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too, couching the ideas in novels so compelling that they are still best sellers more than half a century since they were written. Yet as much as Rand and her ideas are admired by her readers, at the same time they are reviled by critics on both the political left and the political right who accuse her of advocating “greed” and “selfishness.”
    Those objections don’t seem to come up when Allison talks about Rand’s ideas in the BB&T philosophy. Maybe it’s his unpretentious North Carolina accent, his boyish wavy hair, the ever-present smile on his face, or his tendency to laugh as he speaks (he resembles a more slender David Letterman).
    Or maybe it’s that Allison exudes leadership. Meet this man, and you’ll wish he’d offer you a job—because you know instantly that he’s someone you’d love working for. It’s because he believes so utterly in his philosophy, because there is no internal doubt—because, like John Galt, his is a “face without pain or fear or guilt.”
    What is it like to have a philosopher for a CEO? Edward D. Vest, who rose up through the ranks to become BB&T’s chief financial officer, speaks of Allison more as a life coach than a boss. “He teaches you how to think. He teaches you the importance of purpose. Once you find that purpose, you almost get this magnificent obsession of going for something with everything you’ve got, and never letting a second go by, wasting it through evasion, through laziness, through avoiding what you know to be true. So it’s been liberating.”
    At first the BB&T philosophy doesn’t look all that different than the usual corporate pabulum. The stated vision is “To Create the Best Financial Institution Possible.” 2 The mission is “To make the world a better place to live.”
    But then we get to the bank’s purpose, and that’s when things start to get interesting. It was “purpose” that first attracted Allison to Rand—what he finds living is all about.
    Our ultimate purpose is to create superior long-term economic rewards for our shareholders.
    This purpose is defined by the free market and is as it should be. Our shareholders provide the capital that is necessary to make our business possible. They take the risk if the business is unsuccessful. They have the right to receive economic rewards for the risk which they have undertaken.
    A Randian creed, indeed—it brings to mind some of the more flamboyant statements by Francisco d’Anconia, the noble and eloquent defender of capitalism in Atlas Shrugged . He said that “the most depraved type of human being” is the “man without a purpose.” And he said that “I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all—that I was a man who made money.”
    For critics of Rand, such statements supposedly argue for greed and selfishness. For her admirers like Allison, they are the enshrinement of the honorable matter of earning one’s living with one’s own productive work.
    For Allison, all companies exist to make money for their shareholders, though most pretend there’s some other more altruistic purpose. That’s a fundamental hypocrisy that undermines a business’s relationships with its employees. Allison says, “If you throw in a value system that has some kind of altruism, which most businesses do, then people know you’re not serious, because . . . you’re not treated that way, and you can’t be treated that way.”
    A typical altruistic purpose is to claim, necessarily falsely, that the business is all about serving clients—as though shareholder profits were to be sacrificed to make customers happy. BB&T turns this on its head in the statement of purpose, saying that client satisfaction is an essential means to the end of shareholder wealth creation.
    . . . our purpose, to create superior long-term economic