Bank of America 2001 Annual Report Download - page 6

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4
Executive recruiting has been another priority, resulting
in a number of key hires in business-critical positions.
While some of these new teammates came from financial
services firms, many came from companies in other indus-
tries, such as manufacturing, shipping and consumer products.
These executives joined our already strong management
team, making us even stronger. They have brought skills
and knowledge to our organization that are
helping us improve revenue growth, business
processes, customer satisfaction and associate
retention. We will continue to recruit top talent
aggressively from all industries where execu-
tives have the skills, knowledge and experience
to take our performance to a higher level.
If fielding the right team gets us in the
game, motivating our players is the way to win.
We are taking several steps to more closely
align associate and shareholder interests.
These steps include shifting the emphasis for
bonus awards toward relationship-building and
away from pure sales goals; shifting 2002
stock option awards from an emphasis on time-
based vesting to vesting based on stock price
appreciation; and giving senior executives a pro-
gressively increasing percentage of their annual
incentive payment in restricted stock.
Like measurement tools for associates, the
ways we measure corporate performance also impact our
priorities and our decisions. For many years, like many
companies, we have looked to the typical financial measure-
ments to gauge our progress and our success – measures like
revenue and earnings growth, earnings per share and return
on equity. These measures are widely used for good reason,
and we will continue to use them just as we always have.
That said, we also are incorporating shareholder value
added, or SVA,
into our decision making, both at the corpo-
rate
level and throughout the business lines. SVA measures
returns over and above our cost of capital. Simply put, we
believe that SVA as a performance measure and a decision-
making tool has an extremely high, direct correlation to
stock price performance, and will help us do a better job of
managing the company for the benefit of our owners.
Finally, a word about the Bank of America brand. We
believe strongly that a world-class company must have a
world-class brand, and we have continued to invest in the
advertising programs and sponsorships that build awareness
of our brand across the nation. Perhaps more important, we
understand that the real strength of our brand will
be determined over time by the consistency and
quality of the experiences our customers have
when they do business with us. It is excellence in
this regard to which we have all committed, and
through which we all will help build a strong
Bank of America brand for the future.
Our Opportunity and Responsibility.
Throughout this report, you will read about
how we are working hard to grow customer
relationships as a key strategy in our efforts to
grow our company.
Of course, we know that we are not the
only large banking company pursuing a growth
strategy based on expanding relationships. The
strategy alone is no great secret and by itself
will not differentiate us. What we’re focused on
is execution and the impact our work is having
on our progress toward becoming one of the
world’s most admired companies. This is the
goal I set for our associates last year when I became chair-
man, and it is a goal that all of us are pursuing with vigor
and intensity.
I have said many times this year that the opportunity
we
have before us is the business opportunity of a lifetime –
to
take an organization that possesses the right businesses, the
right strategy and the right people and turn it into one of
the greatest companies in the world. In fact, achieving
this
goal is more than an opportunity. Given who we are,
the
position we occupy in the market and the name we do
business under – Bank of America – I believe that achieving
our goal is a responsibility.
DIVIDENDS
1999 2000 2001
(Dollars per share)
$1.85
$2.06
$2.28
RETURN ON AVERAGE
COMMON EQUITY
(Operating Basis)
1999 2000 2001
(Numbers in percent)
17.7%
16.7% 16.5%
Instead of finding a product or a geographic label at the center of
our operations, we are more often finding the customer at the center,
and our customers are beginning to feel the difference.