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Charles R. Schwab: Pottruck Ceo
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Derek Archer, Vice President and Chief Technologist The Charles Schwab Corporation is a well-known investment company with a history dating back to 1971. Charles R. Schwab is founder of this corporation and still serves as chairman of the board and CEO.
If anyone can get the company fired up again, it is Charles Schwab, who stepped in to replace Pottruck. But the task of reinvention is not a simple one. To compete with the deep discounters, Schwab must offer bare-bones services. To match the full-service brokers, Schwab will have to provide the kind of advice that will attract picky clients. All those services can be expensive, and traditionally, Schwab has kept its cost structure low, paying moderate salaries and running lean operations.
Schwab version 4.0 makes the company look more than ever like the full-service brokerage firms it used to scorn. Chapter 15, "Balance of Power," examines how David Pottruck is an ideal leader for Schwab as it enters the twenty-first century. It ... criticizes the co-CEO structure that the company has adopted since 1997. The chapter reports on how the company pursues affluent investors, including its 2000 acquisition of U.S. Trust. But with this newest reinvention, Schwab faces a huge risk to the franchise that has become so successful. Average investors feel abandoned.
Few corporate defeats can be traced to one decision, but the failure of Pottruck’s career at Schwab is an exception to the rule. It was 1997 and Schwab, 60 years old at the time, relished the roles of visionary chairman and CEO at a company that was riding the dot-com bubble through the roof. It was time to make a vote of confidence in a new generation of leadership. But instead of naming Pottruck CEO and delegating the necessary legitimacy to lead, Schwab blinked. He couldn’t let go.
[T]he Schwab board apparently ran out of patience with this project, dismissing Pottruck on a day when the discount broker reported an earnings decline for the second quarter. In essence, it chose radical change over staying the course. SoundView and U.S. Trust are now more likely to be sold, observers say.
Schwab ... created David Pottruck, who spent every minute of his 20-year career at the firm in Chuck Schwab’s shadow before being unceremoniously terminated in July. At 67, when Schwab would much rather be perfecting his already virtuoso golf game, the founder has reclaimed the CEO title that he had reluctantly…"and belatedly…"bestowed on Pottruck a scant 15 months ago.
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