5 POWERFUL STRATEGIES FOR NAVIGATING A BUSINESS DOWNTURN
Frank Bisignano has been a CEO for almost 10 years and a top-ranking financial executive for three decades. He survived the dotcom crash at Citigroup. He helped steer JPMorgan Chase through the tumult of the Great Recession—managing the megabank’s acquisition of the dumpster fire that was Washington Mutual, no less. And he led his own company, fintech and payments platform Fiserv (2021 revenues: $16.2 billion), through the insanity of the COVID pandemic.
Still, he sees today’s business climate, where recession is now viewed as a virtual certainty, as perhaps the most difficult he’s ever confronted. “We have lots of experience with economic challenges, and they come in all shapes and sizes,” Bisignano told Fortune recently. “But this is inflation like no other. You not only have the cost of goods rising at the fastest rate in decades, you have much less availability of supplies, and a workforce dynamic like you’ve never seen before.” (Yes, “quiet quitting” is an issue in fintech too.) “And they’re all hitting at the same time.”
But Bisignano has another experience on his résumé that helps him put things in perspective. On Sept. 11, 2001, Bisignano, then Citigroup’s chief administrative officer in charge of technology and infrastructure, including all real estate holdings, was seated at a staff meeting on the top floor of the bank’s office tower at 388 Greenwich St.—less than a mile from the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. “I close my eyes and see it all,” Bisignano recalls. “We hear this gigantic boom. I go back to my office to see the giant hole in the west tower, and people jumping from the windows. I’m thinking, ‘We have 16,000 people in Lower Manhattan, more than any other company. How do I protect them?’ ” Bisignano ordered
