放牛的銀行CEO 不一樣的御人之道

Very few chief executives of big banks know how to brand a cow, what to do when calving season starts, or how to tell Angus from Shorthorn cattle. Except, that is, Ross McEwan.

很少有大銀行的首席執行官知道如何給牛打烙印，在產犢季節來臨時該怎麼做，或者如何分辨安格斯牛和短角肉牛。只有一個人例外，那就是蘇格蘭皇家銀行(Royal Bank of Scotland)的首席執行官羅斯•麥克尤恩(Ross McEwan)。

The Royal Bank of Scotland boss owns a cattle farm with his wife in their native New Zealand. He holidays there twice a year to get away from the strains of his London-based day job and says they bought it as an alternative to spending a similar amount on a “tiny” city flat.

麥克尤恩和他的妻子在他們的新西蘭老家有一個養牛場。他一年會有兩次從倫敦繁重的日常工作中抽身去新西蘭度假。麥克尤恩表示，他們買下了這個養牛場，就不用花差不多的錢去買一套“狹小的”城市公寓。

An added advantage of his agricultural escape near Auckland, he says, is that it gives him a glimpse of the choices that small business owners face, such as whether to hire a second farmhand.

他說，抽空去奧克蘭郊區經營農場的另一個好處是，這可以讓他體會小企業主會面臨什麼選擇，比如是否僱傭臨時的農場工人。

That sort of recruitment dilemma is a far cry from the management challenge he himself took on at the part-nationalised UK bank, which has been shedding staff in industrial quantities.

這種招募困境遠非他本人在這個半國有化的英國銀行面臨的管理挑戰可比——蘇格蘭皇家銀行一直在大規模地裁員。

Mr McEwan took over as CEO from Stephen Hester in 2013 only a year after the latter lured him from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to run RBS’s retail arm. Since then he has taken a hatchet to what was once the world’s biggest bank by assets.

2013年，麥克尤恩接替史蒂芬•赫斯特(Stephen Hester)出任蘇格蘭皇家銀行的首席執行官，而就在一年前，赫斯特纔剛剛將麥克尤恩從澳洲聯邦銀行(Commonwealth Bank of Australia)挖來負責本行的零售部門。自上任以來，麥克尤恩就一直在精簡這個曾經是全球資產規模最大的銀行。

“We’re retreating across many parts that just don’t give us a good return and are not connected into our core business, which is the UK,” the 57-year-old says. “This is now a core UK bank.”

現年57歲的麥克尤恩表示：“我們正退出許多沒有給我們帶來豐厚回報而且與核心業務無關的業務——我們的核心業務在英國。現在這是一家地地道道的英國銀行。”

RBS is pulling out of many activities in Asia, the Middle East, continental Europe and the US. It has drastically cut back its once mighty investment bank and is selling the international part of its Coutts private bank.

蘇格蘭皇家銀行正退出亞洲、中東、歐洲大陸和美國的許多業務。它大幅削減一度興盛的投行業務，並出售其私人銀行Coutts的國際部門。

The bank is shrinking as fast as it once expanded under Fred Goodwin before the financial crisis struck and it was bailed out at the cost of £45bn to the taxpayer in 2008. Since the crisis its balance sheet has more than halved from £2.4tn and its staff numbers are set to drop almost two-thirds from their peak of 225,000. Its non-UK operations are set to fall from 40 per cent of the group to 20-25 per cent.

該行收縮的速度與其在金融危機爆發前的擴張速度一樣快——當時是弗雷德•古德溫(Fred Goodwin)擔任首席執行官。2008年，納稅人花了450億英鎊的代價對該行進行了紓困。自金融危機以來，該行資產負債表規模從2.4萬億英鎊減少了一半多，其員工數量與22.5萬人的峯值相比將下降近三分之二。非英國業務佔該集團的比例將從40%下降到20%至25%。

A tall man — he met his wife playing basketball at university and recalls being picked for school rugby because he could win the ball in the line-out — Mr McEwan exudes a bonhomie that seems to help people warm to him.

麥克尤恩個子很高，面貌和藹可親，這似乎很容易獲得人們的好感。麥克尤恩在大學打籃球時認識了現在的妻子，他回憶起自己曾被學校的橄欖球隊選中，因爲他能夠在爭邊球(line-out)時搶到球。

But those who know him say he can be tough when needed. “He’s got this ability to not let people off the hook, but not to be brutal about it,” says a top 20 shareholder in RBS. “He is quick and decisive and his judgment is very good at putting the right people in charge.”

但那些瞭解麥克尤恩的人表示，他在必要的時候可能非常嚴厲。蘇格蘭皇家銀行前20大股東中的一位表示：“他有這種不讓人們逃脫責任的能力，但他不會鐵面無情。他做事迅速果斷，而且知人善任。”

Mr McEwan feels his retrenchment strategy is in tune with the times. “The regulators quite rightly want safe banking in their territories,” he says. “I think what you are seeing is that as companies become more global, banks actually are becoming more regional.”

麥克尤恩覺得自己的收縮戰略與時代合拍。他說：“監管機構非常希望自己的轄區內有安全的銀行業。我認爲你看到的是，在企業日益走向全球之際，銀行實際上在日益區域化。”

He says fragmented regulation and stiffer national capital requirements are making life tougher for banks that still have truly global ambitions, such as JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. “I think there will be very few what I would call international banks.” He adds: “You’ve got to have the people on the ground and to work with all those regulatory frameworks and have the capital trapped in territories and not be able to move it around like you used to.”

他表示，監管各自爲政以及各國出臺了更爲嚴厲的資本要求，這讓摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)和匯豐(HSBC)等依然擁有全球抱負的銀行的日子更加難過。他補充稱：“我認爲將來很少有能讓我稱爲國際銀行的銀行。你不得不讓那些人腳踏實地，在所有那些監管框架下運作，讓資本留在當地，無法像過去那樣自由流動。”

Mr McEwan admits to being more comfortable with people than with numbers and only passed his university accountancy exam at the third attempt. Yet he is sure his strategy will show signs of bearing fruit on February 26, when RBS is expected to report its first annual pre-tax profit since the crisis.

麥克尤恩承認，與數字相比，他更喜歡與人打交道，在大學時考了3次才通過了會計科目的考試。然而他確信，自己的戰略將很快初見成效。

He remembers the scepticism among investors about his plans to cut £1bn of its £18bn costs in the first year of a restructuring plan he unveiled almost 12 months ago. “Most of the market said that is far too aggressive, you’ll never get it out. Wait until the results and you’ll see we’ve got £1bn out,” he says.

麥克尤恩還記得，他在近12個月前披露的重組計劃中透露，打算在計劃首年將180億英鎊的成本削減10億英鎊，投資者對此表示懷疑。他說：“市場裏的大多數人說，這過於激進，你永遠不可能成功。等到業績報告出來之後，你就會看到我們成功地削減了10億英鎊的成本。”

Perhaps the biggest challenge for Mr McEwan is to rebuild the bank’s reputation, which has been tarnished by a string of scandals. These include fines for Libor interest rate rigging and foreign exchange manipulation, as well as accusations that its restructuring team — dubbed the Global Restructuring Group — was trying to profit from the struggling small business clients it was supposed to help.

或許麥克尤恩面臨的最大挑戰是如何恢復蘇格蘭皇家銀行因一系列醜聞而遭到破壞的名譽。這些醜聞包括因爲操縱倫敦銀行間同業拆借利率(Libor)和外匯操縱案而被罰款，以及有指控稱，其名爲“全球重組集團”(GRG)的重組團隊試圖從陷入困境的小企業客戶身上牟利——它本應爲這些小企業客戶提供幫助。

“They all add up,” he says, listing several of the setbacks. “Each of those is taking a little bit more out of the reservoir of trust for RBS. It is about how we start rebuilding that reservoir of trust and getting it right.”

他在列舉了數個挫折後表示：“他們全都累積起來。每個都一點點地侵蝕掉公衆對蘇格蘭皇家銀行的信任。關鍵是我們如何開始且恰當地重建信任。”

Mr McEwan’s plan, which he repeats mantra-like, is based on “having customers at the centre of everything we do”. One of his daughters is in the process of setting up a business and he says this has shown him what banks are like to deal with from the other side.

麥克尤恩像唸咒一樣不斷重複自己的計劃，該計劃建立在“我們做任何事情都要圍繞客戶這個中心”的基礎之上。他的一個女兒正在開辦一家企業，麥克尤恩表示，這讓他從另一個側面瞭解與銀行打交道是什麼樣子的。

He describes the allegations about the GRG restructuring team as “probably the only area that I’ve got quite emotional about in my time here, in the sense that it hit to the core of our business”. The unit is still being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Mr McEwan defends its record, arguing it was impossible to cope with an eightfold rise in the number of struggling businesses moved to GRG after the crisis.

麥克尤恩表示：“在蘇格蘭皇家銀行任職期間，可能只有關於重組團隊GRG的指控讓我非常情緒化，從某種意義上來說它直擊我們業務的核心”。該部門現在仍在接受英國金融市場行爲監管局(Financial Conduct Authority)的調查。麥克尤恩爲該部門進行了辯解，他說，在危機爆發之後，因陷入困境而不得不接受GRG幫助的企業數量增長了8倍，GRG根本不可能應付得過來。

“There is no way any organisation can get all of those cases right,” he says. “That is where some of the accusations come from . . . we will have applied a methodology that I suspect was in some cases right and in some cases won’t have been. But that is sheer volume.”

他說：“任何組織都不可能恰當地處理所有這些情況。這就是一些指控的由來……我們將會運用一套方法，我覺得這種方法可能在某些情況下適用而在某些情況下不適用。但它是個浩大的工程。”

The GRG unit has recently been disbanded, many of its top managers have left and it is being folded into other parts of the bank. Mr McEwan says RBS has clarified its charges and the process for transferring companies to its restructuring team. “Our fee structure was a mystery to some,” he admits.

GRG部門最近已被解散，許多高級經理離職，它將併入蘇格蘭皇家銀行的其他部門。麥克尤恩表示，蘇格蘭皇家銀行已經向重組團隊說明了相關指控以及各公司轉變安排。他承認：“我們的收費結構對某些人來說很神祕。”

Another embarrassing episode that led to RBS being fined by regulators was the meltdown of its IT systems in 2012 that left millions of customers without access to their money for several days.

另一個導致蘇格蘭皇家銀行被監管機構罰款的尷尬插曲是2012年IT系統崩潰，結果造成數百萬客戶連續數天無法動用他們的資金。

Mr McEwan says this has been addressed, partly by replacing the “core processing engine” of the bank at a cost of £750m.

麥克尤恩表示，問題已經得到解決，部分解決方案是花費7.5億英鎊換掉了該行的“核心處理引擎”。

“I know now that what we have is a much more resilient IT platform that we can be comfortable with and that will hold up,” he says, adding: “If it does fall over it will be for much shorter periods of time.” However, he concedes there is still a big job to reduce the number of systems and applications at RBS from more than 3,000.

他表示：“我現在知道，我們有一個適應能力更強的IT平臺，我們對它感到放心，而且它也靠得住。如果它確實出現問題，時間也會短得多。”然而，他承認，削減蘇格蘭皇家銀行的3000多個系統和應用仍是一個大工程。

A bugbear for Mr McEwan is the temporary “teaser” rates many banks offer on credit cards and savings products — a practice that does not exist in Australia or New Zealand, he says, and one he has curtailed at RBS.

麥克尤恩的一個麻煩在於，許多銀行鍼對信用卡和儲蓄產品提供的臨時“初始優惠利率”(teaser rate)——他表示，澳大利亞或者新西蘭不存在這種做法，他在蘇格蘭皇家銀行也取消了這種做法。

“You would have thought you would get a better rate for staying, rather than a worse rate for staying and a better rate for going,” he says, adding that since RBS ditched teaser rates its credit card business has suffered but its savings book has grown.

麥克尤恩表示：“你本以爲留下來會得到更優惠的利率，而不是留下來利率降低，離開則會得到更高的利率。”他補充稱，蘇格蘭皇家銀行取消初始優惠利率後，其信用卡業務受到了影響，但其儲蓄業務出現了增長。

The RBS boss, who started his career as a human resources manager at Unilever in New Zealand, still has several hurdles to clear. One is the need to settle allegations in the US that the bank mis-sold mortgage-backed securities before the crisis, which analysts expect to cost £5bn. The bank also aims to cut its stake in Citizens, the US retail lender it floated last year, below 30 per cent by the end of the year — a key step to lift RBS’s capital ratio above its target of 12 per cent.

麥克尤恩是從在聯合利華(Unilever)新西蘭公司當一名人力資源經理開始其職業生涯的。他仍有數項障礙要克服。一個是有必要解決在美國面臨的指控，即該行在危機前不當銷售抵押貸款支持證券，分析師預計該行可能得付出50億英鎊的代價。蘇格蘭皇家銀行還計劃在今年年底前將其在美國零售銀行Citizens中的權益削減至30%以下，這是將其資本比率提高至12%的目標之上的關鍵一步——蘇格蘭皇家銀行去年讓Citizens上了市。

Faced with all this, Mr McEwan and most of his top executives have agreed not to take a bonus for three years. But ultimately, the New Zealander knows he will be judged on only one thing: whether the bank’s share price — which closed at 384p last Friday — hits the 500p level at which the government can start selling its 81 per cent stake at a profit.

面對所有這些障礙，麥克尤恩和其大部分高管同意3年不拿獎金。但最終，這位新西蘭人知道，評判他成敗的依據將只有一件事：蘇格蘭皇家銀行的股價是否達到500便士（該行3月27日的收盤價是343便士），即英國政府可以開始獲利賣出其持有的81%的股份。

Cattle-farming offers a respite for the man in charge of the bailed-out bank’s retrenchment, writes Martin Arnold

麥克尤恩大刀闊斧地對這家接受政府援助的銀行實施收縮戰略，養牛讓他有了一些放鬆的空間。