Picto Diary - 11, 12 January 2017 - In Transit, Three Stops, Reminiscence

Stephen D. Taylor checked in to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
January 11 at 5:16pm · Phoenix, AZ ·

I lived in Phoenix for 14 months during 1996 and 1997. I was asked by some venture capitalists to rehabilitate an ailing insurance premium finance company, NIPF (National Insurance Premium Finance) Company. We financed special lines insurance... hyper luxury cars, expensive sports cars... vehicles, which market, until then, major insurance companies were reluctant to enter.

I brought in six or eight guys to help me. There were a number of good people already there; my predecessor, the company's founder, had been fired by the owners.

We were not successful turning the company around. Growing competition from majors like Progressive, underwriting challenges, and operational complexity arising from having to do business in all states, each having its own rules and regulations, combined to render the turnaround a futile effort.

NIPF wasn't a tiny operation. We were financed via a $50MM trust from Eli Broad's Sun Trust. Broad's man on the spot was Jim Hunt, a former Citibanker, who is now retired living in Jackson Hole.

Eventually, all of the insurance premium finance companies like ours were driven out of business due to majors' penetration into the insurance premium finance space.

Notwithstanding, the Phoenix experience, over all, was a good one for me.

We purchased a three bedroom ranch style house in the Red Mountain Ranch area of Mesa. We debated selling our Abitare condo in Coconut Grove and moving lock stock and barrel... but, I persuaded TIMDT that we shouldn't give up the Miami footprint just yet. At the outset I could see that there was a better than even chance that NIPF wouldn't make it.

So, TIMDT and I, for that period, were commuters. I would go to Miami, weekends, twice a month and she would come to Mesa, weekends, twice a month. Occasionally we'd do a weekend in Park City.

TIMDT and Mwah (sic) got to know "the Valley." We hiked the various ranges during the winter months and marveled at the wonderful, blooming cacti. We found some good Phoenix restaurants and generally had a good time together exploring the area.

Also, midway through my Phoenix tenure, I had a lot of time on my hands. I decided to buy a motorcycle... a long held dream. Arizona is a wonderful place for long range motorcycle touring.

Like a lot of decisions I have made in my life, I bought a motorcycle on impulse. I saw an ad for the new BMW R1100 C cruiser, and just like that went to the BMW motorcycle dealer in nearby Chandler and bought one.

For many start up riders, the obvious choice would be a Harley... but, I was aware that the Harley experience is as much a cultural one as it is a riding one. I was more interested in the bike itself. Also, being somewhat of contrarian anyway, I decided to do something different. BMW.

I had one of the first R1100C's in the valley. On the very day of my purchase, while riding the bike from the Chandler dealer to my home in Mesa, I was stopped by a policeman. He said I didn't come to a full stop at a stop sign. He gave me a warning. But, it was clear that he stopped me because he wanted to look at the bike. After asking all kinds of questions about the motorcycle, he bid me on my way.

I started riding the bike to and from work. One night I left the office late and stopped at a diner for dinner. It was late... after 9:00 PM. There was another bike... a BMW... not the R1100 C... parked in the parking lot.

While I was eating my meal alone, a fellow, medium height, open collar sport shirt, and clunky, blue collar glasses walked over to my table.

"That your bike out there?" he asked. I said yes. "That's not a real BMW motorcycle," he averred. "Where did you get the bike?" he asked. I told him I bought it at the Chandler BMW motorcycle dealer. "Those guys are no good," he said. "If you are going to buy a BMW motorcycle in Arizona, go to Iron Horse Motorcycles in Tucson. Talk to the owner, Marty Cohen."

I don't remember his name, but, he said he was the press operating head for the Phoenix daily, "The Arizona Republic." He said he was a true BMW motorcycle man. He belonged to the local BMW motorcycle riders club.

Arizona Republic (AR) invited me over to his house nearby, to see his bikes - "real" BMW bikes, he said, and riding paraphernalia. It was late... but, he seemed sincere and I wanted to learn, so I accepted his invitation.

AR had a garage full of beemers. A Bumblebee, a PD, and an RT. He had a rack where a half dozen riding suits hung. On a shelf were four or five helmets.

AR invited me to the local BMW Riders club. I went on a couple of weekend rides with the club and met Hugh Butler. Then, I was in my early 50s and he in his mid 60's.

In rural Illinois, Hugh had invented the hydraulic cables used by Caterpillar for their machinery. By the time he had sold his company, circa 1995, his factory employed over 200 people and he was supplying all of Cat's hydraulic hoses. He was a real entrepreneur. An American story

Long having been a suit in the employment of the man, I had never met anyone like Hugh...a man who like Ed, lived by his wits, accountable to no one but himself. We teamed up and over the course of the next six months, rode together the distance of just about every state highway in Arizona. Hugh rode a R800R... not a powerful bike, but good enough given Hugh's 5'6" height and 115 pound weight.

Some time after having met AR, I took his advice and rode my R1200C 70 miles to Tucson to see the Iron Horse Motorcycle dealership and owner Marty Cohen.

I met Cohen on the sales floor. I pointed at a bike that looked like a cross between a pterodactyl and a badger. "What's that,?" I asked. Marty replied that that was an R1100 GS, the "Land Rover" of motorcycles. "It's for off road?" I asked. "Yes," Marty replied. "Off road and on road. A lot of guys don't even take it off road," he said. "They just use it for long distance motorcycle touring."

"I'll take it," I said. Marty paused... looked at me carefully, and said, "how long have you been riding? Are you sure you're ready for something like this?" I was amazed. Was this guy really trying to talk me out of buying the bike?

I bought that GS, kept it for 11 years, and put about 70K miles on it. I rode it over just about every Colorado pass you can name... including the tough ones: Webster, Tin Cup, Engineer. The only two passes I never accomplished were Black Bear and Red Cloud.

From here I could ride a book... but, the message here is that I really started riding motorcycles in Arizona with Hugh. I was hooked.

Also, I started meeting other people like Hugh. Amazing people. Lots of entrepreneurs. Guys who knew how to do stuff. Guys who invented stuff... who could fix stuff. I rode a couple of times with the guy who invented the baseball pitching machine used by the major leagues, minor leagues and colleges. He sold his business for $30 million. The people who bought it ran it into the ground. My friend bought the business back at ten cents on the dollar.

So.... a year in Phoenix. Not a great professional experience... but a life changing jump into a passion that has animated me over the 20 years since.

Stephen D. Taylor checked in to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
January 11 at 10:45pm. Queens, NY.

I lived in New York City twice during my life.

Queens

The first time was for a 15 month period in 1951 and 1952.

Dad was at NYU getting a PhD in Marketing (BYU BS, and Harvard MBA).

We (Dad, Mom, me, and my pre-school brother Dee) lived in a newer apartment complex in Bayside, Queens. I attended the first grade at P.S. 31, Bayside, Queens.

I remember Dad taking me into a store that sold baseball hats. There were three hats to choose from. Giants, Dodgers, and Yankees. I picked a New York Giants hat. The store owner said, "no, you don't want a Giants hat, you want a Yankees hat." I took the Yankees hat. As time moved on in my young life, the Yankees were a better team to follow in any case. Start with the Mantle and Maris race for a home run record in 1961.

Our family visited the Statue of Liberty. I gave a "show and tell" presentation at school about my visit. I was surprised to note that none of the other members of my 1st grade class, made up of native New Yorkers, not interlopers like me, had ever been to the Statue of Liberty. I've run into similar phenomena a lot of times since. I am convinced that if you asked the average Utahn walking down Main Street in Salt Lake City, if he or she had visited Zion Canyon National Park, that nine of ten would say, no. Go to those places (Utah's National Parks) and you'll hear more German, French or Japanese being spoken than English.

PS 31 school kids wore dog tags. There was a fixation about a possible nuclear war with the USSR. Regularly we would do nuclear bomb preparation drills. When a bell sequence rang, we would get under our desks and stay there until an all clear signal rang.

Every morning at school we would stand when our teacher came into the room and, in unison, say: "Good morning, Mrs (so and so). Our greeting to our teacher would be followed by reciting, in unison, the Pledge of Allegiance.

My best friend was Walter Immig. He was Jewish. Our apartments were in the same Bayside complex, so we would play at one another's homes. At Walter's home, Walter's mother would urge us to wrestle on the living room floor. Then, astoundingly as I look back, she would root for me to pound the crap out of her son. I can only suppose that she was trying to toughen Walter up.

Walter had a TV at home. We didn't. We would watch Howdy Doody at Walter's house. Buffalo Bob, Clarabelle yada. There were three TV channels: CBS, ABC, and NBC.

A story from my Dad's memoirs from the period. Dad taught marketing classes at Pace College. He writes that the kids in the class mocked his accent. The problem apparently became so acute that the college Dean had to come into the class and admonish the students. The Dean said to the students, to the effect: "Why are you mocking Professor Taylor's speaking? His accent is exactly the same as those on TV reading the news. It is your accent that is odd. Now get back to work." Apparently the Dean made the point. Dad notes in his memoirs that there were no problems after that.

Dad bought a powder blue, 1952 Dodge which we drove back to Utah after the New York City stint. I remember the new car cost something like $2200.

So... though I am a westerner, a Utahn, by heritage, I like to say that I am a product of the New York City school system.

Westport

Westport, CT is not exactly New York City. But, it is on the fringe of the greater New York City conurbation. And, I commuted from Westport into the city daily, for three years, from 1988 to 1991, to my office at Citibank headquarters, 399 Park Avenue. So.... I count this period as "living in New York City," though, it is not technically true.

I did the commuter routine. After parking the car in the commuter lot, I would take (usually) the 6:00 AM Metro North express train from Westport to Grand Central Station. The commute time was one hour.

From Grand Central Station, I would walk the ten or so blocks uptown, along Park Avenue, to The Brasserie on 53rd street, between Park and Lexington Avenues. There, usually from the same waiter (I can't remember his name), I'd get a corn muffin and a coffee. Over the next thirty minutes or so I'd peruse the New York Times while consuming breakfast. I'd get to my office, across the street, by 7:45 AM. I'd be gone by 5:00 PM to get the Metro North train back to Westport.

I'd go to the office cafeteria for lunch... or skip lunch. Occasionally, I'd go to the Harvard Club for lunch, asking my friend John Metzger, who I had worked with in Australia in the mid-70's, to join me. I enjoyed our Harvard Club lunches. John had a lot of interesting insights into the politics of Citibank of that period. I mostly listened to his observations, which, in hindsight, were spot on. John and I still have a connection on Facebook.

My three year long New York experience at Citibank headquarters was not the greatest professional experience of my life. I had been used to running businesses in Citibank's far flung reaches (Manila, Tokyo, DC, Miami) with a fair degree of autonomy. At New York City headquarters, I had a staff job, a secretary and one assistant. The job, grade wise (ie. pay wise) was a step up from the last position I had held... CEO of Citicorp Savings of FL, and Citi's senior officer in Florida. I was chief credit officer for Citi's US Consumer Banking Group, and, a member of Citi's Credit Policy Committee.

But, I wasn't happy doing staff work... and, perhaps, ill suited to it. Former mentors had left the bank, and the one I was working for was fired and had his job folded into the world of a peer. And, the bank itself was passing through one of its dark periods. This was the time of Citi's operating under a memorandum of understanding with the feds due to its over exposure to real estate and third world debt. It was time, after twenty years working for Citibank, for me to think about leaving.

Stew Leonard was our big weekend deal. Costco seems to have supplanted the Stew Leonard urge these days.

We'd eat at some of the Greek diners up and down US1.

We took weekend excursions... skiing in Vermont... visiting L.L. Bean, in Maine.

My son Jake and I attended a half dozen Yankee games a year. We also went to some football games. We saw the Army Navy game at Giant's stadium in 0 degree temperatures.

I left Citi and New York City in 1991, after working for there for twenty years, to return to Miami and run American Savings of Florida, a publicly traded, troubled thrift.

The timing of my departure from Citi was fortuitous. My accumulated deferred compensation was paid to me in, then, hyper low value Citi stock. The stock provided disproportionate gains in later years when the bank regained it's footing.

Stephen D. Taylor checked in to Heathrow Terminal 5.
January 12 at 9:49am · London, United Kingdom ·

London

I've been to the UK seven or eight times. Two of those visits, each one to London, were for business reasons. Here's a recap of those two visits.

London 1: "Stu" - Reward

Early in 1974, while working, very early in my career, for Citibank in Calcutta, I received a note from Ham Meserve, Citi's India head then based in Bombay. The note from Ham said that his boss, Division Executive Carleton Stewart, based at Citi's New York headquarters, wanted me to stop by Citi's London office when I next visited the US for home leave. "Stu" had been the deciding officer in hiring us (Margaret and me) into the bank in late 1972... and, the decision maker in assigning us to Citibank India after our six month training stint in Beirut, Lebanon.

Stewart, apparently, was happy with the way I was doing my job. He wanted me to have a professional experience that broadened my perspective on opportunities within the bank.

Dutifully, I visited Citi's London office sometime during the summer of 1974. I was hosted by well known and venerated Citi London corporate banking head, Stew Clifford.

At Citi's London office, Stew Clifford had an itinerary prepared that had me visiting two or three of his reports. After, Stew Clifford had me join him for lunch.

For a junior officer working in the far flung reaches of the "Citi empire," the trip buoyed my spirits and made me feel good about the career choice, to join Citi, that I had made.

I might have seen Carleton Stewart (Stu) once after the London trip and thanked him for his setting up the London stop... but, Stu was not long to be an ongoing career mentor. Before my departure from India in late 1974, Stu, himself, had received a change of assignment to (interestingly) London to head Citi's corporate banking operations there. London was, no doubt, a big job... but, it wasn't bigger than the Division Executive job (Middle East, central Asia, and Africa) that Stu was leaving. "Scuttlebutt' in the day was that Stu's career had peaked.

Stu left the bank circa 1976 to take a position as CEO of Riggs Bank in Washington D.C. I never had contact with him again, though I knew two or three Citi officers more senior than myself who continued to stay in touch with him.

After retiring, Stu and his wife Alicia moved to the west coast of Florida. Stu passed away during the early naughts.

Stu and Mwah (sic). Its kind of like one of those "ships passing in the night" stories... except Stu's and my ships briefly stopped in proximity of one another for a brief encounter. The captain of one of the ships passed along some needed stores to the captain of the other ship, and the ships sailed on, never to encounter the other again. But, the receiver captain never forgot the gesture of the giver captain and remained ever grateful for his mid-sea aid.

 

London 2: Recruiting Trip

Sometime during the first quarter of 1995, while working in my Miami, FL office, I received a call from a female executive recruiter based in London. I was CEO of the publicly traded thrift bank, American Savings of Florida (ASF). At the time of the call, ASF's sale to Charlotte's First Union Corporation had been announced.

The recruiter said that her client was a mid sized UK  headquartered bank with a significant footprint in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Would I be interested in exploring such an opportunity? she wondered. I was about to be out of a job after presiding over the successful sale of ASF. "Sure," I said. "I'd like to learn more."

I was invited by the recruiter for an interview in London. The recruiter provided the name of the bank running the search. Standard and Chartered, a multi branch, UK based, geographically dispersed, consumer/commercial banking franchise. The bank was looking for a chief operating officer with experience doing consumer banking in Asia. My "credential" of having worked in Citi's Asian consumer operation as consumer business manager in Japan, 1982-1985, had, I presumed, placed me on the recruiter's list.

A week or so after the call, I traveled to London. My meeting, at Standard and Chartered, was with the recruiter. I was not, then, or later invited to speak to anyone representing the bank. Put this in the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" category.

Shortly after my London visit, a former colleague of mine from Citi Asia, Rana Talwar, was hired for the Standard and Chartered position, which he occupied for six or seven years.

Margaret and I had dinner with Rana and some other Citi alumni at his Delhi home just a year ago.