NAB’s Phil Chronican has reached back to his Westpac days to appoint Rob Coombe as chair of the soon-to-be-separated MLC wealth management arm.
Coombe will join former Westpac BT colleague Geoff Lloyd, who is running MLC after his stint as boss of Perpetual for six years until 2018.
Another BT alumni, Jason Yetton, has recently rejoined Westpac from Commonwealth Bank to run its specialist businesses, which includes its wealth management operations.
It’s a small world in Australian banking, it seems, even as both Westpac and NAB are on the hunt for new executives.
At Westpac Curt Zuber is filling in for now as a replacement for Lyn Cobley, who resigned last week as head of institutional banking.
Zuber is not aiming to stay in the job for a long time but is holding the can to help chief Peter King until a replacement can be found for Cobley.
Zuber is likely to replaced when he departs by long-term deputy Jo Dawson.
Westpac’s King is also looking for a new head of retail to replace David Lindberg who is off to Royal Bank of Scotland, and technology chief Craig Bright, who is off to Barclays.
NAB is also looking for a new business boss to replace Anthony Healy, and a new UBank boss.
NAB chair Phil Chronican left Westpac not long after Gail Kelly started as boss in 2008 and joined ANZ as head of retail.
Coombe, who after running BT was retail boss at Westpac, also left in Kelly’s reign.
Chronican and Coombe are now together again at NAB, with Coombe’s appointment to MLC Wealth the next step towards its separation from the big bank.
Coombe had some time working as boss of the private equity-controlled Craveable Brands, which includes the Red Rooster chicken brand.
Another to return to where he almost started is Julian Peck, who will shortly join APA as strategy boss.
Peck is currently the point person for Morgan Stanley advising Deloitte’s Vaughan Strawbridge as administrator of Virgin Australia.
He doesn’t start at APA until September so can stay at Virgin until the sale of the airline is done. He worked as an executive at AGL before joining Morgan Stanley.
Peck will replace Ross Gersbach who now heads APA’s strategy team as the company looks for pipeline deals.
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