BoNY Mellon CFO brings needed restructuring skills to RBS role

Former Bank of New York finance director Bruce Van Saun will
start work as finance director of Royal Bank of Scotland on 1 October,
completing the overhaul of the RBS board and bringing to bear his restructuring
experience from the BoNY merger with Mellon Financial.

Replacing Guy Whittaker, whose departure was announced by RBS in May, Van
Saun will work alongside former Abbey CFO Nathan Bostock, who joined RBS as its
head of restructuring and risk in June.

Van Saun is an eminently logical choice for RBS FD having been a group CFO in
the banking industry three times. He spent four years as CFO and chief operating
officer for Wasserstein Perella from 1990, followed by three years as North
America CFO for Deutsche Bank. In 1997 he joined BoNY as CFO, remaining in that
role for nine years.

A finance and general management MBA, he added vice-chairman to his title in
2005 while still serving as CFO. The following July, he moved out of the finance
function to become head of asset management and private banking – which proved a
short sojourn as he was recalled as group CFO that September to oversee the
merger with Mellon Financial. He remained there for a year after completion to
integrate BoNY and Mellon’s financial reporting structures and establish its
combined financial and global markets businesses, before stepping down last
July.

Like Van Saun, Whittaker imported deep US markets knowledge into RBS when he
was appointed CFO by Sir Fred Goodwin in 2006, having spent 25 years in New York
with Citigroup, latterly as group treasurer under then-CFO Sallie Crawcheck.

RBS CEO Stephen Hester said Van Saun’s “significant restructuring and
integration expertise will prove invaluable as we work towards rebuilding
standalone strength.”

In his time with BoNY, Van Saun was involved in more than 80 acquisitions and
two major divestitures. He also brings connections to Capitol Hill by way of his
representative place on the Financial Services Roundtable, a powerful lobby of
American banking CEOs.