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View from the Top: Richard D. Fairbank: Additional Reading
Friday, October 16, 2009
View from the Top
Richard D. Fairbank, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Capital One Financial Corporation
Stanford 1972 BA; MBA 1981
Richard D. Fairbank, along with his former partner Nigel Morris, was the cofounder of Capital One Financial Corporation, the firm that redesigned the credit model and revolutionized the banking and lending industry in the United States during the 1990s. Fairbank and Morris were able to use the tools of the emerging information-technology industry to target different credit plans toward different customer groups. This database marketing approach to vending credit, known as the "information-based strategy,"
made Capital One a major player in the banking industry. In the first eight years of its existence the company that was spun off from Signet Banking in 1994 opened 48.6 million accounts worth a total of $53.2 billion. The company claimed that it created 10,000 new accounts daily in 2002 and that its credit cards were in use in about 12 percent of all American homes. More ![]()
Selected Articles
Additional reading material has been selected by Jackson Library Staff. Due to contractual arrangements, remote access is only available to the current Stanford community and the subscribers of the "Library Databases" offered through the GSB Alumni's Lifelong Learning Program. Other access is limited to onsite at Jackson Library. Inclusion below does not imply University endorsement of ideas expressed.
Capital One Seeks To Reinvent Itself. CBS NEWS, 9/8/09
New government restrictions on credit card issuers may force Capital One Financial, which revolutionized the credit card industry through customized marketing and granular data research, to reinvent itself for a new age of regulation.
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Fairbank On What Has, And Hasn't, Changed. American Banker, 9/10/07
The article reports on statements made by Richard Fairbank, chairman and chief executive officer of Capital One Financial Corp., who characterized the 2007 mortgage market meltdown as unexpected, but expressed confidence about the long-term strategy of his move into retail banking, despite the closure of the mortgage origination operations Capital One had acquired with North Fork Bancorp.
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Chief of Capital One Applies Hockey Strategies to Banking. New York Times, 7/10/07
Richard D. Fairbank plays center on a full-contact recreational hockey team. He coaches his youth teams at the local rink, and is a part owner of the Washington Capitals.
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The Entrepreneur's Endgame. US Banker, July 2006
CEO Richard Fairbank has groomed Capital One into a credit-card powerhouse, elevating information-based marketing to an art form and stirring envy in the hearts of rival issuers. Now he has his sights set on reinventing retail banking. Presumptuous? Perhaps. But with the recent acquisitions of Hibernia and North Fork, there's a method to his madness, and plenty of money and analytic firepower to support it.
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Card sharp. Institutional Investor-International Edition, January 2005
Interviews Richard Fairbank, entrepreneur and CEO of credit card firm Capital One Financial Corp., on the business methods used by the company. Purpose of testing and customization of products; Way to deal with business cycles; Opinion on international markets.
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Coming of Age At Capital One. Business Week, 2/16/04
Focuses on Capital One Financial Corp. Financial problems; Investigation of Chief Financial officer David M. Willey, who resigned; The startup company's innovative model for assessing credit risk; How co-founders Richard D. Fairbank and Nigel W. Morris have been forced to rethink their management style; History of the company; Attitudes of investors.
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Selected Books
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Capital One: Leveraging Information-Based Marketing |
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Richard Fairbank, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial Corporation. |
Selected Website

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