With the full force of public fury turned on financial institutions’ perceived excesses, now is perhaps not the best time for Massachusetts bankers to go jetting off to a resort in Bermuda.
That’s the opinion of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, which announced to members last week it is relocating its late-April convention to Boston instead of its usual tropical locale.
The decision creates logistical problems – it’s tough to arrange accommodations for possibly hundreds of people in a few months – but also means lost money in cancellation fees for hotel reservations.
Still, in this “hypersensitive, hypercritical environment,” it made sense to rethink the plans, said MBA spokesman Bruce Spitzer.
“We were concerned it wouldn’t look good, and maybe we could do it differently,” he said.
The convention was to have been held at luxury resorts such as the Southampton Princess in Bermuda, where bankers can attend educational sessions and hit the golf links in the same day.
Boston might seem like a letdown compared to Bermuda – especially for any bankers who might have already bought their airline tickets to the upcoming event – but few were protesting.
“Given the economy and the conditions at large … restraint and frugality is probably a pretty good idea at the moment,” said Robert H. Gaughen Jr., president of the Hingham Institution for Savings. Gaughen had been planning to attend the meeting in Bermuda, but hadn’t yet bought his tickets.
Attendance was likely going to be lower than normal at the event as well, he said. Individual banks, like most businesses, are reigning in anything that could be regarded as frivolous spending.
Spitzer demurred from saying how many bankers had registered for the original event; in typical years, though, a couple hundred attendees usually come to the meeting, he said.
These conventions are a longstanding tradition in banking, begun as a way to equalize compensation between mutual banks and their stock counterparts: publicly traded banks were able to offer stock compensation to their board members, but mutuals didn’t have that option. Offering an annual destination convention, then, became a way for mutuals to entice potential board members.
Eventually, mutual banks and stock banks became more similar in terms of board compensation and their separate banking associations merged into the modern-day MBA – but the convention tradition continued.
Boston, You’re My Home
The association is still working on arranging for accommodations in Boston, and wasn’t certain that the convention would be held on the originally scheduled dates of April 30-May 3, Spitzer said.
The group had booked reservations in Bermuda up to three years ago, and was currently negotiating on how to pull out of its contract – Spitzer indicated that the MBA’s continued business was being used as a bargaining chip with the hotel.
A potential bright spot is that a Boston location will likely draw a bigger crowd. Charles Valade, president and CEO of Worcester-based Commonwealth National Bank, said he’d never gone to a conference, but would consider attending if it were just down the Mass Pike.
Valade said the news had likely fallen on receptive ears – everyone is cutting back on expenses right now, and with frugality at the forefront, the move probably didn’t catch anyone off guard.
“I wasn’t totally surprised. I think it’s encouraging to see them take that kind of a step, to be honest,” he said.
