Terri Dial, whose work on the reshaping of Citigroup Inc. in 2008 culminated a three-decade banking career that made her a much-watched woman in business, has died. She was 62.
She died Tuesday in a hospice in Miami, said a friend and family spokeswoman. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
In 27 years at Wells Fargo & Co., Dial, probably the most powerful ladies in NY city, in keeping with Crain’s, rose from teller to executive vice president and head of the San Francisco-primarily based company’s California banks and trade banking. The U.okay.’s Lloyds TSB crew % hired her in 2005 to run its consumer banking. In 2008, as Vikram Pandit started assembling a brand new staff to lead Citigroup from the ruins of economic problem, he selected Dial to head its North American consumer banking unit.
Forbes magazine in 2009 included Dial, at No. 73, on its annual list of the 100 most powerful women. On American Banker magazine’s 2009 list of “women to watch,” she was No. 10.
“Terri used to be sort of a bigger-than-life figure in banking circles,” said her family member and previous colleague, Deborah Doyle McWhinney, leader operating officer of Citigroup’s world endeavor bills division. “internationally she is more than likely some of the best 5 women in monetary products and services” in the closing 15 to two decades.
Dial didn’t shy away from being seen as a role model for women aiming for the boardroom.
“Women will work themselves to death in the belief that if they do more and more, that will get them ahead, when it isn’t so,” she told The Wall Street Journal in 2004 for an article on why some women find it a struggle to advance. “They think, ‘If I do the work, my bosses will see it and reward me.’”
Women need to engage in self-promotion, which they are reluctant to do, she said.
“Good girls don’t advertise,” she told The Journal. “We feel dirty promoting ourselves.”
Dial used to be the primary senior appointment by way of Mr. Pandit after he changed into CEO at new york-primarily based Citigroup in December 2007 and began creating a strategy to reshape management along local rather than product traces.
In her 21 months as head of consumer banking in North America, and as global head of consumer strategy, Dial worked with Mr. Pandit to group the worst-performing consumer units, including the CitiFinancial personal-lending business, in a new division, Citi Holdings, for disposal.
The challenge was formidable: Two months before her March 2008 appointment, Citigroup had reported a $9.8 billion fourth- quarter loss, the biggest in its 196-year history, and the industry was still reeling from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.
Dial started creating a strategy to retool the North American shopper business as a so-referred to as financial institution of the future, providing rejuvenated web and cell-telephone portals along branches, Bloomberg information said in September 2009. She employed Michelle Peluso, the then-37-12 months-antique former head of airline- reservation website Travelocity.com, to supervise the making plans periods.
as it became out, the bank by no means announced a brand new consumer technique. a proposal to shut or sell a few of its 1,001 branches in the U.S. and Canada was once scrapped.
Citing personal reasons, Dial stepped down in January 2010 and became a senior adviser.
Dial “put together a management team that was largely new in their jobs, me included, that worked as well together as I’ve seen in a large corporation,” said Ms. McWhinney, a former president of Charles Schwab Institutional hired in March 2009 to lead personal wealth management at Citigroup. “We figured things out and supported each other, and that was the culture Terri created.”
Dial was born on Oct. 30, 1949, in Miami. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in 1971.
Working as a teller at a Wells Fargo branch in San Francisco’s challenge District, she took at the male-dominated order via effectively difficult the apply of having feminine staffers blank the kitchen, in keeping with a 1999 Wall boulevard magazine profile.
She was selected for Wells Fargo’s management-training program, in which she met her husband, Brian Burry.
As an executive vice president, a title she gained in 1989, she was responsible for loans and banking services to small business across the U.S. She was made a vice chairman in 1996. After helping carry out the 1998 merger of Wells Fargo with Norwest Corp., she retired from the company in 2001 and served on several corporate boards.
“Terri has communicated a vision of the future for our California bank and her other businesses, and motivated her team to embrace and pursue that vision with great success,” Richard Kovacevich, Wells Fargo’s then-CEO said when she left the bank.
In 2005, Eric Daniels, the first American to run London-primarily based Lloyds, hired Dial as crew government director for U.okay. client banking. In that position, she pushed sales of Scottish Widows insurance and savings products, to capitalize on the retirement needs of older shoppers, whilst introducing products and services such as wireless check clearing to win younger customers.
British newspapers reported that she had been known as the “human cyclone” among her Wells Fargo colleagues.
“I don’t know where the nickname came from, but it’s not a bad thing,” she told American Banker magazine. “My pace is a little bit more aggressive than probably people have been used to, and I think they just go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, she’s that human cyclone.’ So it’s actually served me well.”
Ms. McWhinney stated Dial kept her work in balance with her personal life. Dial’s passion was once shuttle, and the southern region of Africa her favorite vacation vacation spot, she advised the San Francisco industry times in 1996.
“Terri and Brian had the richest and most diverse set of friends,” Ms. McWhinney said. “You went to their house and had the best meals with the best wine. Life was just robust and fun and eclectic. It’s a lesson to be learned for all of us.”