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	<title>Headwaters Capital &#124; Todd S. Thomson</title>
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		<title>Davidson&#8217;s Inaugural Todd and Melissa Thomson Professor of Environmental Studies Announced</title>
		<link>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/davidsons-inaugural-todd-and-melissa-thomson-professor-of-environmental-studies-announced/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:23:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>michelle</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental initiatives]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Todd S. Thomson]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[From http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x38182.xml
December 10, 2009
Annie Merrill Ingram has been appointed as Davidson&#8217;s inaugural Todd and Melissa Thomson Professor of Environmental Studies.
Ingram, a professor of English who specializes in 19th- century American literature, has been serving as the college&#8217;s Environmental Studies Coordinator since the subject was approved as an academic concentration in 2007. She will continue that [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>From <a href="http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x38182.xml">http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x38182.xml</a></p>
<p>December 10, 2009</p>
<p>Annie Merrill Ingram has been appointed as Davidson&#8217;s inaugural Todd and Melissa Thomson Professor of Environmental Studies.</p>
<p>Ingram, a professor of English who specializes in 19th- century American literature, has been serving as the college&#8217;s Environmental Studies Coordinator since the subject was approved as an academic concentration in 2007. She will continue that duty, while the new professorship also positions her to lead the college toward developing a first-ever interdisciplinary major in environmental studies.</p>
<p>In making the appointment, Vice President of Academic Affairs Clark Ross said, &#8220;Annie has a long history of promoting environmental studies, making her the perfect choice for this chair and continuing her leadership role in the field.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ingram began creating and teaching environmental literature classes five years after joining the Davidson faculty in 1994. It was a manifestation of a lifetime&#8217;s love of the outdoors and appreciation for the wilderness.</p>
<p>She grew up all over the country but spent most summers at &#8220;the Ranch,&#8221; her grandparents&#8217; place in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. &#8220;I began carrying my own pack on family backpacking trips when I was seven,&#8221; she recalled. &#8220;My cousins and I loved playing in the woods and creek, fishing and picking wild blackberries.&#8221;</p>
<p>Her first environmental offering at Davidson was &#8220;Studies in Literature and the Environment.&#8221; She also developed an environmental writing course in conjunction with Davidson Outdoors that involves backpacking, leadership, and wilderness skills. She has twice taught &#8220;Wild Lives: American Environmental Narratives,&#8221; and has team-taught the college&#8217;s new &#8220;Introduction to Environmental Studies&#8221; course. During the last two years she has also co-edited a book about ecocritical theory, and contributed to a book on contemporary environmental literature.</p>
<p>Ingram noted that momentum toward an environmental studies major has been building at Davidson for many years. On at least two occasions prior to 2007, the Educational Policy Committee considered it as an academic concentration, but didn&#8217;t find enough course offerings to support the action.</p>
<p>The new course offerings that finally led to EPC approval of the six-course concentration in 2007 included development of an introductory course and a capstone course in environmental studies. New environmentally focused courses have been developed by professors throughout the curriculum. A gift from 1984 graduates Todd and Melissa Thomson established the professorship , and permitted the college to offer one-term visiting appointments to nationally recognized specialists in environmental studies &#8211; Mike Branch and Mart Stewart.</p>
<p>There are five seniors expecting to graduate in May as the first Davidson students with an environmental studies concentration on their transcripts.</p>
<p>The growth of a curricular structure for environmental studies has coincided with other initiatives on campus focused on environmental awareness and sustainability. Ross noted that an environmental studies major will be supported by the rich mix of extracurricular initiatives, institutional goals and infrastructure procedures aimed at sustainability. &#8220;President Tom Ross has made environmental concerns paramount in college life,&#8221; Vice President Ross said.</p>
<p>President Ross declared 2007-08 as &#8220;The Year of Sustainability&#8221; at Davidson and signed the American Colleges and Universities Presidents Climate Commitment,  which commits Davidson to reaching climate neutrality as soon as possible.</p>
<p>The college created a sustainability office staffed full time with a Davidson Fellow. Physical Plant has implemented LEED standards for construction, and the college composts campus food waste and fallen leaves. New technology has led to significant reduction of paper use for computer lab printers, and recycling bins have been placed beside trash bins throughout the campus. For the past three years, a group of 10 students have joined together to live in the off-campus Eco House, where they engage in the study and practice of sustainability. The extracurricular Environmental Action Coalition has conducted annual campus waste audits, and campaigns to reduce energy use.</p>
<p>Environmental studies are also supported by the college&#8217;s new strategic plan, which encourages interdisciplinary study of subjects that touch on the college&#8217;s three major curricular areas-social science, natural science and humanities.</p>
<p>Davidson admission officials report that institution of environmental studies will allow the college to respond to an area of interest for many prospective students, who are attracted by that area of study. Though students have always been able to create their own environmental studies major through the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Ingram said most students prefer a structured major in the regular curriculum. &#8220;If we build it, they will come,&#8221; Ingram predicted.</p>
<p>The visiting and permanent faculty positions in environmental studies have been made possible at Davidson by a gift from trustee Todd S. Thomson &#8216;83 and his wife, Melissa &#8216;83. The Thomsons are long-time environmentalists. Todd, who is CEO of Headwaters Capital in New York City, has served for several years on the board of the World Resources Institute. The couple have recently completed a vacation home in Montana that is the first LEED Platinum residence in the state.</p>
<p>&#8220;I was inspired in my view of environmentalism partly from an environmental economics course I took at Davidson,&#8221; said Todd Thomson.</p>
<p>He also expressed his admiration for Annie Ingram, and his delight in her selection for the position. He said, &#8220;I can&#8217;t imagine a person who more embodies what we have in mind for the professorship than Annie. Her intelligence, energy, commitment, and focus on research and facts are exactly what&#8217;s needed to be great in the role. She is obviously highly respected and appreciated by students and faculty alike.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ingram said she is deeply honored and humbled to be named to the professorship, and looks forward to the opportunity to lead course development and program development in the area.</p>
<p>Despite plenty of negative news about the state of the environment, Ingram said she&#8217;s optimistic that the challenges can be met. &#8220;I&#8217;m ‘Polly-Annie,&#8217;&#8221; she said. &#8220;We&#8217;ve got to be optimistic about it to get it done.&#8221;</p>
<p>Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,800 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.<br />
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		<title>Big Sky Mountain High: Todd Thomson</title>
		<link>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/big-sky-mountain-high-todd-thomson-walks-the-walk/</link>
		<comments>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/big-sky-mountain-high-todd-thomson-walks-the-walk/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:48:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[energy reducing technologies]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[
From the World Resources InstituteWorldView
June 2009

Nestled in the majestic mountains of Big Sky, Montana, WRI Board Member Todd Thomson’s new home quietly sits in the vast open countryside near Yellowstone National Park. Take a closer look beyond the idyllic and tranquil setting, however, and you’ll quickly realize that the scenery and architecture of this home [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.headwaters-capital.com/Worldview_June2009.pdf"><img src="http://www.headwaters-capital.com/wp-content/uploads/Adobe_PDF_icon-150x143.png" width="35" height="35" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-35" /></a>
<p>From the <strong>World Resources Institute<br /><em>WorldView</em></strong><br />
June 2009</p>
<p></p>
<p>Nestled in the majestic mountains of Big Sky, Montana, WRI Board Member Todd Thomson’s new home quietly sits in the vast open countryside near Yellowstone National Park. Take a closer look beyond the idyllic and tranquil setting, however, and you’ll quickly realize that the scenery and architecture of this home aren’t the only awe-inspiring things in these mountains.</p>
<p>Headwaters Camp, the name of the log cabin style home owned by Melissa and Todd Thomson at Yellowstone Club, stands as a testament to the Thomson’s commitment to the environment and sustainable living.  This past spring, it was recognized by the United States Green Building Council for achieving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification.  It is only the third home in Montana to receive any kind of certification from the USGBC and the first in Southwest Montana to receive Platinum certification.  </p>
<p>In undertaking this project, the Thomsons worked with Highline Partners, Dan Joseph Architects, and Kath Williams + Associates to carefully and creatively build a home that would not only be architecturally stunning but also be environmentally friendly and sustainable.  LEED certification for residential homes measures a home’s performance in seven environmental categories: Location  and Linkages, Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Indoor Environmental Quality, Energy and Atmosphere, Homeowner Awareness, and Innovation and Design.  With over one hundred variables to achieving the extremely rigorous LEED certification, the architects, designers, and builders needed to be truly innovative.  It required re-thinking age old building and design techniques in an effort to minimize the impact on the environment, while also emphasizing energy efficient design and building methods.  Headwaters Camp achieved this impact through the use of local and reclaimed materials, eliminating construction waste, and taking advantage of increasingly affordable energy reducing technologies.  Triple glazed windows, super insulation, on-demand water heating systems, ground source heat pumps, passive solar design, dual flush toilets and grey water reclamation systems are just some of the many technologies that improved the sustainability of Headwaters Camp and dramatically decreased its overall energy demand. </p>
<p>“This was a remarkable experience for us. Our building team managed to accomplish the highest level of green certification with a gorgeous, rustic design and quality construction—all with comfort and exceptional livability for our family. They managed to deliver this with minimal additional up-front costs and much lower heating and energy costs. I can only hope others are inspired by our experience and follow a similar path,” says Todd Thomson of the building and LEED certification of Headwaters Camp.  </p>
<p>The Thomson’s commitment to building green should also be credited. WRI staff and board members place great importance on the idea of being committed to important environmental issues and “walking the talk” when it comes to the environment.  Building green, reducing our carbon emissions to net zero every year, and working in a LEED certified Gold workspace are just some of the ways WRI tries to lead by doing. As an organization, and as individuals, we hope that our actions, like the Thomsons, will inspire and motivate others to be passionate and involved when trying to protect our environment. </p>
<p><em>Todd Thomson is CEO of Headwaters Capital and is a Board Member of WRI.</em></p>
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		<title>Green Is Good For Business</title>
		<link>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/green-is-good-for-business/</link>
		<comments>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/green-is-good-for-business/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:26:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eco-friendly technology]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Todd S. Thomson]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Wal-Mart]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[As appeared in BusinessWeek, May 8, 2006
By Todd S. Thomson
More companies understand that they can protect the environment and prosper.
Historically, corporations thought keeping an eye on the environment also meant taking an eye off shareholders. That has changed dramatically in the past few years. Now there are reminders everywhere that a growing number of companies [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_19/b3983116.htm">As appeared in BusinessWeek, May 8, 2006</a></p>
<p>By Todd S. Thomson</p>
<p>More companies understand that they can protect the environment and prosper.</p>
<p>Historically, corporations thought keeping an eye on the environment also meant taking an eye off shareholders. That has changed dramatically in the past few years. Now there are reminders everywhere that a growing number of companies see the interests of investors and those of the environment as closely aligned. Cases in point: the celebrity-toasted hybrid car offerings from Toyota (TM) and Honda (HMC), the ubiquitous ads from energy companies extolling alternative-fuel research, even a simple trip to Starbucks (SBUX). </p>
<p>So what explains this about-face? Simply put: profits. Most of today&#8217;s environmental initiatives are not just well-choreographed PR campaigns intended to fool consumers. Instead, many corporations are going green because they&#8217;ve recognized the gigantic profit opportunities in doing so &#8212; and the competitive danger of lagging behind.</p>
<p>Good old-fashioned cost-cutting may be the easiest way for companies to reap bottom-line benefits from initiatives that also happen to have environmental payoffs. Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), long known for pressuring suppliers on prices, asked a supplier to slim down the packaging on a private-label brand of toys called Kid Connection. That single effort will not only enable Wal-Mart to ship 497 fewer containers a year at a savings of $2.4 million but also will spare some 3,800 trees and save more than 1,000 barrels of oil. And Chief Executive Lee Scott said recently that Wal-Mart could save $52 million a year with just a one-mile-a-gallon improvement in gas mileage for its huge fleet.</p>
<p>Then there&#8217;s the revenue side of the equation. As the urgency of global climate change is more widely recognized, products that effectively decrease emissions are going to generate massive profits. Some of the beneficiaries of this trend may surprise you. Who would have thought, for example, that companies such as General Electric (GE) and Boeing (BA) would see new opportunities in a world of $70-a-barrel crude? But GE has begun selling a superefficient gas turbine that, while providing enough electricity to power 300,000 U.S. homes, produces 73,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year relative to a typical unit. And orders for Boeing&#8217;s $150 million, 250-passenger 787 Dreamliner jet, which uses 20% less fuel than comparable models, jumped from 56 in 2004 to 235 in 2005 as oil prices soared to record levels.</p>
<p>Hybrid cars are probably the best-known success story. Few people, however, know when the saga began: Auto makers such as Toyota and Honda started investing a decade ago to enable their product lines to compete in a &#8220;carbon-constrained&#8221; economy. Now they are capitalizing on environmental regulation in Europe, China, and elsewhere as well as skyrocketing pump prices. Ford (F ) and General Motors (GM), meanwhile, spent the past decade introducing new lines of gas-guzzling light trucks and sport-utility vehicles (and years lobbying against tougher emission standards) instead of innovating. The moral: Forward-thinking businesses that realize environmental standards must tighten will thrive.</p>
<p>Aligning revenue streams with environmental imperatives has yet another important corporate benefit: As political pressure mounts to make reduction of greenhouse gases mandatory, companies with a head start on eco-friendly technology will have the credibility to participate in, or even shape, the debate over how to further reduce emissions.</p>
<p>The amount of innovation necessary to stop global warming will be staggering, but it also could be staggeringly profitable for global companies. Just think: China, likely the great economic engine of the 21st century, cannot continue on its growth path unless it addresses its pollution crisis. In an early step in that direction, a group of state-owned companies recently announced a $715 million venture to develop cleaner coal-gasification technology. But imagine what China will ultimately pay for the green technology that will let it continue prospering economically (and, in turn, maintain its social and political stability).</p>
<p>At January&#8217;s World Economic Forum in Davos, I sat among fellow CEOs, opinion leaders, and heads of state who kept pointing to environmental issues as key obstacles to everything from defusing regional tensions to enhancing global growth. That broad consensus suggests the enormous opportunities for businesses that manage to ride that environmental wave &#8212; and the bleak future for those that get caught in its wake.</p>
<p><em>Todd S. Thomson is CEO of Headwaters Capital and is the former CEO of Citigroup Global Wealth Management.  He is also a director of the World Resources Institute.</em></p>
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		<title>Asia&#8217;s dance of the twin elephants</title>
		<link>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/asias-dance-of-the-twin-elephants/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:32:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emerging economies]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Financial Times
28-Feb-2006
By Todd Thomson
Also found at FT.com
All roads lead to China and India. Whether one is talking to policymakers gathered in Davos or to business leaders scattered around the globe, the conversation inevitably turns to the spectacular growth of China and India – the elephants in the room, or at least the boardroom. Perhaps not [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Financial Times<br />
28-Feb-2006<br />
By Todd Thomson</p>
<p>Also found at <a href="http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto022820061542449050&amp;page=1">FT.com</a></p>
<p>All roads lead to China and India. Whether one is talking to policymakers gathered in Davos or to business leaders scattered around the globe, the conversation inevitably turns to the spectacular growth of China and India – the elephants in the room, or at least the boardroom. Perhaps not surprisingly, most observers divide into two camps: skeptics who expect the two nations to stumble after so many years of rapid growth; and doomsayers who think China and India will suffocate the developed west.</p>
<p>I disagree with both schools of thought. First, I will address the skeptics. I think that, if anything, the China-India story is under-blown. The numbers show the huge potential for spending on middle-class goods and infrastructure. China, a nation of 1.3bn people, bought just 5m cars in 2004, according to The Economist. France, a nation less than one-twentieth the size in population, purchased half that.</p>
<p>In all, China and India are expected to spend more than $2,000bn on infrastructure in the next 15 years, on everything from roads to airports to dams. The opportunity is even greater than most realise.</p>
<p>Of course, it is true that China and India face enormous challenges if they are to live up to their promise. Under-employment, limited infrastructure, constraints from natural resources, environmental concerns, over-regulation and underdeveloped banking systems are just some of the factors that have the potential to derail the opportunity for growth. China&#8217;s one-child policy, for example, has created one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world – a massive fiscal problem when it comes to funding its social welfare programmes.</p>
<p>Another challenge is to stimulate domestic spending. While growth in China has averaged more than 9 per cent in the past 25 years, that has largely been on the back of booming exports. Rising foreign demand will not sustain China&#8217;s economy for ever, especially if US consumer spending drops off. As for India, its combined state and federal budget deficit is about 9 per cent of gross domestic product and its foreign direct investment is barely one-tenth of China&#8217;s.</p>
<p>In spite of the challenges and the sceptics, I remain bullish on China and India. While the hurdles they face may trip them up temporarily, the secular growth trend of these emerging economies is clear. Spend even a little time in these nations and you cannot help but be struck by the wondrous sense of opportunity among the people. That is the fuel of their expansion over the next 50 years.</p>
<p>Now for the doomsayers, who view the ascendancy of China and India as a threat to the west. This vision seems blurred by a sense of entitlement. Entitlement is an insidious disease that weakens even the strongest economies and sows the seeds of uncompetitiveness.</p>
<p>The feeling of entitlement concerns not only pensions and healthcare but also employment – and to being paid for long periods even when not in work. In the US motor industry, restrictive labour contracts and lacklustre offerings have wiped out thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of shareholder wealth. History shows that for individuals, for businesses and for nations, feelings of entitlement lead to stagnation and protectionism and eventually erode the primacy that first made the entitlement possible.</p>
<p>Encouragingly, some western leaders have recently taken on this issue directly. Last month George W. Bush, US president, in his State of the Union speech, called protectionism a form of &#8220;economic retreat&#8221;. Also last month, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, called on the European Union to tear down trade barriers. She characterised the World Trade Organisation&#8217;s progress in establishing freer trade as &#8220;slight&#8221;. Germany, she said, must reduce regulations and make workers less reliant on the government for jobs. Loud applause greeted her remarks.</p>
<p>In the same spirit, rather than fear the advancements of China and India, we must celebrate them. The development of these elephantine economies is likely to lead to greater freedom, democracy and stability in the world, and make for stronger global growth. (Imagine the dangerous alternative of another 2.4bn people with no economic future.) Yes, we must be sensitive to the plight of individuals caught out by these global transitions. But if we, as developed nations, are to avoid our own decline, and indeed capitalise on the opportunities in the emerging markets, we must remember the catalysts of our own success – education, innovation, self-reliance and open markets. And we must resist the siren song of entitlement and protectionism.</p>
<p><em>Todd S. Thomson is CEO of Headwaters Capital and is fromer CEO of Citigroup Global Wealth Management (The Citigroup Private Bank, Smith Barney and Citigroup Investment Research).  </em></p>
<p>Industries: Executive Offices; Public Admin; General Government Administration;<br />
Countries: China; France; India;<br />
FT.com<br />
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.</p>
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		<title>Leadership by Numbers?</title>
		<link>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/leadership-by-numbers/</link>
		<comments>http://www.headwaters-capital.com/todd-s-thomson/leadership-by-numbers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 15:20:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s One Part of Todd Thomson&#8217;s Management Strategy at Citigroup
Published: May 18, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton
At a time when the accounting scandals of Enron, WorldCom and other corporations are still fresh in people&#8217;s minds, it&#8217;s interesting to note that Todd S. Thomson, chairman and CEO of Citigroup Inc.&#8217;s Global Wealth Management division, describes the role of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>It&#8217;s One Part of Todd Thomson&#8217;s Management Strategy at Citigroup</strong><br />
Published: <a href="http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1193">May 18, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton</a></p>
<p>At a time when the accounting scandals of Enron, WorldCom and other corporations are still fresh in people&#8217;s minds, it&#8217;s interesting to note that Todd S. Thomson, chairman and CEO of Citigroup Inc.&#8217;s Global Wealth Management division, describes the role of CFO as &#8220;the conscience of a company.&#8221; Thomson, who was Citigroup&#8217;s CFO and chief strategist before taking on his current position, spoke with Wharton&#8217;s Michael Useem, director of the school&#8217;s Center for Leadership and Change Management. During the interview, Thomson discussed the importance of focusing on facts, motivating employees, and treating shareholders as customers, among other topics. Thomson will be a keynote speaker at the Ninth Annual Wharton Leadership Conference in Philadelphia on June 9.</p>
<p><strong>Useem:</strong> Given your previous senior-level positions with GE Capital, Barents Group and Bain, what in those earlier jobs did you find most useful for your role as CFO of Citigroup? What was not in your background, and what did you have to learn on the job?</p>
<p><strong>Thomson: </strong>My view of the CFO job is that it really encompasses a few things. The first is that you must be the conscience of the organization, [which includes] making sure that you are the one who thinks about the shareholder. This means having the necessary financial controls and processes in place. I see the second part of the job as bringing the right information to the right people at the right time to make the right decisions. As CFO, you run the finance organization, but most of the time you are part of a team of people, including the CEO, the president and perhaps some division managers. You are all figuring out where to take the business. I view the CFO as the one who sets the agenda for those conversations.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a very powerful role&#8230;. A couple of very important parts of my background helped me to think this through. At Bain, for example, the whole approach is data driven &#8212; not around opinions, not around personalities, but around the data and the facts. Spending as long as I did at Bain, I analyzed many business problems, recognizing how important it is to go out, bring in the right information, analyze it the right way and get it in front of people who can make the right decisions.</p>
<p>I was also at GE Capital. If you look at the GE method of managing, it&#8217;s about bringing facts to bear &#8212; not about putting people together and debating an issue without the relevant data &#8212; about doing real analysis on the business itself. That&#8217;s the second part of the job.<br />
The third part of the job, for many CFOs, is the strategy piece. It&#8217;s about understanding what&#8217;s really happening out there in terms of changing customer needs, industry dynamics and competitor frameworks &#8230; and bringing all that into the discussion. I had the opportunity to work in 15 industries as a strategist while I was with Bain. At GE Capital I had the opportunity to see how strategy truly gets implemented.</p>
<p>The final piece, from a CFO&#8217;s perspective, involves cost discipline. In most places, the CFO is viewed as the guy who [uses] a sharp knife to keep costs to a minimum, always ensuring that costs aren&#8217;t getting out of control anywhere in the organization. One of GE&#8217;s incredible strengths is cost discipline. Having had the experience at GE, I understand how, from a day-to-day management perspective, CFOs can invest money in things that will pay off. You eliminate all the extraneous projects, the &#8220;popcorn stands&#8221; that people want to start &#8212; all those ideas that sound good late at night but in the cold light of day are more fantasy than practical reality. </p>
<p><strong>Useem: </strong>Can you talk about the tactics you used as CFO to create and sustain a culture where everybody appreciated that they really had to do the analyses and have the facts? To put it another way: How did you build, on the ground, a culture and a way of life that communicated to everybody the need for a fact-based decision-making process?</p>
<p><strong>Thomson: </strong>First, we have our senior management team &#8212; what we call our &#8220;business heads&#8221; meeting &#8212; every week for a few hours, and then once every month for a full day, where about 15 people meet offsite. These are the senior people who run the business on a day-to-day basis &#8212; the CEO, myself, the heads of [divisions] and the chief risk officer.</p>
<p>What I did from a top-down perspective was to revamp the entire management information process so that we were getting information to people who would actually sit down and look at it every day. We changed our management information report, which comes out monthly and focuses on the performance of the business. We changed what was inside and what was presented so you could see the facts about how the business was being run. If we thought cross selling was important, then we could see every month in that report what we were doing in cross-selling revenues.</p>
<p>If expenses were important, we broke out expense categories and tracked them month by month. The key issues about running the business were embedded into a management report, and I talked about them at each of our weekly meetings and then at the monthly meetings. It was always about the facts. Everybody had them so we could talk about them. We also started doing full competitor analysis on a business-by-business basis. So again, instead of people coming in without the facts and saying, &#8216;We hear this is going on in the industry,&#8217; and &#8216;We kind of hear that this competitor is doing that,&#8217; we said we should collect the data, do the analysis and find out where we are winning and where we are losing. Then let&#8217;s have a conversation about how we are doing. So we changed it from a top-down perspective.</p>
<p>We also changed it from a bottom-up perspective. I ran the financing strategy organization globally, so there was a reporting line to me from the CFOs in each one of the businesses, and I could set the tone with this group too. I would get the group together once a quarter for a [conference] call and once a year in person for a few days. I was responsible for putting a lot of these people into their positions, and they understood that part of their job was to make sure their CEOs were getting the facts. So there was a top-down as well as a bottom-up approach to try to get the culture focused around facts and data when making decisions.</p>
<p><strong>Useem:</strong> Just a quick follow-up on that. You changed the process and the mindset. Did you also have to change some people? And if so, how did you know a person was ultimately incapable of adapting to this more factually-disciplined attitude towards decisions?</p>
<p><strong>Thomson:</strong> Once you have those processes in place, then your discussion in a business review becomes much different. You are asking questions &#8212; but not about opinions. Instead, you are asking people to prove to you why something is true. That means they have to provide you with real facts and data. And if they don&#8217;t, you tell them to go and do the work and come back [with the results].</p>
<p>In a business like ours &#8212; which we expect to be very high-performing &#8212; we don&#8217;t have a lot of patience for asking people to go back again and again to do their homework. We expect them to show up having done their homework. When you get people who don&#8217;t learn after going back two or three times, then you realize that they should go someplace where data and facts are not that important.</p>
<p><strong>Useem:</strong> Just to shift ground here, in your previous position as Citigroup&#8217;s CFO and head of Operations, Technology and Strategy, you worked with Sandy Weill when he was CEO and now, obviously, with Charles Prince. Can you talk about the right kind of relationship that a CFO should create with the chief executive officer? And could you contrast the way you worked with Weill and Prince?</p>
<p><strong>Thomson:</strong> In my view, the CFO&#8217;s job is to be a very close partner with the CEO and help the CEO build the business. At the same time, the CFO should be a good partner by, in a sense, pushing back at the CEO on a number of issues. One of the problems when you are a CEO is finding people around you who will push back at your ideas in a constructive fashion instead of saluting and just going off and doing whatever you said needs to be done. I think the CFO&#8217;s job is to be that close partner with the CEO in building the business. There also has to be good chemistry between the two. But besides the respect for each other, part of your role is to push back.</p>
<p>Sandy and Chuck are both excellent leaders but very different personalities. Sandy is a &#8220;people person&#8221; and tends to manage through people. Sandy would wander around into offices &#8212; including mine &#8212; on a regular basis, and we would sit down and start talking about the business.</p>
<p>Chuck tends to structure more formal reviews as opposed to informal discussions. In both cases, what was important was that they felt their CFO &#8212; in this case me &#8212; knew what was going on around the company and would bring up issues of importance for discussion. I felt quite pleased with the professional and personal relationships with those two leaders.</p>
<p><strong>Useem: </strong>As CFO you are one of most visible faces in the equity market. In conjunction with the CEO, how would you describe your approach to working with the big institutional investors and equity analysts who followed Citigroup?</p>
<p><strong>Thomson: </strong>I viewed our shareholders as customers, as clients if you will. And that&#8217;s how I worked with our investor relations department that reported to me. I think that&#8217;s how the senior management of Citigroup wanted to view them. We viewed ourselves as working for the shareholders, and so what I tried to do with the institutional shareholders was the same thing that I did with our board of directors. I tried to identify key information for them, what they needed to know about our business to make an intelligent investment decision &#8212; if they wanted to be a long-term shareholder or not. So on a regular basis we would communicate with the shareholders. We would have a call each quarter to explain earnings and identify what the truly important performance drivers were.</p>
<p>We would also set up regular meetings to talk about our strategies for each of our major business segments. On &#8216;Consumer Day&#8217; we would go through our credit card business, consumer finance business and retail banking business in the U.S. and outside the U.S. Then we would have a &#8216;Global Corporate and Investment Bank Day&#8217; to go through those businesses. We did that for each of our major segments once a year. It gave shareholders and analysts a good, in-depth idea about more than just our financial performance over the last quarter. It informed them about our business strategy to try to drive future performance as well.</p>
<p>In addition, we would visit a lot of our large shareholders and also host them in our offices. We would let them know how we think about the business, how we were allocating capital, where we thought we could gain share and grow revenues, and so forth. Finally, if something unusual was happening &#8212; for example, a new capital allocation approach &#8212; we would hold a special conference call with our shareholders to let them know that we were implementing something that&#8217;s different. Here&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing and here&#8217;s why it&#8217;s important.</p>
<p><strong>Useem: </strong>Last November you moved from five years as CFO to become the CEO of [Citigroup's] Global Wealth Management division. I believe there is well over a trillion dollars worth of assets there. And as CFO you were also presiding over annual revenues (in your last year) that were probably fairly far north of $100 billion. In both cases you had no [previous] job similar to what you did as CFO or now as CEO of Global Wealth Management. To the extent that you were performing similar functions, it was on a much smaller scale.</p>
<p>When Chuck Prince announced your assignment last fall, he said, &#8220;We are providing these two talented and accomplished executives (a reference to Sallie Krawcheck, who switched with you to become CFO) the opportunity to build upon their skills and capabilities while furthering our goal of creating a broadly experienced next generation of leaders for Citigroup.&#8221; If you would, take both of those positions as you came into them and offer a few thoughts on lessons you acquired on moving into a much more demanding and often very different assignment. What enabled you to do both, having done neither of those jobs before?</p>
<p><strong>Thomson:</strong> I think it all comes down to leadership. That&#8217;s true for any job where you are running a large organization, whether it&#8217;s one with 6,000 employees in finance and thousands of technical and other people around the world, or whether it&#8217;s moving into a job as CEO of wealth management with 30,000 people and $8.5 billion in revenues. In each case it&#8217;s all about providing leadership and direction for people &#8212; having them understand the vision of where you want to take that function or business, and getting them motivated to go along with you in that vision.</p>
<p>Coming into a new area I typically start by recognizing that it&#8217;s all about dealing with people. [That means] listening. It&#8217;s the first thing I always try to do, and I try to do it continually after. But it&#8217;s most important, at the beginning, to go in, meet people, talk to them, ask questions and listen to what they have to say. Because in most cases I found that these people do understand the business; they understand the issues, the problems and the opportunities. In most cases, if you listen carefully, you can find all the answers.</p>
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