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Richard Fairbank knows where you live. He knows the stores you shop at, the restaurants you frequent, and the last credit card purchase you made. Understanding how people spend money - and how much they spend - is part of Fairbank's job as chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial Corp., one of the country's top-10 issuers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Ever opened the mail to find a card issuer promising a pre-approved credit line, a teasingly low annual interest rate, and the convenient transfer of balances from higher-cost cards? Under Fairbank, Capital One pioneered this now entrenched marketing trend.

Fairbank, a tall, athletic-looking 46-year-old, is the son of a physics professor and keenly aware that properties are in constant motion. Overlay that with his prior incarnation as a marketing consultant and the roots of Capital One's intense development methodology become clearer. Capital One is Fairbank's laboratory, where new ideas are constantly in various stages of conceptualization, testing, and implementation.

Being an innovator has its privileges. When introduced in the early 1990s, balance transfer foisted competition on a high-growth, high-margin business and snared Capital One many credit-worthy customers. Since its former parent, Virginia's Signet Banking Corp., took it public in 1994, the Falls Church, VA-based company has had 20 percent-plus annual gains in earnings-per-share and return on equity.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:03 AM