This interview was conducted during the 45th International Conference but was published again in 2020 due to its relevance to the theme of corporate social responsibility at the 46th International Conference.

Michael P. Lyons is executive vice president and head of Corporate & Institutional Banking for The PNC Financial Services Group. 

Before joining PNC in October 2011, Lyons served as global head of corporate development and strategic planning for Bank of America. In that role he was primarily responsible for repositioning Bank of America's balance sheet to help the company focus on its core businesses and growth strategy. He was also responsible for mergers and acquisitions, the private equity business, the LaSalle trust and custody business, investor relations and the bank’s strategic partnership and investment in China Construction Bank. Previously, he served as a portfolio manager at investment advisor Maverick Capital. Prior to Maverick, Lyons worked in the investment banking division of Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch where he focused on financial institutions.

Lyons is a national trustee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and currently serves on the investment committee. He is the board chair for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, and a member of the board of directors of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Lyons is a member of the management committee of Early Warning Services, LLC.

Lyons graduated from the University of Pennsylvania magna cum laude in 1993.

To commandeer the helm of institutional banking and asset management services at one of the largest corporations in the nation requires patience and focus - attributes which Mike Lyons finds himself utilizing in his daily operations at PNC Financial Services. His mission is both concrete and complex: “We have a strategy to be the top relationship-based provider of traditional banking with every release that comes out, every employee meeting we have, every business meeting we have, every announcement we make.” When tackling these multifarious objectives, Lyons draws upon his experiences in strategic development at Bank of America, especially his close collaboration with CEO Brian Moynihan. “He was great in identifying a plan,” said Lyons. “Not everybody initially agreed, and we worked through some difficult times, but by being consistent in the strategy, and being fair to the employees, people were inspired by that strategy and got engaged.” Lyons strives to emulate a similar kind of leadership within his own division, and he believes that part of his managerial role involves being a source of motivation for his coworkers. “You have to be clear in what you are doing and have a lot of faith, said Lyons. “Get the employees to buy into that and be something that they’re attracted to so that when they come into work, it doesn’t feel like work but like something they’re executing.”

One of the critical assets for Lyons to assess is his own time budget. The optimal route to maximize utility in this sector is to have a priority list in which one notes both what matters most and what matters least. In the investor’s world, perfection tends to fall on the lower end of this list because accuracy relies on heuristics. With the state of the market constantly in flux, it is essential to make educated judgment calls without hesitation. “Every day we are moving capital, so you need the right information when going into decisions,” said Lyons. Nor is there time to worry about decisions once they are made, even if they aren’t always right. “In the investment world, you are wrong a lot. The best investors are wrong a lot,” said Lyons. “We’ve made a thousand mistakes, and that doesn’t happen just in the investment world; it also happens in the corporate world.” Lyons believes that making mistakes is not only acceptable but a necessary experience when adapting to the fast-paced dynamics of the financial world. “We need to take some of the stress out of decisions and being wrong.” 

A huge part of finding the right investments is determining how consistent they are with company values. Sustainability is rising up the ranks on PNC’s priority list. This may come as a shock for most, since the state of the environment is seldom regarded as a significant interest for banking institutions. However, Lyons believes that an investment in the environment deserves a place on the balance sheet. When distributing loans, Lyons conducts a pre-screen to assess the environmental impact of the borrower’s project to ensure that they align with PNC’s commitment to lowering its consumption of natural resources. “As a company, we’ve announced emissions reduction standards, we’ve announced water reduction usage, electricity usage, power usage standards,” said Lyons. “We have a corporate and social responsibility scorecard in which we publicly state our goals and assess how we’re doing against those every year.” As part of its push to encourage the transition to a low-carbon economy, PNC released its inaugural Green Bond in November 2019, a comprehensive public report detailing its progress in cutting down on paper use, electricity use, etc. Lyons considers this level of transparency to be an essential component of the bank’s materiality analysis and hopes that PNC’s leadership in this initiative will help shift the industry as a whole towards a sustainable future. “We’ve come a long way in the last five years focusing on this; it’s a really important topic, and we’re working with all our constituents, including some very prominent environmental shareholders, to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”