CIO Scott Case is a former BOFA employee. Now he is in charge at Truist, UGH! I heard that the SunTrust work environment deteriorated when he was hired. This is the worst work environment you can imagine. I know folks at BOFA, and it is the same way there: distrust, paranoia, finger pointing, back stabbing. Nobody that I work with wants to work here anymore, but many of us don't have a choice. ET leadership and the TMP are aloof and separate themselves from the rest of us. The folks that are the application experts and that know how to do a merger are ignored. We are burdened with policies and procedures that have no value. I can't even keep up with the emails about them, much less review and understand them. There is no way somebody can keep up with them and get any real work done!
What other areas of the bank are being run by SunTrust? Is it that Bill has more influence since Kelly is leaving?
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You fine associates, excuse me teammates, have Mr Case so rattled he sold 9851 shares of his awards for 575k. Don’t weep for EVP Case though, he stills has 20,583 shares at his disposal. If you want to know who is reaping the benefits of this supposed MOE just keep your eye on the SEC filings. SunTruist thrives!
I think @2efv has it right. When the Truist name was announced I remember reading how much John Allison hated that the BB&T name was going away. And yeah Kelly’s ego is definitely on steroids. I remember when they released the On The Move videos and we all had to acknowledge that we watched the video and they kept track of who did and didn’t.
Feels like this was all part of a devil’s bargain. Bill agrees to play second fiddle for 2 years while Kelly gets to preside over the merger then rides off into the sunset while the old BB&T gets decimated beyond recognition while Bill regains his role at the top and guts the pension and accelerates more extreme cost cutting measures.
@2oip -
Here is my opinion. I honestly don’t see Kelly’s intentions as being 100% money motivated, as he was set to cash out big anyway. I think his motivations were more along the lines of the end of his tenure was rapidly approaching - and BB&T was still somewhat known as “John Allison’s bank”.
Kelly’s ego seemed to me to be out of control the last five years, and it dictated he do something big to separate himself from John. He looks for a partner, and lo and behold finds a bank as desperate as he is for a quick deal. Rumors abound that SunTrust’s management, operational, and cultural issues are weighing heavily on its performance. Kelly arrogantly thinks his “cultural expertise” is all that is needed to fix SunTrust’s issues - but he is ridiculously naive and overconfident. Now a spiraling mess has unfolded, and the inmates are literally running the asylum.
On a different thought, as a BBT (now Truist) shareholder, I feel I got a raw deal - STI is “bought” and gets the initial price bump - BBT shares didn’t - and now I own a cr---y bank that has underperformed the overall banking index by around 20%...and is set to do even worse as the severity of its issues come to light...
I’ve never seen so many pointless procedures and paperwork in my life. Every day there’s a new email like “URGENT THE WORLD WILL END IF YOU DON’T FILL OUT THIS SHEET!”
This comment is so true! It is unbelievable! We are told to stop what we are doing, which is the real work that is needed for the merger and fill out some forms for the TMP or senior leadership. Many times this is no easy task and take days!
@2bov+1aQSWTLe my belief is Kelly knew exactly what he was doing. He already had to get a waiver to stay on as CEO past 70 so his time was pretty much up anyway and this was a last chance to cash in big. I don’t know how else to explain how lopsided the management is now in favor of the STI side. And once Kelly is gone later this year it’s pretty much all STI from Bill to Scott to mid-level managers and so on.
Pretty remarkable since BBT shareholders put up 57% in this deal. SMH.
Will the truth about this merger ever be told? Did Rogers really outsmart Kelly? STI managers are the most arrogant, pompous group I’ve ever seen. Anyone who thinks this has went smoothly and will work well in the end is delusional. Handing out bonuses in some areas to try and keep back room people from leaving, lunacy. Try treating people better and managing without your smartest kid in the room syndrome you arrogant arses!
I’ve never seen so many pointless procedures and paperwork in my life. Every day there’s a new email like “URGENT THE WORLD WILL END IF YOU DON’T FILL OUT THIS SHEET!”
And yes we have way too many environments. They were so proud of themselves for building over 1,000 physical VMs like it’s 1999 all over again. Anyone who says this merger was supposed to be about cutting edge technology also has a bridge to sell you.
I have never seen such a combination of arrogance and ineffectiveness as I have seen from the SunTrust side. There were rumors before the merger that SunTrust was struggling, and now it has become readily apparent why. It is mind boggling that Kelly set this up so the lesser performing organization is now running the higher performing one (as highlighted by the multiple premium BBT traded relative to STI prior to the merger). This is going to make a great book one day...wow.
I recently had to take a required course, Truist Culture Overview. These are the Truist values, "Trustworthy, Caring, One Team, Success, Happiness". They are just words, not reality. In fact, it seems just the opposite. I don't trust leadership, they really don't seem to care, there are two teams, hSTI and hBBT, not one, we are heading for failure on the merger, and nobody that I work with is happy.
So what other areas of Truist were taken over by SunTrust? I am also curious if it is just the technology team.
hBB&T employees in Enterprise Tech (that is the hSTI name for IT) are in misery and shock. We didn't know it could be this bad. The WebEx meetings with SunTrust leadership make me feel sick to my stomach. They "pat each other on the back" and discuss topics that mean very little to those of us in the day to day grind, trying to survive and trying to get our merger work done in spite of all of the constant meetings and requests to complete forms and spreadsheets for those trying to track what we are doing. They don't have a clue what we are doing. The tasks and content on these forms could be totally wrong, even fictitious for that matter, and they wouldn't know, as long as the form is filled out properly, all is well in their world....
I was in the risk organization before I left and all of the new policies and procedures were largely adopted from SunTrust and then made even more complicated. Everything new we were doing seemed unnecessarily complicated with many, many steps and many people involved in everything (clearly too many cooks in the kitchen). The spirit of BB&T (I was hBB&T of course) was to get the job done. Find a way to do it and do it efficiently without getting bogged down in unnecessary stuff. Wow does SunTrust LOVE pointless paperwork and process. I worked through many BB&T mergers and we did those extremely well. There was always a general spirit of getting things done and just making it work while doing what we needed to for regulators. When it became apparent the merger was an utter mess, the stress and lack of hope in addition to miserable coworkers drove me out. You can try to maintain EPA (Enthusiastic Positive Attitude for non-BB&T people) for only so long with your direct reports before you feel like a total corporate sellout and shell of a human.
I am also in ET. You are right, this sucks! We have BB&T folks that have done many successful mergers. We could have done this merger much faster and better. We don't need all the new environments. There is so much work involved in building them that we won't be able to tell if a testing issue is a merger change or environment related, and we have much less time to focus on what really needs to be done for the merger. We don't need all of your procedures and policies. Somebody high up must be foolish enough to thing they have value..