Things are unsettled at NAB.
Andrew Irvine, NAB CEO, in March announced a raft of executive changes.
Andrew Auerbach, one of Irvine’s pals from Bank of Montreal in Canada, has recently joined NAB as Group Executive, Business & Private Banking. Auerbach held similar roles at BMO from 2007 to 2022.
Andrew Irvine joined NAB from BMO in in 2020, where has was head of Canadian Business Banking.
Rachel Slade, the previous Group Executive B&PB, left NAB on 1 July.
Nathan Goonan, chief financial officer at NAB is also gone. Goonan will take up the CFO role at Westpac later this year.
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Goonan will replace current Westpac CFO Michael Rowland, who will retire from the bank.
Andrew Auerbach, though, is the name on everyone’s lips at NAB.
Auerbach is not just great mates with the CEO Andrew Irvine from their time at the Bank of Montreal. They are best mates.
Andrew Irvine and Andrew Auerbach have some sort of scheme for NAB, or they are plotting one.
It better be good. Commonwealth Bank have NAB cornered in business banking.
CBA are closing in on NAB on the asset side and are streets ahead on business liabilities, making CommBank number one in business banking.
Working their way through this difficulty is far from the only deeply toxic matter stressing Andrew Irvine.
The timing of a recent $1.2 million share sale by the NAB CEO – and what Irvine knew when – is a red hot topic within the NAB inner sanctum.
The governance team at NAB have been asking questions and Andrew Irvine is under immense pressure to self-disclose to ASIC.
The Goonan exit will have been a surprise.
But Andrew Irvine must have known about the imminent appointment of Andrew Auerbach as head of NAB business banking when he sold those shares on March 4th. The Goonan and Auerbach executive changes were announced on 17 March.
Insider trading? Oh dear.
Irvine was looking the goods.