April 18, 2001

Fleet CEO vows better service

By Tom Walsh

Terrence J. Murray, FleetBoston Financial Corp.'s chief executive, may not like the tactics of his company's opponents.

But he agreed with them yesterday on one key point - the nation's seventh-largest bank needs to improve customer service.

With major acquisitions likely to be on hold for the foreseeable future, Fleet needs to remake its image and provide top-notch customer service in order to drive revenue growth, Murray said at the company's annual meeting.

Bruce Marks, chief executive of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, said he was happy to hear Murray's admission that customer service has not been great.

"It's what we've been saying for the past 10 years," said Marks, one of Fleet's most vocal opponents.

Marks arrived at the meeting at the World Trade Center in typical fashion, dressed in a bright yellow "Loan Shark" T-shirt and accompanied by about 125 followers chanting anti-Fleet slogans.

Marks' issue du jour is privacy, and his group said it is poised to file a lawsuit against Fleet for allegedly violating customers rights by giving out personal information to telemarketers.

Murray acknowledged the company, like other financial services firms, had in the past sold customer information to third parties, but said it stopped the practice six months ago.

"We will not sell or share any information with any third party without direct authorization from a customer," Murray said.

Shortly before the meeting, Fleet released its results for the third quarter, reporting an 86.8 percent drop in net income, from $ 142 million compared to $ 1.076 billion in the same quarter 2000.

Much of the decline resulted from one-time charges, including $ 450 million from the acquisition of Summit Bancorp Inc.; a $ 225 million loss on the sale of Fleet Mortgage Corp.; and $ 50 million in restructuring charges in Fleet's capital markets units.

Total revenue dropped 17.59 percent, to $ 3.725 billion from $ 4.52 billion at the same time last year. Revenue from capital markets dove to $ 359 million from $ 1.06 billion last year.

Nancy A. Bush, an analyst for Ryan, Beck & Co., said Fleet had a "sloppy quarter" and appeared to be purging itself of as much bad news as possible.

This article is reprinted here for non-commercial, educational, fair use purposes only.