Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons from the Front Lines of Global Finance. Forew. by Paul Volcker - Hardcover

Rhodes, William R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071704256 ISBN 13: 9780071704250

Verlag: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Now featuring a New Preface on The Eurozone Debt Crisis
Praise for Banker to the World
"Bill Rhodes is a legend in banking...this slim and very readable book is his account of the lessons he learned...his successes are many and genuine, and we need to know how he did it."
- Financial World, July 2012
About the Book
In more than five decades with Citi, William "Bill" Rhodes, the firm's former senior vice chairman and senior international officer, has worked with senior business leaders, statesmen, and strongmen and brokered immense financial deals while looking across the table at finance ministers... and up the barrels of guns trained on him. He has earned the cooperation of Fidel Castro over cigars and the admiration of Rupert Murdoch, who said of Rhodes, "By dogged hard work, Bill forms important and great relationships. Everyone knows Bill. Everyone trusts Bill."
From these and other experiences, Rhodes has learned a lifetime of lessons about managing amid crises and, more important, how to lead prudently, decisively, and effectively to prevent crises from ever happening in the first place. In Banker to the World , Rhodes presents his collected wisdom, best-practices, analysis, and anecdotes in one essential volume on the creation of value through leadership and on the importance of leading by one's values.
Dramatically illustrated by more than two dozen examples, Rhodes's principles offer an excellent foundation for leaders at all levels. Having honed his skills in high-level negotiations around the world including those with the Sandinistas, heads of state, and corporate CEOs in situations ranging from the opening of post-apartheid South Africa and the defusing of the Latin American "debt bomb" to the forestalling of the nationalization of Citi assets in Venezuela - Rhodes dispenses invaluable advice, including:

Lead boldly and decisively: Know when to disregard caution for caution's sake and always insist on a neutral negotiating atmosphere.
Anticipate problems by visualizing their impact: Get ahead of risk by taking a comprehensive view of potential obstacles.
Confront problems directly and proactively: When faced with a critical situation, going directly to its epicenter is what turns a crisis into an opportunity.
You may not be presented with challenges such as restructuring a nation's multibillion-dollar debt or dealing with Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. But in Banker to the World , Bill Rhodes gives takeaway lessons on leading with character, tact, and determination that any manager, executive, or government official will use again and again to evaluate challenges, anticipate responses, and be more decisive in navigating crises of any size.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William R. (Bill) Rhodes is the retired senior vice chairman and senior international officer of Citigroup and Citibank. He is President and CEO, William R. Rhodes Global Advisors, LLC; senior advisor, Citi; and professor-at-large, Brown University. Bill gained a reputation for international financial diplomacy in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of his leadership in helping manage the external debt crises that involved developing nations and their creditors worldwide. He has since served as a trusted advisor to governments, financial officials, and corporations worldwide. He is a director of many for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and has received numerous decorations and honors from governments and institutions.

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BANKER TO THE WORLD

Leadership Lessons From the Front Lines of Global Finance By WILLIAM R. RHODES

McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 William R. Rhodes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-170425-0

Contents

Chapter One

LESSON 1

LEAD BOLDLY AND DECISIVELY

Facing Down the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, The Middle East and Israel, and Getting the Deal Done in China

Bold decision making is the hallmark of leading in crisis situations, and it is a skill that I have had to employ time and again over my 50-year career. In a time of crisis, it is important to recognize the course of action that needs to be taken, and to take that action quickly. The following three examples are cases in which, when faced with challenges, taking bold decisions resulted in positive outcomes.

In Nicaragua in 1980, for example, I had to insist that gun-toting Sandinistas not disrupt our debt negotiations—and was rewarded with a box of cigars from Fidel Castro following the deal's completion. In the early 1990s, I overrode the concerns of some of my colleagues, who were worried about Citibank's position in the Middle East, in order to open a Citibank presence in Israel in the spirit of the Oslo Accords. And in China, I led Citibank through the acquisition of a stake in a local bank that required a decision on my part to go ahead and take responsibility for signing the deal, despite eleventh-hour problems at the signing ceremony.

The lessons illustrated here demonstrate that when faced with challenges, adversity, skeptics, last-minute snafus—and even armed guards—leadership in these types of situations requires making a bold decision about a course of action and then motivating the teams around you to carry that decision through. To lead, you must be proactive and courageous—and willing to take the responsibility if your measures fail.

NICARAGUA

I had spent 20 years working in Latin America and the Caribbean before I was faced with Daniel Ortega and his submachine-gun–toting Sandinistas. I will never forget that experience, and it is an example of the type of leadership that I advocate for anyone who is in a position to lead people and shape outcomes: engaging in bold, direct action; making clear decisions; and then sticking to those decisions without wavering or backing down.

On July 19, 1979, Ortega and his comandantes seized power in Nicaragua. They inherited a national debt of $1.6 billion, including $582 million owed to 115 private banks around the world. We at Citi were one of those banks, and we had a branch in downtown Managua. As a senior vice president in charge of corporate banking in Latin America, I decided to fly down to assess the situation.

The Sandinistas—a new, leftist government that had just taken over from a long- running conservative regime—had been in power just three weeks, and the mood was tense. As our Falcon 20 taxied to a stop at the airport in Managua, we were met by a number of female fatigue-clad soldiers carrying AK-47s. They were to be my escorts for my few-hour visit to the city. I was to fly out the same day, under threat of execution right there on the tarmac if we did not leave on time.

"Your plane will leave on time because otherwise my leader has given me orders to shoot you," one of the Sandinista women said to me by way of greeting upon arrival.

She said the same to our pilot.

I assured her in Spanish that we would be leaving exactly as scheduled. But I would have preferred a slightly more friendly welcome. It happened to be my forty-fourth birthday—August 15, 1979. When it came to the Sandinistas, I didn't have a philosophical bent.

On the way into the city, I could see streets pockmarked by the remnants of heavy fighting. Several years of Sandinista rebellion and the regime's attempts to quell it had left 50,000 people, or 2 percent of the population, dead. For more than a year, National Guard troops had used artillery and aerial bombs to devastate the eastern part of the city while trying to rout the Sandinista rebels, demolishing schools, hospitals, and vital electric and water infrastructure, and killing thousands in Managua alone.

On top of the manmade destruction, the 1972 earthquake had also wreaked terrible devastation on Managua—80 percent of the buildings had been destroyed, and the city center had been reduced to rubble. Seven years later, there was no sign of rebuilding and little evidence of the massive amounts of aid that had poured into the country for reconstruction. The downtown streets were mostly empty save for ruins, and roads led out of town through wastelands to hastily built shantytowns on the perimeter. The toppled president, Anastasio (Tachito) Somoza Debayle—the younger son of Nicaragua's original dictator, who had been assassinated in 1956—had appointed himself head of the earthquake reconstruction committee and had awarded his own companies 80 percent of the building contracts; however, only a fraction of these were ever completed. Downtown Managua was virtually abandoned, as most of the rebuilding that had been done had taken place on land in the south and southeast of the city, which had been owned by Somoza and his associates.

Like most businesses in Managua, our bank branch was closed. As I had requested, I was taken to meet Arturo Cruz, Sr., the head of the Central Bank. Cruz, who had a degree from Georgetown University, had long been working to overthrow the Somoza regime. He had been jailed twice, once following a failed plot in 1947 and again following another such plot in 1954. He had gone into exile in Washington to work for the Inter-American Development Bank, where I had met him. During that period, the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación National) had approached him and enlisted his support.

When the Sandinistas succeeded in toppling the Somoza regime, Cruz returned to head the Central Bank in Managua—but not before transferring control of the Nicaraguan embassy in Washington to the new Sandinista government. Cruz and some of his associates took up quarters downstairs and left the outgoing Somoza ambassador to settle his affairs on the second floor. (Cruz resigned from the Central Bank post in 1981 to become ambassador to the United States, and he ultimately joined the Contras in 1985 before quitting them as well two years later.) These Sandinistas considered themselves elitists, not guerrillas, and their intent was to bring a new leftist order to Nicaragua that would erase the injustices of the Somoza years for the benefit of the Nicaraguan people.

Cruz assured me during our meeting that Nicaragua was committed to restructuring its international debt obligations. I was pleased to hear it, and so I returned to New York with the good news that the Sandinista government would support debt restructuring talks.

But just a month later, at a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in September, Daniel Ortega raised alarms in the international banking community.

"Nicaragua's foreign debt should be assumed by the international community, especially the developed countries and above all those who supported the Somoza regime," he said. This raised fears that the Nicaraguans would do what Fidel Castro had done in Cuba—nationalize U.S. banks and selectively repudiate most of his foreign debt. The Mexicans stepped in to mediate and offered to host debt negotiations in Mexico City. Clearly there were...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw-Hill Professional
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071704256
• ISBN 13: 9780071704250
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar