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panorama
more new players in the market will open it up
Metro hit its first-year targets in the first month. So Hill knows about burgers as well as banking, but he is also involved in many other businesses, including property, a golf course, chairing a US pet insurance group, and a financial website on which he writes blogs criticising rivals, the US government and regulators too.
Hill admits he was attracted to the UK by the common language as well as what he sees as its backward attitude to banking. “Why are we doing this in the UK rather than some other part of America?” he asks. “Because the opportunity is here.”
However, he is prepared to transfer his new-found enthusiasm for the UK to other foreign firms wanting to do business here. His commercial banking operations should appeal to exporters wanting instant decisions and looking for solutions where more staid bankers look for problems.
Metro’s first branches have opened in central London and Hill is cautiously rolling out his bank across the capital and into the immediate hinterland rather than attempting to build a national network immediately. “In four or five years’ time you’ll see we have 100 stores in greater London,” he asserts. “You’ll be surprised how big we will be in the SME market.”
Does he fear the UK’s established banks will steal his ideas? “It’s very difficult to turn an existing bank into a real retail model,” he claims. “It’s about how you think.” He points out that there were 173 banks in New York when he took Commerce there, but he opened 270 branches and attracted customers. “We’re used to having multiple players,” he says. “It’s impossible to convert a normal bank to this model. And more new players in the market will open it up more.
“Metro is the Apple of banking,” he says. “What’s different about Apple? They’ve got cell-phones and computers, but they package it a different way.”
The UK Government had to bail out four of the country’s big retail banks after the financial crash and regulators wanted to bring in new competition. Hill has not waited for the Government inquiry to start, never mind reach its conclusions; he submitted his application while Lehman Brothers was sinking in 2008. “The Government was committed to new players in the market and liked our deposit-funded low-risk model,” he explains.
Hill has brought in UK directors and is deputy to a British chairman. “The regulator wanted a Brit at the top,” he says. “It valued people on boards of banks who have banking experience.”
His wife Shirley has designed the branches and, while Metro grows, they are living in London with their Yorkshire terrier, Duffy – the star of Metro’s advertising. Hill has invested $40m of the $400m he received from the Commerce Bank takeover into his London venture and will need to subscribe more as Metro grows and fl oats on the London Stock Exchange. What happened to the other $360m? “My wife spent it,” he jokes, but he is the one laughing all the way to the bank.
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