New York Community leans on CEO's connections as it revamps leadership

Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting
Joseph Otting, the CEO of New York Community Bancorp, continues to build his leadership team. The company said that it's added nine additional senior executives, including several former colleagues of Otting during his previous jobs.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

Joseph Otting, who was hired this spring to turn around New York Community Bancorp, continues to lean heavily on his banking and regulatory connections to fill out the embattled bank's leadership team.

Nine senior executives joined the Long Island-based bank this week, including three longtime Office of the Comptroller of the Currency staffers whose tenures overlapped with Otting's stint atop the agency. Four other hires previously worked at either U.S. Bancorp, where Otting was once a vice chairman, or OneWest Bank, where he served as president and CEO.

Of the nine new hires, three are now members of New York Community's 18-person executive management team. Those hires are: Kris Gagnon, a former chief credit officer at OneWest and later CIT Group, who's now in the same role at New York Community; Richard Raffetto, New York Community's new head of commercial and private banking, who previously oversaw corporate banking at U.S. Bancorp; and Don Howard, most recently of Citigroup, who has been hired as director of regulatory governance, risk and controls.

New York Community, which has faced exceptional challenges this year, largely stemming from its rapid growth and its outsize exposure to the rent-regulated apartment loan market in New York City, has been rebuilding its leadership team. Most of the top executives who were running the company early this year have departed.

New York Community, the parent company of Flagstar Bank, is set to release its second-quarter earnings report on Thursday. As of Wednesday afternoon, analysts surveyed by FactSet Research Systems predicted a net loss of 40 cents per share. For the first quarter, the company reported a net loss of 45 cents per share.

Ahead of Thursday's earnings report, Piper Sandler analyst Mark Fitzgibbon wrote in a research report that he expects New York Community's balance sheet to shrink by about 2% from the first quarter. 

He's also forecasting a loan-loss provision of $200 million, versus $315 million in the prior quarter. The company's stock price fell 5% on Wednesday and is down 65% since the start of the year.

Earlier this week, New York Community completed its previously announced sale of $5.9 billion of mortgage warehouse loans to JPMorganChase. That deal will be followed by the sale of another $200 million of mortgage warehouse loans, the company said in a press release.

Five of the hires announced by New York Community on Tuesday — including Gagnon, Raffetto and Howard, who was Citi's head of global compliance transformation — will report directly to CEO Otting.

So, too, will Bryan Hubbard, the new senior regulatory program manager, and Robert Phelps, who will serve as special advisor to the CEO.

Hubbard was most recently the deputy comptroller for public affairs at the OCC. Phelps is a 30-year OCC veteran, having worked in roles including deputy comptroller of supervision risk management.

Also on the list of new hires is William Fitzgerald, head of workout/commercial, who most recently was the head of commercial real estate resolution at First Citizens Bancshares. Adam Feit, who joins the company from U.S. Bancorp, is head of specialized industries banking and capital markets.

Sydney Menefee, a former senior deputy comptroller at the OCC, is the new senior director of strategic financial and capital management. And Tom Lyons, who was senior vice president of operations' financial and data risks at U.S. Bancorp, joins NYCB as the director of finance business risk and controls.

During New York Community Bancorp's annual shareholder meeting, executives reiterated their mission to restore value in the beleaguered Long Island-based company. Questions from shareholders suggested at least some discontent following a capital influx that significantly diluted their position in the company.

June 7
Joseph Otting - New York Community Bancorp

Trouble at the $112.9-billion asset bank first came to light in January when it reported a quarterly loss, a significant reserve build and a massive dividend cut. That was about nine months after New York Community acquired much of the failed Signature Bank, and just over a year after it acquired Flagstar Bancorp. The pair of deals pushed the regional bank above $100 billion of assets.

Following the January update, New York Community's stock price plunged, sparking fears of a possible deposit run. The company disclosed "material weaknesses" in its internal controls and fired former CEO Thomas Cangemi.

In March, an investment group led by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — who had previously worked with Otting to turn around OneWest, which emerged from the failure of IndyMac Bank — rescued the beleaguered company with a surprise $1.05 billion capital injection

In May, the revamped executive management team laid out a path to improve profitability, but also warned that there was more near-term pain ahead as the company needed to root out troubled loans.

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