As Capital One Financial chief executive Richard D. Fairbank faced a gathering of investors several weeks ago, there was no avoiding the fact that one of Washington's biggest business successes had lost momentum.Just months after the credit card issuer had plunged into an unconventional segment of the mortgage market with its acquisition of a major bank, that segment of the market imploded. First-quarter earnings were down and the stock price was languishing.
"Do you sense any level of impatience with your shareholders in terms of translating your end-game strategy into near-term earnings performance?" the moderator at the investor conference asked, noting that he was sugar-coating the question investors were posing.
Fairbank, whose mass marketing of credit cards had generated years of stellar returns for shareholders and had enriched him personally by hundreds of millions of dollars, addressed the question head-on.
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