BofA exec gets tough lesson on loyalty

By ROBERT TRIGAUX

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 2000

Alex Sink boasts more than her fair share of smarts, drive, wealth and clout. Many of those attributes helped elevate her in the past 26 years to the head of Bank of America, the former NationsBank, in Florida.

But none of this was worth spit in the rough 'n tumble NationsBank ranks where Sink spent most of her working career and half her life. At NationsBank-turned-Bank of America, the bank's headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., was the High Command. Loyalty was demanded and rewarded. Loyalty drove Sink to succeed.

Sink's father was a Marine. Sink's husband was a Marine. Bank of America chief and Sink's longtime mentor Hugh McColl was a Marine. Honor. Duty. Get the job done.

So it must have hurt deeply last month when Sink got the word from corporate messengers that her services no longer would be required. Word is she was stunned.

Sink, 52, was not fired, by any measure. She already was contemplating retirement in a few years. But she had bucked command a bit too often. Most recently, she had failed to "re-up" her enlistment with a long-term commitment sought by the new generation of top executives taking over from McColl.

Alex. Here's a generous retirement package. Take it and make way for another, younger woman to lead the charge in Florida. Godspeed. That was the gist of last month's message from Charlotte.

Semper Fi. In the high echelons of big corporations, loyalty does not go nearly as far as it used to.

"I did not raise my hand and ask to retire," Sink told a reporter last month. Catherine Bessant, 39, will take Sink's place.

Sink is not commenting further. Her "retirement" is not effective until July 31. But this much is clear: The brusque end of a banking career devoted to one company and the vision of one leader -- Mr. McColl, as he is called by employees -- was not what Sink had envisioned.

In her 20s, Sink endured the North Carolina bank's boot camp that separated the good soldiers from the free thinkers. As a young lender, she toughed her way through the bank's frat-boy inclinations, which at times included entertaining clients at strip joints. In the manly banking world, Sink did her many jobs well and showed pluck in the eyes of the bank's future leaders.

By the mid-1990s, in her mid-40s, Sink was named president of NationsBank's Florida operations. At the time -- a few years before NationsBank would buy Barnett Banks, Florida's largest bank -- Sink had attained as high a position as any woman in U.S. banking.

Sink's banking future looked bright, at least until NationsBank succeeded, after repeated attempts, in buying Barnett in 1997. The $15.5-billion megadeal, a banking industry record at the time, secured NationsBank's position as the No. 1 bank in Florida.

But NationsBank, previously a distant No. 3 in Florida, not only had to absorb the larger Barnett. After overpaying for Barnett, NationsBank had to make big cuts to pay for the deal. At the same time, the bank had to finesse a merger of Barnett's decentralized culture into NationsBank's by-the-book hierarchy.

To head the merger effort in Florida, McColl passed over Sink as NationsBank's top executive in the state and chose Barnett president Allen Lastinger. Sink was relegated to Lastinger's No. 2. But Lastinger quickly foresaw the coming culture clash and fled into retirement.

By early 1998, McColl passed over Sink again and brought in Gene Taylor, a former head of NationsBank Florida, to retake control of the struggling merger. Sink stayed in Florida but was reassigned to run NationsBank's national private banking business.

In April 1998, the Charlotte bankers all but forgot about the Barnett merger when NationsBank acquired California's huge Bank of America. Taylor was quickly redirected to San Francisco to help in a much bigger merger. And Sink was brought back, this time as the No. 1 person charged with consolidating Barnett and turning NationsBank into a big moneymaker in Florida.

After too many chefs in the Florida kitchen, Sink was left alone to clean up the mess.

Among NationsBank's many mergers, Barnett will stand out as one of its duds. Nearly all of Barnett's top managers have retired as placated millionaires or now work for competing banks. Preoccupied by the Bank of America deal, NationsBank failed to fix recurring computer system problems in the Barnett merger. As NationsBank cut staff and closed branches in Florida, customers complained about poor service.

"It's very well known that we had a disaster back then," Sink acknowledged last month.

Some Florida customers even showed up at NationsBank's 1999 annual meeting in Charlotte to complain, prompting McColl to apologize publicly to shareholders for the bank's inadequacies in Florida. Failures, ultimately, that happened on Sink's watch.

Sink did what she could to pull NationsBank Florida together. At first, the Florida bank did not meet the profit goals demanded by Charlotte. But the bank has performed better in the past year.

In fact, other Florida banks say they now sense a renewed aggressiveness at Bank of America when competing for business in the state.

"They bought Barnett and BankAmerica-ized it," says former Barnett executive Joe Wheeler, who now runs Florida Bank of Pinellas County in Largo. "It's like Barnett never existed."

Did NationsBank's bumbling through the Barnett merger end Sink's career? Not directly. But even as Bank of America begins to rebound in the state, the past couple of years did not leave a great impression in Charlotte.

Sink's departure from Bank of America is just part of a bigger overhaul. As bank chief McColl cedes more power to No. 2 executive Ken Lewis, numerous regional presidents at Sink's level are "retiring" to thin the bank's ranks.

Bank of America's recent woes go well beyond Florida. The bank's shares have fallen more than 20 percent in the last month as skittish investors dumped shares on concerns about credit quality.

As for Sink, she will survive quite well without Bank of America.

With her own influence and a 14-year marriage to Holland & Knight managing partner Bill McBride, the couple are (by modern standards, at least) the Tampa Bay area's version of the Camelot couple. The duo's high profile in Florida has helped Sink's and McBride's careers enormously.

Sink is rich. She is the most recognized businesswoman in the state. And she is remarkably connected among Florida's power players.

That's why, in the last race for Florida governor, former Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay sought out the liberal Sink as a possible running mate against Jeb Bush. She declined, but plans to work on various Democratic campaigns in the state. We may yet see her face in Florida politics.

In 1993, before she became NationsBank president in Florida, I spoke with Sink about her efforts to join the very male world of banking's top ranks.

Sink never wavered in her loyalty to NationsBank. But she wondered openly if she, or other women, could ever achieve access to the executive suites.

"The question for women," Sink said then, "is whether the top management of banks will let it happen or make it happen."

Seven years later, Sink may have her answer.

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