Mayo A. SHATTUCK III

Chairman, President, and CEO of Constellation Energy Group

I was President of Alex. Brown & Sons, the oldest independent investment bank in the country before it was sold to Bankers Trust in 1997. A principle had guided the firm for almost two centuries, and it was: “Customer first, firm second, individual interests third.” This simple statement was the abridged version of a 1909 quote from John C. Brown, one of the founder’s descendants:

I would like to leave with those who are to follow . . . a sense of commercial honor, an absolute fairness in all dealings, a willingness to suffer pecuniary loss if need be, rather than to tarnish by one unworthy act the good name of the Firm.

At Alex. Brown, we asked all employees to literally sign a value statement that included this principle. Throughout the years, I witnessed and participated in hundreds of discussions that fell back to this core value statement. It guided us through some difficult and many prosperous years. Besides protecting the firm’s reputation and its relations with its customers, it also had the effect of fostering teamwork and the idea that no one individual was bigger than the firm.

As we forge ahead in the twenty-first century, it’s particularly interesting that the values set two centuries ago—a focus on clients’ needs, uncompromising integrity, and a commitment to quality and excellence—are still the fundamental foundation to success in business.

Customer first, firm second, individual interests third