Truist CEO hosts last earnings call before retirement, talks of ‘passing the baton’
Truist CEO Bill Rogers hosted his last quarterly earnings call on Friday for the Charlotte-based bank, which reported net income of $1.5 billion, a 25% increase from the $1.2 billion generated during the same period last year.
The bank announced Rogers’ retirement in June and named Michael Lyons the new president and CEO, starting Sept. 1. Rogers will serve in an executive chair position until he officially leaves in April 2027.
During the earnings call, both executives’ career moves were brought up a few times.
Rogers said his final year as CEO was spent optimizing the balance sheet, building capital flexibility and cleaning up a clear dashboard of metrics for his successor. He noted that while his tenure was about building the foundation, Lyons’ job will be about bringing acceleration and intensity for growth.
“I feel really good about the baton passing,” Rogers said, “but also feel really good (thinking about the 4 x 100 relay and) passing the baton with somebody that can run the last lap at a lot of speed against a really common objective.”
Lyons stepped down in June as CEO of Fiserv Inc., a payments and financial services technology company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to become CEO of Truist. Lyons is also a former PNC and Bank of America executive with over three decades of financial services experience.
During the analyst Q&A, Lyons’ appointment from outside the bank was brought up as something that could be “jarring” to staff, according to UBS analyst Erika Najarian. Rogers dismissed concerns about losing top talent, outlining their workplace philosophy.
Truist treats employee retention as an active, daily mission rather than a passive corporate policy, according to Rogers. He explained that the leadership team operates with a mindset to “re-recruit” their staff daily to ensure top talent remains motivated and aligned with the bank’s long-term vision.
“I think the best thing for top performers is an incredible platform, career opportunity and a lot of certainty, and I think that’s what we’re delivering.”
More on Truist bank
Truist was created in December 2019 after BB&T of Winston-Salem and Atlanta-based SunTrust merged in a $66 billion deal. The combined bank picked Charlotte as its new headquarters. It’s of Charlotte’s “Big 3” banks, along with Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Rogers, who previously led SunTrust, became Truist’s second CEO in September 2021. Kelly King, BB&T’s former CEO, stepped down as CEO but stayed on as board chairman — a leadership change the two men had planned during merger talks, The Charlotte Observer reported at the time.
In 2022, Truist opened its first uptown Charlotte branch in the same building as its headquarters at 214 N. Tryon St., and rebranded existing SunTrust and BB&T locations as Truist branches.
During the call, Truist reported that total revenue growth for the quarter before reductions was $5.2 billion, which is a 5.5% increase from the same period last year when the total was $4.9 billion.
Truist employs more than 3,000 workers in the Charlotte area, part of around 40,000 people companywide.
