Richard Vague

Vague started his business career in banking at American National Bank (later renamed MBank Austin) as chief marketing officer.[7] In 1985, Vague was president of Mpact Brokers, a discount brokerage subsidiary of MCorp Bank.[10] In 1987 he was named president and CEO of MBank USA, a credit-card bank subsidiary of Lomas & Nettleton Financial Corporation.[11] In 1989 as president of Wilmington, Delaware based credit card bank Lomas Bank USA, he and fellow MBank executive John Tolleson orchestrated the sale of Lomas' retail banking and credit card divisions to Merrill Lynch[7] for $435 million in cash and $65 million in preferred stock.[12] After the acquisition, Lomas Bank USA was renamed First USA Bank.[13] In 1990, Vague was named president of bank card company First USA Holdings.[14] In 1996, Vague and five other First USA executives sold off over 200,000 of their shares in the company.[15] Bank One acquired First USA in 1997, then the fourth largest credit card issuer in the US, for $6.65 billion in stock.[16] In June 1999, Vague and fellow Bank One executive James Stewart launched Wingspan Bank as an online banking division of Bank One.[17] By October 1999, Vague resigned as head of Bank One's credit card operations[18] after the credit card unit under-performed, which had impacted the bank's expected earnings by 15%.[19]

In 2000, Vague and former Bank One executive James Stewart founded Juniper Bank. Juniper Bank became Barclaycard US when it was acquired by Barclays in 2004.[20]

In 2007, Vague and Kevin Kleinschmidt, a former Barclaycard US executive, founded Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas supply company.[21] Energy Plus was acquired by NRG Energy in 2011 for $190 million.[1]

In 2010, he founded venture capital firm Gabriel Investments.[22]