Fulton Financial Promotes Executives as It Investigates Republic First

Fulton Financial in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is making changes to its leadership team.

Fresh from hiring a new financial director who starts next month, the $30.8 billion parent company of Fulton Bank has created three new executive positions — chief credit officer, chief business banking officer and executive market president — and promoted within the company to fill the positions, according to a news release. The new positions come amid a busy year for Fulton, which in April took over almost the entire bankrupt Republic First Bank in Philadelphia.

The promotions are intended to “increase focus on key areas” of Fulton’s business, Chairman and CEO Curt Myers said in a release. The changes include putting the credit team under “a single leader with enterprise-wide responsibility” and adding market presidents to strengthen the bank’s “commitment to local leadership and representation,” Myers added.

Meg Mueller, who was Fulton’s head of commercial banking, will move to chief credit officer and report directly to Myers, according to the release. Mueller will oversee a team that executes loans across commercial, consumer and business banking.

Philip Smith, regional commercial director, will be head of business banking and will report to Andy Fiol, head of consumer and business banking. Jeffrey Rush, former head of commercial sales, will be executive chairman of the market and will oversee three market leaders.

Rush will report to Fulton CEO Angela Snyder, the release said. Meanwhile, John Glover will replace Mueller as head of commercial banking and join the management team. Glover, who most recently served as head of commercial markets, will also report to Snyder.

A company spokesman said on Tuesday that the promotions will take effect in the third quarter.

Fulton’s leadership team now has 11 members, including new additions Glover and Mueller, who was already part of the group in her previous role. They will soon be joined by Richard Kraemer, the “designated” CFO, who will join Fulton in early September. Kraemer, who most recently served as treasurer and deputy CFO at Valley National Bank in New Jersey, will replace interim CFO Betsy Chivinski, who has been acting CFO since former CFO Mark McCollom resigned earlier this year.

The leadership changes come as Fulton continues to grow into a larger regional bank.

He is working on the integration of Republic First, which was acquired by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. this spring, after years of struggling to maintain adequate capital in the face of a particularly fierce fight between proxies and investor groupsThe transaction added about $4.2 billion in deposits and about $2.9 billion in loans to Fulton’s balance sheet, Fulton said previously.

As Myers told analysts last month during Fulton’s second-quarter earnings conference call, the integration of clients, teams and systems should be complete by the end of the year.

Separately, the company has launched an initiative that executives say will streamline operations, increase efficiency and leverage technology investments. The initiative, called “FultonFirst,” is entering the implementation phase of a 12- to 18-month project. Executives said they will provide more details on growth initiatives and cost-cutting opportunities in October.