Visa Names JPMorgan\'s Scharf as New Chief

Visa on Wednesday named Charles W. Scharf, a former head of JPMorgan Chase‘s vast retail arm, as its new chief executive, as the credit card giant's current leader prepares for retirement next year.

Mr. Scharf will start in his new position on Nov. 1 and take a seat on the board, while the current chief executive, Joseph W. Saunders, will become executive chairman until he retires on March 31.

The departure of Mr. Saunders, who led Visa's journey into life as a publicly traded concern, had long been expected. Upon his departure, the company will appoint a new independent chairman.

Mr. Scharf is no stranger to Visa. JPMorgan is one of the biggest partners to the payments company, and Mr. Scharf sat on Visa's board from 2007 through last year.

“The payments industry is an exciting place to be with both the continued migration across the globe to electronic payments and the development of ground-breaking new technologies, and Visa plays an importan t role in enabling both,” Mr. Scharf said in a statement. “The management team Joe has led has made Visa into the industry leader and I am excited to build on that momentum in an evolving and dynamic market.”

The move will give Mr. Scharf his most prominent post since last year, when he stepped down as the head of JPMorgan's retail division. That position was subsequently divided among a number of executives, and Mr. Scharf was transferred to One Equity Partners, an internal private equity division.

That represented something of a comedown for Mr. Scharf, who had once been seen as a potential successor to JPMorgan's chief executive, Jamie Dimon. Mr. Scharf began his career as an assistant to Mr. Dimon, working for him through the succession of deals that eventually created Citigroup.

When his boss was ousted from Citi and wound up at Chicago's Bank One, Mr. Scharf followed, turning around the regional bank's once-troubled retail operations. When JPMor gan bought the firm in 2004, he assumed the same role, dramatically expanding his retail empire in part through acquisitions like that of Washington Mutual during the financial crisis.

Since then, however, JPMorgan's retail arm has had to grapple with a number of legal headaches that have weighed down on the firm's results. While Mr. Dimon has said that the reassignment was not related to the bank's mortgage problems, he joked to DealBook last year that his former protégé “is looking forward to not working for me.”