Family Office
City National appoints new wealth-business head
Former Wachovia executive fills breach left open when Byrd left
last year. Richard Gershen, former head of business management
and strategy for Wachovia's Evergreen Investments and a
three-decade veteran of the financial-service industry, has
joined City National Bank as a executive vice president and
director of its Wealth Management Services division.
Gershen replaces Richard Byrd, who left City National last spring
to lead San Francisco-based Bank of the West's wealth-management,
trust and private-banking businesses.
Wachovia is part of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo.
"City National is committed to being the primary source of wealth
advice and investment solutions for our growing roster of
clients," says Russell Goldsmith, chairman and CEO of Los
Angeles-based City National."Rich Gershen has both the experience
and expertise to lead and enhance this effort."
Another thing
Leading a team of 500, Gershen will oversee the bank's investment
manager City National Asset Management, its brokerage City
National Securities, its personal and business trust services,
and its eight investment-management affiliates. The own-brand
managers are housed in Chicago-based convergentcapital.com
Convergent Capital Management and include multifamily office
convergentWealth.com Convergent Wealth Advisors.
Gershen, a direct report to Goldsmith, will serve on City
National's executive committee.
Before joining Evergreen in 2000, Gershen was COO of Banc of
America Capital Management, Bank of America 's institutional
asset manager, for about five years. Prior to that, he was a
fixed-income portfolio manager with Shields Asset Management
(initially a unit of Xerox's financial-service subsidiary, later
part of AllianceBernstein).
City National has also hired former Wells Fargo private banker
Ernesto Alvarez as a private-client advisor in Los Angeles. He
reports to Kevin McCarthy, head of the bank's private-banking
business in the city.
City National has 62 offices, including 15 full-service regional
centers, in southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area of
California, Nevada and New York. -FWR
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