(Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest lender by assets, named Jefferies Group’s Michael Armstrong as head of its U.S. wealth-management business.
Armstrong, global head of wealth management at New York-based Jefferies since 2014, will start later this year, the Toronto-based firm said in an internal memo obtained Friday by Bloomberg News. He’ll replace John Taft, who plans to retire May 31 as chief executive officer of RBC Wealth Management U.S., and report to Russell Goldsmith, CEO of the lender’s City National Bank unit.
At Jefferies, “the firm grew its assets under management, expanded its product and service offerings and attracted numerous teams of financial advisers,” Goldsmith said in the memo.
Richard Khaleel, a Jefferies spokesman, declined to comment. AdvisorHub reported the appointment earlier Friday.
Armstrong worked at Morgan Stanley from 1987 to 2012, overseeing the company’s private-wealth management division, leading the equity division’s international prime brokerage unit in London and working in Hong Kong as the regional chief operating officer, according to the memo.
Royal Bank last month named onetime Montreal Canadiens draft pick Tom Sagissor as president of its U.S. wealth-management business, which has $264 billion of client assets and about 1,900 financial advisers in 200 offices in 41 states. The business employs 4,700 people in the U.S.
--With assistance from Laura J. Keller. To contact the reporter on this story: Doug Alexander in Toronto at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at [email protected] Steven Crabill, Steve Dickson