RBS to subsume ABN Amro wholesale brand

Royal Bank of Scotland, which teamed up with Benelux bancassurer Fortis and Spain’s Santander to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro for €70 billion in October, will do away with the ABN Amro brand in the wholesale banking arena. The merged division will be run in Asia-Pacific by RBS' current Asia head of global banking and markets (GBM), John McCormick.

RBS' London-based global banking and markets chief, Brian Crowe, unveiled ‘level 1’ appointments in an internal memo on December 7. He stressed that this represented the “future senior executive team” of a business that will be created subject to regulatory approval from the UK’s chief financial regulator, the Financial Service Authority, and its Dutch equivalent, De Nederlandsche Bank.

Leith Robertson will be deputy chief executive and Wilco Jiskoot, formerly a top wholesale banker at ABN Amro, will become deputy chairman of RBS GBM – but it is unclear when he will assume this role or for how long.

Symon Drake-Brockman will run global debt markets and relocate to the US in January as co-head of the business in the Americas with Jay Levine, the chief of Greenwich Capital, which RBS acquired when it bought Natwest Bank in 2000, who is expected to retire in March.

Frank McKirgan is one of few ABN Amro executives to head up a business unit at the combined entity. He will run equities on a global basis. RBS’ Peter Nielson was named head of currencies, commodities, rates and local markets, and Brian Stevenson will head global transaction banking.

Howard Burnside will run risk management at a global level, while Chris Kyle becomes chief financial officer, with David Shalders as chief operating officer and Steve Daniels running human resources. All four worked previously for RBS.

Meanwhile, Anthony Yuen was promoted to head of Asia-Pacific for corporate banking and financial markets. He previously held the position of managing director and treasurer for RBS Financial Markets, Asia.

Yuen will continue to report to Crowe, who is also group treasurer.