Audrey Hawthorne / Chief Strategy Officer
Perspectives from a life in leadership.
The latest essay
After March 2023 I stopped classifying deposits by their age. The balances that stay through a frightening week are the ones a client's payroll, payables and collections depend on, and a bank should build its securities book, its pricing and its bankers' pay around that distinction.
Read the essayAfter March 2023 I stopped classifying deposits by their age. The balances that stay through a frightening week are the ones a client's payroll, payables and collections depend on, and a bank should build its securities book, its pricing and its bankers' pay around that distinction.
Much of the value lost in a bank acquisition disappears between announcement and closing, while the seller is frozen and its bankers are courted. A buyer should assume a long review, let the seller keep competing and settle the obvious objections before it files.
Direct lenders now offer sponsor-backed companies more debt and fewer covenants than a regional bank should. We withdrew from that contest and concentrated on the revolver, the treasury relationship and careful lending to the funds themselves, which carries a concentration risk of its own.