John Mack is a legend on Wall Street. He worked his way up through the ranks of Morgan Stanley and became CEO in 2005. He was at the helm during the financial crisis and managed to bring his company through relatively intact.
Whether or not Mack did a good job during his tenure as CEO of Morgan Stanley is up for debate but clearly he is someone who knows the financial services industry intimately. And he has decided that p2p lending has a significant role to play in that industry.
Earlier this week Lending Club gave me a heads up about this big news they released this morning. John Mack is joining the Lending Club board of directors. Here is what he had to say about this (quoting from the press release):
“Lending Club has created an innovative platform that provides investors with low-cost access to high-quality consumer credit assets, and at the same time makes credit more affordable to consumers,” said Mack. “This is a winning combination and I am truly excited to serve on the company’s board.”
This can only be viewed as a positive for Lending Club and p2p lending in general. It is already getting a great deal of coverage in the mainstream press. The San Francisco Business Times reports that John Mack is an investor (not of the venture capital kind – an investor in the loans) in Lending Club. The Wall Street Journal elaborates on that investment – Mack has invested in both private funds of LC Advisors. Bloomberg and the Financial Times in the UK have also covered this story.
To the average investor this news is of merely passing interest. But what it will do is get the attention of the high net worth individuals and the institutional investors. If someone was on the fence about Lending Club, seeing John Mack’s vote of confidence in the company can only help influence their decision to invest. So, I don’t think Lending Club will be short of investor money any time soon.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.