If anyone thought Flagstar was content to benefit just once from this year’s banking crisis, think again.
The New York Community Bank subsidiary bought much of Signature Bank’s remains for $2.7 billion in March. The spoils included $38.4 billion in assets, $25 billion in cash, $12.9 billion in loans and 40 former Signature branches.
The bank followed that up this week by announcing it’s hiring at least 50 bankers from another casualty of 2023: First Republic.
Flagstar said Thursday it is onboarding six teams of private-client bankers from the defunct San Francisco lender, which JPMorgan Chase bought in May.
“These six teams are regarded as among some of the best in the industry. The fact that they opted to join Flagstar Bank, N.A. is a testament to our business model and strong reputation in the marketplace,” NYCB CEO Thomas Cangemi said Thursday in a release. “At First Republic, these teams attracted both deposits, especially non-interest-bearing deposits, as well as loans, and we look forward to their clients banking with our Company.”
Three teams will be based in New York City, and three on the West Coast, serving entrepreneurs, high-net-worth individuals, private-equity and venture-capital firms, business managers for professional athletes, and high-end realtors and developers, the bank said.
"These new teams blend perfectly with our legacy private client teams,” said Eric Howell, NYCB’s president of commercial and private banking. “We both have a shared culture of providing personalized products and services via a high-touch, single-point-of-contact model and meeting clients' every financial need.”
Flagstar is hardly the first bank to scoop up bankers perhaps in limbo after First Republic’s failure. Citizens Bank last month announced it had hired roughly 50 senior private bankers from First Republic in an effort to build out its wealth-management presence and scale its business banking footprint.
For its part, JPMorgan, in late May, notified roughly 1,000 First Republic employees that they would not receive employment offers from their new management. JPMorgan also said it would close 21 First Republic branches, or roughly a quarter of the failed bank’s brick-and-mortar presence, by the end of this year.
