City National appoints new wealth-business head

FWR Staff

20 February 2009

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 .

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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