Visa Names Rodrigues to Succeed Williamson as CEO

Christopher J. Rodrigues, group chief executive of U.K.-based banking firm Bradford & Bingley, is the new president and chief executive of Visa International, the bank card network announced today. Rodrigues, 54, will take over June 1 from William Boardman, chairman of Visas International's board, who is serving as interim chief executive until then. Rodrigues succeeds Malcolm Williamson, chief executive since October 1998, who stepped down to return to his home in the U.K. Like Rodrigues, Williamson had come from a U.K bank, in his case Standard Chartered, to head Visa. A former executive with American Express Co. and McKinsey & Co., Rodrigues has been in his current post since 1996, and in 2000 led Bradford & Bingley through a demutualization. The company, which has 600 branches, is listed on the FTSE 100. Rodrigues also served from 1998 until 2003 as a non-executive director of the Financial Services Authority, a major markets regulator in the U.K. He was chief executive of travel-services company Thomas Cook before going to Bradford & Bingley. In a statement Visa released today, Boardman said Rodrigues has “a proven track record in negotiating the challenges of today's business environment.” He takes over Visa, which has 21,000 member banks worldwide, at a time when the network is facing fierce pricing pressure from both competitors and regulators, and is in the United States confronting unprecedented competition from American Express for banks' card business. Bradford & Bingley separately announced it had appointed Steven Crawshaw to succeed Rodrigues.