London - Standard Chartered PLC named Bill Winters to replace Peter Sands as Chief Executive Officer as the bank seeks to reverse faltering earnings growth. Shares surged.
Winters, 53, a former co-chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Company’s investment bank, will join the group in May, before taking over as CEO a month later, in London, Standard Chartered said in a statement on Thursday. Chairman John Peace plans to step down from the board next year.
Sands, 53, has come under pressure from investors after Standard Chartered’s share price plummeted in the past two years following a series of scandals including sanctions violations. The bank, which makes about three-quarters of its earnings in Asia, has been closing businesses and cutting jobs after a drop in earnings in 2013 ended more than a decade of growth.
“Bill is globally respected banker” and has the “right experience, skills to drive group’s new phase of growth”, Peace said in the statement. ‘‘He brings substantial financial experience from leading successful global business, exceptional understanding of global regulatory, conduct environment.”
The shares jumped 3.1 percent to 955.20 pence at 8.26am in London. They have decreased about 0.8 percent this year.
Winters, who currently runs Renshaw Bay, an asset management firm in London, will receive a base salary of 1.15 million pounds ($1.8 million), according to the statement.
In the management reshuffle, Jaspal Bindra, 54, group executive director and CEO Asia, will also step down from the board at the end of April and leave the company “shortly thereafter” after 16 years, according to the statement. The three longest-serving independent non-executive directors will also step down from the board, with the bank planning to cut the board’s size to 14 directors “in due course”.
Sands was the longest-serving UK bank CEO, steering the London-based lender through the 2008 financial crisis without government support. The former partner of management consulting firm McKinsey & Company joined Standard Chartered in 2002 as finance director, succeeding Mervyn Davies as CEO in 2006.
Under his tenure, total assets at the bank, which focuses on Asia, the Middle East and Africa, increased to $690 billion in June from $266 billion in December 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg