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Tag: finance

Finance | Insurance 2023: NIGEL MORRIS

Morris plans to be “extremely disciplined” in coming months after a tough year for venture capital, he told TechCrunch in May. But his fintech investment company “remains intensely focused on building lasting, durable businesses.”

Morris co-founded Capital One Financial in the early 1990s with Richard Fairbank, who remains the credit card giant’s chairman and CEO. Morris served as Capital One’s president and chief operating officer until 2004, when he left to return to his native England to “generally be a dilettante,” as he told students at his alma mater, the London Business School, in 2022. He ultimately found the experience unsatisfying and returned to the U.S. in 2007.

He and Frank Rotman then co-founded QED Investors, which has now invested in 200 companies, including Credit Karma, Klarna and SoFi Technologies.

For three years, Morris has been named to Forbes’ annual Midas List, recognizing the top venture capitalists in the world. This year, QED was one of only 16 firms that had multiple people on the list; Rotman was recognized for the sixth straight year.

Morris sits on the board of Ideas42, a nonprofit organization that uses behavioral science technology to address complex social problems.

Finance | Insurance 2023: JOHN C. ASBURY

Discovering an affinity for banking during a summer job while still in college, Asbury began his 30-year-plus career as a commercial credit officer at Wachovia Bank & Trust. He would serve in a variety of executive roles, including as president and CEO at New Mexico’s First National Bank of Santa Fe, before landing in his present job as head of Virginia’s largest community bank. With 109 branches, Atlantic Union Bank reported $20.6 billion in assets and $15.7 billion in deposits as of June 30.

In January, Atlantic Union Bankshares, the bank’s Richmond-based holding company, transferred the listing of its common stock and depositary shares from the Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange. In July, Atlantic Union announced it would acquire Danville-based American National Bankshares, the holding company of American National Bank and Trust, forming a bank with total assets of $23.7 billion as of June 30.

 Vice chair of the American Bankers Association, Asbury is a Virginia Port Authority commissioner and serves on the boards of the Greater Richmond Partnership and Virginia Learns, which he also chairs. Asbury graduated from Virginia Tech and earned his MBA from William & Mary.

Finance | Insurance 2023: LAWRENCE ‘LARRY’ BERNERT III

From his first job installing toilets at Portsmouth Naval Hospital to becoming principal and portfolio manager at Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas Asset Management, Bernert says his career has been informed by his ability to listen and consider different perspectives.

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business MBA grad is a chartered financial analyst who is active in his community, including serving as a board member for the Norfolk Employees’ Retirement System, where he chairs its investment committee; and as chair of the Children’s Health Foundation, which supports the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters.

WST was ranked No. 45 on the 2022 CNBC Financial Advisor 100 list and manages about $4.4 billion in client assets.

PERSONAL MOTTO: Trust your gut!

HOW I CHOSE MY CAREER: When my first job after school was eliminated by the recession of 1990, I was lucky that my friends Fleet Smith and Wayne Wilbanks had recently founded our firm and needed an analyst. I signed on and, 30-plus years later, here we are!

Finance | Insurance 2023: MARK A. FRANTZ

Blue Delta Capital Partners is an equity firm dedicated to supporting growth-stage companies providing technology solutions to the federal government.

Since co-founding the firm in 2009, Frantz has guided it in creating three funds, including a $215 million investment fund launched in December 2021. The newest fund offers $10 million to $50 million to qualified growing businesses. In January, the firm made its latest investment in Core One Solutions, which provides national security mission support services in the defense and intelligence sectors.

Last year, he was included for the first time on Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 list of the top 100 executives in the government contracting community.

Frantz serves on the board of directors for Glen Allen-based Fortune 500 IT and professional services firm ASGN. He is also a senior advisory board member for the Northern Virginia Technology Council, serving as co-chairman of the annual Cybersecurity Summit.

Frantz holds a law degree and MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to founding Blue Delta, he served as associate director of the White House’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under President George H.W. Bush and as a policy adviser to former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.

Finance | Insurance 2023: VIKRAM ‘VIK’ ATAL

Atal was appointed PRA’s president and CEO in March, after serving as a board member since 2015. He previously spent 27 years in leadership positions with Citigroup Inc. and was president and founder of Atal Advisers LLC, a business and strategy consulting firm.

PRA Group, a global player in acquiring and collecting nonperforming loans, earned $966 million in revenue in fiscal year 2022, and it employed more than 1,300 people in Virginia as of December 2022.

In March, four days before Atal became CEO, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined PRA subsidiary Portfolio Recovery Associates $24 million for what CFPB Director Rohit Chopra called “intimidation, deception and illegal debt collection tactics and lawsuits.” As part of its settlement, PRA agreed to pay a $12 million penalty and $15 million to affected customers.

Atal has degrees from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, India, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He serves on the K.R. Mangalam University board and the advisory board of MissionOG, a startup investment group.

FIRST JOB: Auditing a zoo with the largest population of gorillas outside of Africa

Finance | Insurance 2023: SIMON R.B. HAMILTON

Hamilton’s first job as a teen was mowing lawns — or, rather, running his own lawn-mowing business, with his brother as his first employee. That enterprising spirit has taken him a long way, first to a perch as vice president of investments at Baltimore-based advisory firm Ferris, Baker Watts, and then to Wise Investor Group, which he joined as one of three partners in 2007. He now leads the portfolio management department. Wise was initially aligned with Baird, but in September 2022 moved to Raymond James.

Last year, Forbes ranked Hamilton the fifth best wealth adviser in Virginia and No. 202 on its list of the nation’s Top 250 Wealth Advisors. Barron’s ranked him 16th in Virginia in its 2022 Top 1200 Wealth Advisors list.

A Haverford College alum, Hamilton co-hosts the “The Wise Investor Show” podcast and serves on the board of Fairfax Brave, a youth soccer club.

HOBBY/PASSION: Wine. I really enjoy researching, cataloging and, of course, tasting.

WHAT MAKES ME HAPPIEST: Seeing my girls be successful in academics, sports and life

MOST VALUED POSSESSION: My grandmother’s autobiography

Finance | Insurance 2023: RICHARD FAIRBANK

With bachelor’s and MBA degrees from Stanford University under his belt, billionaire Fairbank began his path to a Fortune 500 corner office at Virginia’s Signet Bank. There, he teamed up with Nigel Morris, now managing partner of QED Investors, to co-found a credit card spinoff business that became Capital One Financial, one of the nation’s 10 largest banks. Morris has called Fairbank “one of the most special human beings on the planet.”

Fairbank became CEO in 1994 during Capital One’s initial public offering. Under his leadership, the credit card giant is moving strongly into digital banking. Revenue grew to $34.25 billion in 2022, making it Capital One’s second-most profitable year. However, for this year’s first quarter, the bank reported a 60% drop in profits from the same period a year ago, to $960 million, largely due to customers defaulting on their credit cards and car loan debts.

Known for its star-studded commercials featuring icons like Samuel L. Jackson and Taylor Swift, Capital One moved to permanent hybrid work schedules in 2021, and in May the company required employees to be at work three days a week.

Finance | Insurance 2023: JAMES SCHENCK 

Since becoming CEO in 2014, Schenck has led a period of growth for PenFed, the nation’s second largest federal credit union, with 2.9 million members. During his tenure, PenFed has grown its assets from $17.6 billion to $35.5 billion in 2022 and more than doubled its membership. The credit union reported $1.18 billion in 2022 net revenue.

Schenck joined PenFed’s executive leadership team in 2001, and from 2011 to 2014 served as the credit union’s executive vice president and president of its realty subsidiary.

Prior to joining PenFed, the United States Military Academy and Harvard Business School graduate served 13 years in the U.S. Army, piloting Black Hawk helicopters, training Army aviators and teaching economics and finance at West Point.

Schenck is also CEO of the PenFed Foundation, which donated $2.2 million to more than 100 charitable organizations in 2022.

Finance | Insurance 2023: FRANK ROTMAN

Rotman started fintech venture capital firm QED Investors with Capital One co-founder Nigel Morris in 2007. With $4.3 billion under management, QED has invested in more than 200 companies, including Credit Karma, Klarna and SoFi Technologies.

As a student at the University of Virginia, Rotman worked as a research assistant at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he performed intelligent computer optimization work for unmanned spacecraft and the Mars Exploration Program. Upon graduating from U.Va., Rotman worked at Signet Bank and was an early leader at Capital One, helping create its original credit card portfolio.

He left to help establish a student lending company, EduCap, and then teamed up with Morris to create QED. Rotman is widely acknowledged in the investing industry as an expert in credit risk and portfolio management.

For the past six years, Rotman has been named to Forbes’ annual Midas List recognizing the world’s top venture capitalists. This year, QED was one of 16 firms with more than one person on the list, as Morris was also recognized.

Finance | Insurance 2023: JANET N. TOPE

Many executives at Tope’s level have a long list of employers on their résumés. Tope has just one: Wells Fargo. The Florida State University alumna “stumbled into” the bank in 1988 straight out of college with her business degree in hand and has been there ever since.

In 2017, she was promoted to director of the Richmond, Peninsula and Hampton Roads regions for the nation’s fourth largest bank, which was ranked 47th on the Fortune 500 in 2023 and has more than 7,500 of its 238,698 worldwide employees in Virginia.

Outside work, Tope serves as a board member for Communities in Schools of Richmond, in addition to serving on the Regional Leadership Circle for the Greater Richmond Partnership.

PERSONAL MOTTO: Do what you say you are going to do and have compassion as well as grace.

HOW I BALANCE WORK AND PERSONAL LIFE: This is tough to do without planning on my calendar — everything goes on my calendar, and I set boundaries.

FAVORITE APPS: Find My and Amazon