Former RBC Finance Chief Nadine Ahn gets new job; Citi banking head Raghavan shakes up team

Former RBC exec Ahn gets new job; Citi's Raghavan shakes up team

October 11, 2024 11:53 AM

In this week's banking news roundup: fired Finance Chief Nadine Ahn is hired by Canaccord Genuity; Citi banking head Vis Raghavan makes moves in hunt for profit; 2024 marks 18th credit union-bank merger; Warren Buffett cuts Bank of America stake below 10%; and more.

Fired RBC Finance Chief Nadine Ahn hired by Canaccord Genuity

Canaccord Genuity Group hired former Royal Bank of Canada executive Nadine Ahn as deputy chief financial officer, with plans to move her into the CFO role next year.

Ahn, who was fired as Royal Bank's CFO in April, will take over from Canaccord's current finance chief, Don MacFayden, after a transition period, the Canadian investment firm said in a statement Wednesday. MacFayden will continue in a leadership capacity within Canaccord's U.S. capital-markets business.

"She's incredibly experienced and fits like a glove inside this organization," Canaccord Chief Executive Officer Dan Daviau said of Ahn in an interview. "We've done an immense amount of diligence on her."

Ahn, one of the most prominent female executives on Bay Street, with 25 years of experience at Royal Bank, is suing her former employer for wrongful dismissal after she was sacked over an undisclosed personal relationship with a colleague.

Ahn denied that her friendship with Ken Mason, a former employee in Royal Bank's treasury department, was romantic, and the bank said it conducted an investigation through outside legal counsel that uncovered email and text correspondence showing it was an intimate relationship and that Ahn breached her obligations as CFO. —Christine Dobby, Bloomberg News

Citi banking head Raghavan shakes up team in hunt for profit

Citigroup established a new banking executive team to oversee its commercial and investment banking work under new head Vis Raghavan.

Raghavan, who joined Citi this year from JPMorgan Chase, promoted John Chirico to co-head of corporate banking alongside its current chief, Jason Rekate, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg.

Jens Welter, the head of investment banking for the U.K., Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is moving to New York to take responsibility for North American investment banking coverage, replacing Chirico. Nacho Gutierrez will take Welter's place.

Citi's banking unit has underperformed peers in recent years, and Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser brought on Raghavan to help lift returns at the Wall Street bank. The dealmaker, who has a reputation for tough talk and an obsession with league tables, spent more than two decades at JPMorgan, where he co-led investment banking. —Todd Gillespie, Bloomberg News

Another Washington credit union to acquire a community bank

HAPO Community Credit Union in Richland, Washington, agreed to acquire in-state banking peer Community First Bank in Kennewick. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2025.

The deal marked the 18th of 2024 involving a credit union buying a bank. That extended a record set earlier in October. Before this year, the most credit union-bank deals in a year was 16 in 2022. HAPO's planned acquisition also marked the fifth of these deals involving a bank based in Washington.

The $2.4 billion-asset HAPO said that, after it absorbs the $632 million-asset Community First, it would have $2.5 billion of deposits, $2.2 billion of loans and more than 220,000 members. —Jim Dobbs

Buffett cuts Bank of America stake below 10%

Warren Buffett can take his time to reveal trades in Bank of America stock now that his conglomerate's stake has been trimmed below a 10% regulatory threshold requiring rapid disclosure.

A selling spree that began in mid-July has helped Berkshire Hathaway reap about $10.5 billion from its years-long investment in the bank, whittling down the holding to 9.99% of the lender's outstanding shares.

Through 15 rounds of disposals, U.S. rules have required Buffett to disclose trades within a few days. But a regulatory filing Thursday showed the stake is now small enough that Buffett may provide updates quarterly — potentially leaving fellow shareholders in the dark for months if he sells further.

Buffett, 94, hasn't commented on why he's pulling back from the investment. —Katherine Doherty, Bloomberg News

BlackRock hits $11.5 trillion of assets as private markets grow

BlackRock pulled in $160 billion of client cash to its long-term investment funds last quarter, pushing the world's largest money manager to a record $11.5 trillion of assets as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for stocks, bonds and private assets.

Investors added $97 billion to exchange-traded funds and $63 billion to fixed-income overall in the third quarter, New York-based BlackRock said Friday, a total that topped the $100 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. BlackRock has pulled in $360 billion of total net inflows this year, surpassing the net flows of 2022 and 2023.

After the third quarter ended, the firm completed its acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners, adding $116 billion of private market assets.

BlackRock is in the process of closing a $3.3 billion deal to buy private-markets data firm Preqin and is exploring a purchase of private credit firm HPS Investment Partners. —Silla Brush, Bloomberg News