & Investment Management division of Bank of America. GWIM includes Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust, the largest wealth management business in the world at $2.3 trillion in client assets. She has turned around a number of troubled businesses in her career through eliminating conflicts of interests, namely Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., and has been known as one of the most senior women on Wall Street. Most recently she has been widely published in both social and more traditional media, focusing on Wall Street regulatory reform; she is also advising a number of start-ups. On May 15, 2013, she agreed to buy the global women's network 85 Broads from its founder, Janet Hanson.

Early life

Krawcheck grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. She attended the exclusive Porter-Gaud School. While in high school, she was a local track star, and in 1983, as a high school senior, she was honored as a South Carolina Presidential Scholar. She received a Morehead Scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she received a degree in journalism. In 1992, she obtained an MBA from Columbia Business School, graduating "Beta Gamma Sigma."

Career

Sanford C. Bernstein

Krawcheck started her business career as the Institutional Investor magazine's top-ranked equity analyst covering the Wall Street firms, rising to become Director of Research and then chairman and CEO of sell-side research firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.. She had a reputation for impartial advice and her decision to take Bernstein out of the lucrative, but conflicted underwriting business, caused Fortune to dub her "The Last Honest Analyst." Citigroup sought her out to deal with criticisms over conflicts of interest within its wealth management and research business after charges were brought against the company by Elliot Spitzer.

Citigroup

Krawcheck was named CEO of Citigroup's (then new) Smith Barney unit, for which she was named to Time's 2002 list of "Global Influentials" and Fortune's Most Influential Person Under the Age of 40. The Smith Barney unit was set up in order to separate Citigroup's investment banking from its stock brokering and research operations, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest in those areas. Krawcheck was put in charge of 13,000 brokers and analysts of the new retail brokerage unit.

In 2004, Krawcheck was appointed Chief Financial Officer for Citigroup Inc. In efforts to streamline the company, she sold Citi Asset Management and Travelers Life Insurance. As a result, Institutional Investor named her one of the top three CFOs in the financial services industry, and she was also recognized in the role by US Banker magazine. She returned to a business role to replace a colleague who was asked to leave the company for inappropriately using company resources.

In 2007, Krawcheck was named CEO of Citi's wealth management business, which included returning to Smith Barney and adding the Citi Private Bank. At the time of her arrival, the Private Bank had been thrown out of Japan for sales practice issues; this, combined with continuing Citi regulatory issues, resulted in financial advisor attrition that was at an all-time high. She worked to change the corporate culture for Smith Barney's financial advisors as an early advocate of a fiduciary standard for the brokerage industry.

Krawcheck left Citi on September 22, 2008. The move followed months of tension with Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, due to the fact that Krawcheck argued for Citi to reimburse clients for defective investments distributed by Citi wealth management's brokers and bankers. Pandit and other chief officers at Citi disagreed, arguing that Citi had no legal obligation in the matter.

Bank of America

Following the acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2009, Bank of America hired Krawcheck to head the new division. Although Bank of America then-chief executive Ken Lewis had attempted to cancel the deal in the weeks before it closed, fearing Merrill Lynch was in worse financial condition than previously known, Krawcheck led the unit to $3.1 billion in profits during her two years as president of the wealth management unit. In the second quarter of 2011, Krawcheck's division increased net income by 54 percent, from $329 million to $506 million, while Bank of America posted an overall $8.8 billion loss.

Krawcheck also increased the number of financial advisors at Merrill, reversing an "exodus" of advisors from the firm. , Merrill employed more than 16,000 advisors, during a time when most rivals had seen their ranks shrink.

Krawcheck's position at Merrill was eliminated by chief executive Brian Moynihan as part of restructuring, and Krawcheck left Bank of America on September 6, 2011. She received severance payments totaling $6,000,000.

Media career

Sallie has had numerous appearances on CNBC and written columns for Reuters and The Huffington Post, among others. She has over 10,000 followers on Twitter and over 47,000 followers on LinkedIn and is one their most followed "Thought Leaders."

Accolades

Forbes named her as number seven in its list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women of 2005. In 2008, she was named to Investment Advisor magazine's IA 25, the list of the 25 most influential people in and around the investment advisory business. She was recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of its Young Global Leaders. She is a past recipient of CNBC's "Business Leader of the Future" Award. She has been credited by The Daily Beast as remaining one of the "rare honest voices on Wall Street."

Additionally, Krawcheck has established a needs-based scholarship at her former secondary school, Porter-Gaud, awarding full tuition to students of exceptional aptitude.