Nelson Chai
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Nelson Joosuk Chai (born 1965) is an American
investment banker Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with ...
and financial executive. He formerly served as the
chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...
of American financial services company
Merrill Lynch Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment bank ...
and briefly as
Bank of America The Bank of America Corporation (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank w ...
's president for the
Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pacific Isla ...
region. He is the former president of
CIT Group CIT Group (CIT), a subsidiary of First Citizens BancShares, is an American financial services company. It provides financing, including factoring, cash management, treasury management, mortgage loans, Small Business Administration loans, l ...
and reported directly to then
CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
John Thain John Alexander Thain (born May 26, 1955) is an American businessman, investment banker, and former chair and CEO of the CIT Group. Thain was the last chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch before its merger with Bank of America. ...
. On August 21, 2018, it was announced that Chai has been hired as the
chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...
of
Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...
.


Career

Chai served in senior positions at
AlliedSignal AlliedSignal was an American aerospace, automotive and engineering company created through the 1985 merger of Allied Corp. and Signal Companies. It subsequently purchased Honeywell for $14.8 billion in 1999, and thereafter adopted the Honeywell n ...
and Philip Morris before joining medical diagnostics products manufacturer
Dade Behring Dade Behring was a company which manufactured testing machinery and supplies for the medical diagnostics industry, based in Deerfield, Illinois and Glasgow, Delaware (formerly a DuPont site). History Behring Diagnostics, a Frankfurt-based compa ...
in 1997 as corporate vice president of worldwide field finance; he later became their senior vice president of business development.


Archipelago

Chai was named chief financial officer of
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
-based
electronic communication network An electronic communication network (ECN) is a type of computerized forum or network that facilitates the trading of financial products outside traditional stock exchanges. An ECN is generally an electronic system that widely disseminates orders ...
company Archipelago Exchange in June 2000. Chai was a major driving force behind the merger between Archipelago and the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
; he repeatedly pressured his boss Archipelago CEO Gerald Putnam, to meet with NYSE officials, though Putnam felt that the NYSE would be uninterested and hoped instead to pursue an acquisition of rival ECN
Instinet Instinet is an institutional, agency-model broker that also serves as the independent equity trading arm of its parent, Nomura Group. It executes trades for asset management firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds. ...
. In April 2005, when Archipelago formally announced its pending acquisition by the NYSE, it was decided that Chai would take over as CFO of the NYSE in May 2006 from Amy Butte, who had held that position since February 2004. Butte later decided to leave the exchange entirely rather than continue at her planned new position as executive vice president of strategy and product development. In 2006, Chai received a salary of $750,000 and a bonus of $825,000 from the NYSE; combined with other payments, his cash compensation for the year totalled $2,168,922.


Merrill Lynch

On 3 December 2007,
John Thain John Alexander Thain (born May 26, 1955) is an American businessman, investment banker, and former chair and CEO of the CIT Group. Thain was the last chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch before its merger with Bank of America. ...
, the new
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
at
Merrill Lynch Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment bank ...
and Chai's former boss at the NYSE, announced that Chai would join Merrill in the position of chief financial officer starting on 10 December; the move was part of a management shake-up at Merrill, initiated due to their losses in the
2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis The United States subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. It was triggered by a large decline in US home prices after the coll ...
. Chai replaced Jeffrey Edwards, who had held the position of CFO since 2005; Thain stated Edwards would assume another unspecified role within Merrill. Chai's new employer revealed that he would receive a bonus of $2.5 million for the 2007 fiscal year, split evenly between cash and stock, for his three weeks of work that year, bringing his total compensation for the year to $3.1 million. Merrill justified the bonus by pointing out that Chai would not receive any year-end incentive payment from his previous employer. Chai was slated to receive a salary of $600,000 in 2008. However, he and other top-level Merrill executives received no bonus that year, due to the ongoing financial crisis.


Bank of America

When
Bank of America The Bank of America Corporation (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank w ...
(BofA) acquired Merrill Lynch in late 2008, they named Chai to head their Asia business. BofA planned to relocate Chai to
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
for his new position. He replaced Jason Brand, who had worked at BofA for 15 years. However, Chai departed from BofA in February, just two weeks after the ouster of Thain, and was replaced by Ki-Myung Hong. He had not yet relocated to Hong Kong at the time he quit. His departure left just one other member of Thain's management team in place at BofA, Tom Montag as head of sales and trading.


CIT Group

In early 2010, the
CIT Group CIT Group (CIT), a subsidiary of First Citizens BancShares, is an American financial services company. It provides financing, including factoring, cash management, treasury management, mortgage loans, Small Business Administration loans, l ...
reportedly approached Chai about the CFO position there after they hired Thain as CEO. In June, they announced that Chai would be coming on board, but in the capacity of
chief administrative officer A chief administrative officer (CAO) is a top-tier executive who supervises the daily operations of an organization and is ultimately responsible for its performance. Government and non-profit A CAO is responsible for administrative management of ...
and head of strategy instead. Chai's new responsibilities at CIT include global infrastructure and operating architecture, leadership of the insurance and consumer finance divisions, as well as business development and strategic planning. A little over a year later, in August 2011, he was named CIT's president; following the promotion, he would keep his prior responsibilities as CAO and head of strategy, and in addition would take charge of CIT's
corporate finance Corporate finance is the area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, the capital structure of corporations, the actions that managers take to increase the Value investing, value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and anal ...
and
vendor finance Vendor finance is a form of lending in which a company lends money to be used by the borrower to buy the vendor's products or property. Vendor finance is usually in the form of deferred loans from, or shares subscribed by, the vendor. The vendor ...
businesses. His total compensation package for 2011 was $1.7 million, down by 40% from 2010, reflecting a broader downward trend in executive compensation packages at CIT to which the only exceptions were Thain himself and transportation division president Jeffrey Knittel.


Personal life and other activities

Chai was born in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to
Korean immigrant The Korean diaspora (South Korea: or , North Korea: or ) consists of around 7.3 million people, both descendants of early emigrants from the Korean Peninsula, as well as more recent emigres from Korea. Around 84.5% of overseas Koreans live in ...
parents. He studied as an undergraduate at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
, and went on to receive an
MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...
from the
Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
. He has three children with his wife Jung, a stay-at-home mom. They lived in Lake Forest,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
before moving to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Chai previously drove an
Isuzu Trooper The Isuzu Trooper is a full-size SUV that was produced by the Japanese automaker Isuzu between 1981 and 2007. In the domestic Japanese market it was sold as the Isuzu Bighorn, the car was exported internationally mainly as a Trooper but it also ...
compact Compact as used in politics may refer broadly to a pact or treaty; in more specific cases it may refer to: * Interstate compact * Blood compact, an ancient ritual of the Philippines * Compact government, a type of colonial rule utilized in British ...
sport utility vehicle A sport utility vehicle (SUV) is a car classification that combines elements of road-going passenger cars with features from off-road vehicles, such as raised ground clearance and four-wheel drive. There is no commonly agreed-upon definitio ...
, but traded it in for a
Toyota Prius The is a car built by Toyota which has a Hybrid vehicle drivetrain, hybrid drivetrain, combining an internal combustion engine with an electric motor. Initially offered as a four-door Sedan (automobile), sedan, it has been produced only as ...
hybrid electric vehicle A hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is a type of hybrid vehicle that combines a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) system with an electric propulsion system ( hybrid vehicle drivetrain). The presence of the electric powertrain is intende ...
in 2004. Chai has served on the board of directors of the United States-India Business Council since August 17, 2007. He is also a member of the national board of directors of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chai, Nelson 1965 births Living people American investment bankers American people of Korean descent Bank of America executives Businesspeople from New York City Businesspeople from Illinois American chief financial officers Harvard Business School alumni Merrill (company) people New York Stock Exchange people People from Lake Forest, Illinois Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni