As investment bank Bear Stearns imploded in March, Bob Steel was among the financial titans making an unappetizing choice: Let the company's demise possibly unravel the global financial system or engineer a rescue sure to be labeled a bailout.

From his New York hotel room, Steel, then a top U.S. Treasury Department official, dialed in to a 5 a.m. conference call where he, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the New York Federal Reserve Bank president and others finalized steps to prop up Bear Stearns. Later that day, it was Steel's job to brief President Bush.

It was a memorable moment, Steel acknowledged: "I didn't talk to the president every day."

Named Wachovia's new chief executive last week, the 56-year-old will need these crisis-management skills if he is to restore the tarnished bank.

"He thrives under adversity," said Paulson, who met Steel at Goldman Sachs when they both worked there. "I watched him at Goldman Sachs when we went through tough times. I watched him deal with others on the team, people inside and outside. He is cool under fire. He is measured. He knows how to pace himself, how to motivate others around him."

His resume isn't spotless. As chairman of Duke's board of trustees, he has faced criticism for the university's handling of the lacrosse scandal that rocked the campus for a year. Analysts also have questioned his lack of experience in retail banking, an area that provides 70 percent of Wachovia's profits.

But by many accounts, the Durham native stands out for his intellect, work ethic and people skills.

Steel can help fashion a new blueprint for regulating Wall Street as well as lead a search for a new university president. Instead of moving ahead on his own, he taps the opinions of everyone from receptionists to senior executives. He sends e-mail messages to co-workers stamped in the wee hours of the morning but finds time to tend to a sick mother. His well-worn witticisms are peppered with self-deprecating lines about his wife being the boss. And when an analyst poses an uncomfortable question, he courteously praises the query but begs off answering.

Now Wachovia, the nation's No. 4 bank by assets, needs Steel to revive a company reeling from loan losses that are overwhelming a valuable retail banking franchise. It's a mission that the entire banking industry will watch closely, especially in Charlotte, where the bank has its headquarters and employs 21,000. Wachovia also has 2,300 employees in the 13 counties it considers its Triangle region.

Steel, who made an energetic debut Thursday with employees, analysts and reporters, said he will take the tack that he has used during crises at Goldman Sachs and at the Treasury: Identify the problem, gather multiple perspectives, select the best solution offered and drive hard.

"There isn't always a perfect or easiest alternative," he says. "There is the best alternative on offer."

A Durham childhood

The new boss of 120,000 Wachovia employees from Connecticut to California grew up in a traditional middle-class neighborhood a short walk from the Duke University East Campus.

In Steel's early childhood, his father had a jukebox service route, but that business went belly up. Later, he sold life insurance. Steel's mother, now 86, worked part time in a Duke psychiatry lab.

There are three Steel boys -- Robert in the middle; Charles, six years his senior; and John, eight years his junior. The Steels' driveway, with its basketball goal, often was where the neighborhood children gathered.

Steel attended Duke, his parents' alma mater, but he showed little sign he would become the financier he is today.

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