People moves: Citi Europe CRO to head crisis management; HSBC Global Asset Management hires strategy head; and more

Citi has announced a raft of changes among senior management. It has promoted its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) chief risk officer, Colin Church, who will now serve as global head of crisis risk management and climate risk. According to an internal release from David Livingstone, Citi’s EMEA chief executive officer, Church will be responsible for a firm-wide climate risk strategy.

Livingstone adds that Church was selected for the position after having “led Citi through several crisis management events” such as the Arab Spring and the eurozone debt crisis. Church will report to Brad Hu, global CRO.

Zdenek Turek replaces Church as EMEA CRO, effective immediately. His last role was as head of Citi’s Europe cluster, and he also served as CEO of Citibank Europe, Citigroup’s European lending arm. Turek has also worked as Citi’s chief commercial officer for Romania, head of Africa, and CEO for central and Eastern Europe. He’ll be based in London, also reporting to Hu.

The head of the Europe cluster role is being filled by Kristine Braden, effective immediately. Braden will also become CEO of Citigroup Global Markets Europe, following regulatory assent. She has previously worked as CCO and head of corporate and investment for Citi’s Swiss operations, as European head of the global subsidiaries group, and as global banking head for the Philippines. Braden will be based in Frankfurt and report to Livingstone, and will join Citi’s EMEA operating committee.

Stefan Hafke will become interim chief country oficer for Germany, on top of serving as head of corporate banking for Germany and Austria. He steps in following the promotion of Stefan Wintels, who has been made co-head of the global financial institutions group within the firm’s banking, capital markets and advisory arm. Citigroup is currently selecting a permanent successor to Wintels.

Cecilia Ronan is taking over Turek’s former role of CEO of Citibank Europe following regulatory and board approval. She will continue in her current role as CCO for Ireland, now reporting to Braden. As CEO of Citibank Europe, she will report to Livingstone.

UK high street lender Metro Bank is off to a difficult start in its search for a new chief risk officer. In February, Aileen Gillan, Metro Bank’s current CRO, announced her intention to leave the firm by the end of that month. This hasn’t happened, however, due to problems with her interim replacement.

Grahame McGirr – who was set to start work as interim CRO on March 1 – has been asked to leave, the bank says. As a result, Gillan has been asked to stay on as CRO until the end of March. Metro Bank is now seeking an interim CRO and a permanent replacement for Gillan simultaneously. According to a Metro Bank spokesperson, McGirr’s appointment “didn’t work out”; Gillan, the spokesperson added, will also be “available” beyond the end of the month if an interim hasn’t been confirmed by that point.

Mark Yunfeng Wang is set to become HSBC’s new chief executive officer for China. Wang, currently head of global banking and markets for China, will replace current CEO David Liao following regulatory approval. The latter, according a statement made by the bank, will be taking up another “senior position” at HSBC with a formal announcement forthcoming. Wang, who will report to Asia Pacific chief executive Peter Wong, has worked for the firm since 2005; he became head of global banking and markets for China in 2016. Before joining HSBC, he held positions at Bank of China and Deutsche Bank.

HSBC Global Asset Management, the investment management arm of HSBC Group, has appointed Stuart White as global head of strategy and UK and international CEO. The UK CEO element of his expanded role is subject to regulatory assent. Former UK CEO Andy Clark has left the business to pursue other opportunities, according to the bank.

White’s promotion follows five years of service as head of strategy, a role he assumed in September 2015; now, he’ll be responsible for the business’s entities in the UK, Turkey and other territories. He will also have oversight of asset management in Saudi Arabia. White joined HSBC Global AM in 2010; prior to that, he held roles at Threadneedle Asset Management and Insight Investment. He will continue to report to Nicolas Moreau, global CEO, and remains based in London.

On top of White’s appointment, HSBC Global Asset Management has made a number of personnel changes this month. Reorganisations in the firm’s global investments team include the promotion of Vis Nayar, who is set to assume a new combined role of European and UK chief information officer following regulatory approval. Nayar will be responsible for the UK as a whole, as well as having oversight of the European investment teams; the national CIOs of Europe will report to him.

Nayar’s most recent role, in which he served for five years, was deputy equity CIO and head of systematic equities. He has also worked for a number of HSBC’s businesses throughout his career, including HSBC Markets and HSBC Alternative Investments, as well as holding positions at BNP Paribas and KPMG. He will now report to White and Joanna Munro, global CIO.

Guillame Rabault – at present CIO for France – will become quant equity CIO, taking over from Nayar on the systematic equities front according to a company release. He will remain responsible for investment process research in his new position. Like Nayar, he’ll report to Joanna Munro.

Current multi-asset co-CIO Joseph Little will become global chief strategist, focusing on investment strategy and leading the business’s macro and strategy team. The other multi-asset co-CIO, Jean-Charles Bertrand, will become sole multi-asset CIO. Little has previously worked for JP Morgan Cazenove, a former joint venture of JP Morgan and the UK investment bank; Bertrand has worked for HSBC since 1993. They will both report to Joanna Munro.

Ian Barnett will assume the newly created role of head of CIO office, in which he will oversee the investment process across HSBC Global Asset Management’s various operating areas. His latest position was head of global portfolio analytics and design. He has previously worked for Deutsche Asset Management, Neuberger Berman and JP Morgan. He will also report to Joanna Munro.

Melissa McDonald will become head of responsible investment. She currently serves as global head of product equities and responsible investment. Her new role involves joining the global investments team; she will work on policy and partnerships in the area. She has previous held positions at AXA Investment Managers and ABN Amro Asset Management. She will also report to Joanna Munro.

Veronica Lazenby has joined Jupiter Asset Management as chief risk officer. She reports to chief executive officer Andrew Formica and is based in London. Prior to her new role, Lazenby was chief risk officer for UK legal entities at BNY Mellon. She also held senior op risk positions at Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Financial services firm IHS Markit has made Brett Schechterman, a former head of fixed income at UBS, global head of its investment management platform. He reports to Andrew Eisen, senior vice-president and head of solutions. Schechterman, who has also worked for Legal & General Investment Management and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is based in Chicago. 

John Porter has been appointed strategic adviser at US futures brokerage and clearer RJ O’Brien. His new role will involve giving talks on macroeconomics at RJ O’Brien’s conferences and he will also join the firm’s investment committee.

Porter has previously served as head of fixed income and structured finance at AXA Investment Managers and as global head of portfolio and liquidity management at Barclays. Before that, he was a senior economist and chief investment officer at the World Bank. Porter now reports to Dan Staniford, RJ O’Brien’s chief sales officer. Once travel restrictions spurred by Covid-19 are lifted, Porter will split his time working between London, Paris and New York.

Collateral management firm CloudMargin has announced the hiring of a new head of client services. Miriam Marascio assumed the post in mid-March. Her position involves responsibility for client care, including onboarding and relationship management. Before joining CloudMargin, Marascio worked in a number of client services roles over a13-year career at Clearstream Banking, a provider of post-trade processing services owned by the Deutsche Börse group. She reports to CloudMargin’s CEO Stuart Connolly.

The European Central Bank has appointed Fernando Monar Lora as director of risk management – a promotion from his current position as head of the risk analysis division in the ECB’s directorate risk management (D-RM). He’ll begin work on April 1.

Monar Lora takes over the director position from Carlos Bernadell, who is now adviser to the ECB executive board. Monar Lora has served as head of the risk analysis division in the D-RM since 2016, in which role he chaired the risk management committee. Previously, he worked in market operations for Banco de Espana, Spain’s national central bank and regulatory supervisor.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed Kathleen Hutchinson as deputy director in the Commission’s Office of International Affairs (OIA). She will oversee the Office’s work, which involves advising the Commission at large on matters of cross-border regulation, enforcement and supervision as well as organising the SEC’s interactions with authorities outside of the US. The OIA also provides technical assistance to the SEC’s foreign counterparts.

Hutchinson is promoted from inside the OIA, where she most recently served as an assistance director in the Office’s regulatory policy group. She began her work at the SEC in 2003, following a legal career. She will now report to Raquel Fox, the OIA’s director, and is based in Washington DC.