PROVIDENCE – Lawrence K. “Larry” Fish has severed his last tie with Citizens Financial Group Inc., Michael D. Jones, vice president and director of New England media relations for Citizens Bank, told Providence Business News today. Taking over as chairman will be Ellen Alemany, 53, the CEO of both Citizens Financial and RBS Americas.
Fish, now 64, had served as chief executive at Citizens Financial for 15 years – growing the company from the fifth largest bank in Rhode Island to the eighth largest commercial bank in the nation – before giving up the post in March 2007 to become chairman of the bank’s new parent company, RBS Americas. (READ MORE) At the time, he credited the bank’s growth to “the combination of our locally based management team and the global strength” of Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc.
Although he was succeeded as CEO by protégé Stephen D. Steinour – who then also was president of Citizens Financial – Fish continued to serve as both Citizens’ chairman and a member of the board of the Edinburgh-based RBS Group. In December of that year, however, he gave up his posts with RBS Americas and the RBS Group, and his active role in company operations, continuing only as non-executive chairman of Citizens Financial Group.
Fish is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Advisory Committee On Economic Inclusion (ComE-IN), to which he was named in 2006. (READ MORE)
A 1966 graduate of Drake University, he received an MBA in 1968 from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration, where he was awarded a Frank Knox Fellowship that included travel in India and graduate studies at the London School of Economics. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Drake, Bryant University, Johnson & Wales University, Providence College, Roger Williams University and the University of Massachusetts.
In accepting the chairmanship of RBS Americas in 2007, Fish had said “this new structure will enable our customers, shareholders, colleagues and communities to reap even greater benefits from the combined strengths of our businesses in the United States.”
His retirement comes as RBS Group is beginning a new restructuring as it struggles to stem record losses. The plan, aimed at achieving annual savings of 16 percent by 2011, will include “re-engineering and other measures – and, regrettably, reductions in employment,” RBS Group CEO Stephen Hester said last week in the Edinburgh-based parent company’s annual report. (READ MORE) For Providence-based Citizens, the restructuring will mean exiting “most activities outside [its] core footprint,” and restructuring expenses “to reinvest in the core franchise,” the bank said.
“What Stephen Hester said was that Citizens will be retained,” Jones, the company spokesman in Providence, stressed in a telephone interview today. Plans for the bank also include substantial new investments in technology, he said, although further details are not yet available.
“There is much work to do,” Hester said today, in a statement introducing Alemany as the new chairman of Citizens Financial.
Alemany – a longtime Citigroup executive who had risen to CEO for Global Transaction Services at the Charlotte, N.C.-based company – received her MBA from Fordham University in 1980.
She joined RBS/Citizens in June 2007 as the first CEO of the RBS Americas division. And last March, when Steinour stepped down from Citizens Financial and commercial banking veteran James G. Connolly was named to serve as the company’s president, she became CEO of Citizens Financial as well. (READ MORE)
Alemany also serves as a member of the Federal Advisory Council, consulting with and advising the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors; and a member of the boards of directors of the Financial Services Roundtable and The Clearing House Payments Co. Last year, she was honored as one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking by US Banker magazine, and as No. 26 on the Forbes magazine’s annual list of the 100 Most Powerful Women.
“Since joining us in 2007, Ellen has ensured a seamless transition both in leading Citizens and looking after our franchise in the Americas,” Hester said, adding: “I wish Ellen and her team every success in moving Citizens forward and serving its customers well.”
Citizens Financial Group Inc. – a division of the Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc. (London Stock Exchange: RBS.L; NYSE: RBS) – is a commercial bank holding company founded in Providence in 1828. It has $161 billion in assets and about 24,300 employees at 1,618 Citizens Bank and Charter One branches in 13 states plus non-branch offices in about 40 states, most of which Citizens Financial operates through its RBS Citizens NA subsidiary. Additional information is available at CitizensBank.com or www.rbs.com.
For Leaders Who Don't Have Time to Get Sick
Top performers guard their calendars, delegate relentlessly and optimize every hour of the day. Health,…
Learn More
