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THE BIG INTERVIEW


Clearly a man who knows what he wants – and gets it


Co-founder and CEO of Clearly Bank, Mike Cunningham, talks about surviving in a BA 747, living the dream and why if someone says ‘turn right’ he will always turn left


Interview by Henry Vilar


India, China and SA) countries. I started trying to figure out how to deal with India, where we decided to forget retail – it was too difficult. We said “let’s build a corporate business there; it makes sense. The investment banking is there; the license is ready”. After that, I moved to Pakistan and later Namibia.


After my first son was born and we had some hard times, I realised I was living in a BA 747. I looked at what I was doing at Barclays and nothing was as exciting as going off to do something different. I was approached by ADCB Bank in Abu Dhabi, as they wanted a Head of Strategy. This was in April 2008, when the world was pretty good.


But by the time I got to work there, in October 2008, it was crazy – the bank was in a terrible state.


background, and how Clearly came to be? C


I started life with Barclays, as an intern and on the graduate scheme. Soon after I had gone off to work for the bank in Africa, where I got a real taste for emergent markets or anything outside of Europe – it was just more fun. I was tasked with the organic strategy for the BRIC (Brazil, Russia,


www.ibsintelligence.com © IBS Intelligence 2017 an you tell us a bit about your


We were the first bank to take money from the government, but also the first one paying it back. I had the most amazing seven years and a half with ADCB, where we went from really deep remediation, all the way to building, in my opinion, the best bank in the UAE. It’s an incredible story, the way the balance sheets grew, the way they went from retail struggle to a powerhouse.


People generally don’t like banks. It’s not like buying a new car, it’s just boring and not exciting. We often make some important happy changes in our lives, like buying a house, or getting married, miserable. But we don’t do it on purpose because we’re bad people, we do it by design. And it’s that design that I wanted to change with my ideas, outside of


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