104 | theceomagazine.com
AGAIN
Latitude Financial Services CEO Sean Morrissey proves
that rebranding is more than just increasing awareness
and changing perceptions.WORDS ADRIAN FLORES • IMAGES ELIZABETH BULLA
lec Baldwin features in this Aussie financial services story.
But for a change, the actor currently renowned for his
Donald Trump impersonations is not the star of this show.
More on that later. This story is really about Latitude
Financial Services CEO Sean Morrissey, who was given
the task of guiding the company through one of the biggest
transactions in Australian history.
In November 2015, GE Capital sold its Australian and New Zealand
consumer lending arm to a consortium consisting of KKR, Värde and
Deutsche Bank. Following the transaction, Sean was headhunted for the
CEO position of the consumer lending arm as it began settling into its new
identity as Latitude Financial Services. “The funny thing is that I was with
GE for approximately 16 years,” he says. “Then they came and asked me to
run an old GE business.”
When Latitude legally separated from GE, Sean says, it hadn’t totally
separated physically. Over the course of nearly two years, it had to take over
more than 80 key services from GE, including major HR and finance systems
right down to email and telephone systems. Sean highlights the work of its »Making
FINANCE
relatable
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