New York Community Bank subsidiary Flagstar is losing at least 16 teams of private and commercial bankers to New Jersey-based Peapack-Gladstone and Long Island-based Dime Community Bank, the banks said in press releases Monday.
Peapack hired Andrew Corrado, Flagstar’s head of commercial and private banking in the Northeast, to serve as president of Peapack Private’s commercial bank in New York City, and more than 10 Flagstar teams are following him, the New Jersey lender said Monday. Corrado came to Flagstar from Signature Bank and before that, worked for Capital One, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The move is meant to accelerate Peapack’s push into New York, launched last July and led by Jeanne Scungio, the private-bank chief who herself is an émigré from one of 2023’s banking casualties, First Republic.
“Our expansion last summer has been well-received,” Peapack-Gladstone CEO Doug Kennedy said in a statement Monday. “The additional investment we are making today by hiring Andrew and multiple teams of commercial and private bankers capitalizes on the momentum we’ve achieved to date.”
The banking sphere was rife last year with efforts by banks to onboard talent from failed lenders Signature, First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank. MUFG and HSBC hired tens of bankers from SVB. Meanwhile, Citizens Bank and Flagstar hired dozens each from First Republic.
Monday’s announcements find Flagstar on the losing end, marking the broadest movement of talent away from NYCB, largely considered the most at-risk bank of 2024 so far. The bank’s share price plummeted 83% in the weeks after it disclosed a $252 million loss over commercial real estate exposure. The bank named a new CEO, hired risk and audit executives, took a $2.4 billion impairment charge and received a $1.05 billion cash infusion from investors who brought in yet another CEO.
That man, former Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting, has said he will announce a revamped strategy for NYCB when the bank delivers its first-quarter earnings this month.
"We remain concerned that more teams may leave to go to other institutions,” Piper Sandler analyst Mark Fitzgibbon told American Banker. “We have no doubt that New York Community is working really diligently to keep the existing teams in place because it's an important part of their business."
The bankers leaving NYCB represent roughly 12% of the bank’s 134 private client teams, carrying deposit books of $5 billion to $8 billion, the publication reported.
Despite the talent loss, the bank hasn't seen its deposits fluctuate, a source familiar with the matter told American Banker.
Since receiving its cash infusion, NYCB’s share price has jumped 47% but is still down 69% from Jan. 30.
Dime, meanwhile, hired six deposit-focused groups from Flagstar, in a move meant to deepen the bank’s presence in Nassau County and Brooklyn, and, for the first time, give it a toehold in Westchester County.
“The groups were attracted to our single-point of contact model, best-in-class treasury management systems, state-of-the-art escrow and sub-accounting systems, commitment to continue to innovate, flat organizational structure, and customer-first mindset,” Dime CEO Stuart Lubow said Monday in a press release.
Dime has hired 13 deposit groups from Signature, First Republic and Valley National Bank in the past year, the bank’s CFO, Avinash Reddy, told American Banker.
"The reality is we saw disruption in the marketplace, and we sought to grow our franchise," Lubow told the publication. "We view all of our hiring efforts over the course of the past year as investments that we believe will accrue to the benefit of the franchise and create more shareholder value."
