Dive Brief:
- Zions Bank CEO A. Scott Anderson is retiring effective April 1, and will become nonexecutive chair, the bank said Friday in a press release.
- Paul Burdiss, the $87 billion-asset Salt Lake City-based bank’s CFO, will succeed Anderson as CEO, Zions said Friday.
- Ryan Richards, the bank’s corporate controller since 2021, will succeed Burdiss as CFO, Zions said Friday.
Dive Insight:
The executive shuffle at Zions comes at a crucial time for regional banks writ large. The sector continues to weather fallout from exposure to commercial real estate — the value of which has steadily dropped with lower occupancy since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inflated interest rates have also made the properties more difficult to sell and the loans on them more difficult to pay back.
Zions stands as one of Utah’s leading commercial banks, and one of four regional lenders that saw trading in their stock halted after Signature and Silicon Valley Bank failed last March. Zions’ share price fell roughly 25% on the first day of trading after the failures.
Anderson wrote a letter to customers that day, saying the closures “rattled the markets, as well as people’s nerves,” but he sought to reassure that Zions had “access to billions of dollars of readily available liquidity.” He also noted that the average account balance at SVB was 22 times larger than at Zions, which he said reflected greater stability at the Salt Lake City bank.
Zions ended 2023 with its share price down roughly 11%, according to Reuters. Profit at the bank fell about 50% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, and Zions’ trading saw volatility again last month, after fellow regional New York Community Bank disclosed a surprise $252 million loss Jan. 31. Zions’ share price has lost another 11% so far this year, Reuters reported.
“It’s with more than the usual measure of appreciation that I extend my heartfelt thanks to Scott Anderson,” Zions Chairman Harris Simmons said Friday, calling the CEO’s contributions “instrumental” to the bank’s success. “He has also been a community leader without equal, serving on nonprofit boards too numerous to count, and contributing his time, talents and prodigious energy in tackling important challenges, both locally and nationally.”
Anderson came to Zions in 1991 after a 17-year stint at Bank of America and has served as CEO since 1998, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He’s not the only Zions executive retiring April 1. Thomas Laursen, Zions' general counsel, also will retire, the bank announced Friday. Rena Miller, Zions’ deputy general counsel, will succeed him, the company said.
Burdiss, Anderson’s successor, has served as Zions’ CFO since 2015, the bank said. He previously was corporate treasurer at SunTrust and executive vice president, treasurer and director of investor relations at Comerica, the Salt Lake City bank said.
Before coming to Zions, Richards was director of investor relations and, briefly, chief accounting officer at Truist. He also served as chief accounting officer and corporate controller at Truist’s predecessor, SunTrust and, from 2009 to 2012, was a senior policy analyst at the Federal Reserve, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“I’m pleased that each of these executive roles are being filled with highly qualified members of our own team,” Simmons said Friday.
