Laurentian Bank of Canada's headquarters in Montreal on April 5, 2022. The bank’s core leadership roles have been shifting back to Montreal, its traditional headquarters.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Laurentian Bank of Canada’s LB-T head of capital markets, Kelsey Gunderson, is leaving the Montreal-based bank as it prepares its latest turnaround plan after a tumultuous year.
Mr. Gunderson joined Laurentian Bank to run its capital markets division in the fall of 2019, serving as chief executive officer of Laurentian Bank Securities. Brian Doyle, the chief financial officer for capital markets, will serve as acting head of capital markets and chief executive officer of the Securities arm on an interim basis.
Mr. Gunderson came to Laurentian as an experienced executive in equity sales and trading after he spent a dozen years at BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. He led Laurentian Bank’s capital markets business through a period of upheaval that included the COVID-19 pandemic, a withdrawal from direct financing to the oil and gas industry and a sharp run-up in interest rates that upended markets.
Over that span, Laurentian chief executive officer Éric Provost credited Mr. Gunderson with “improving the Bank’s syndicate position with many of our major clients, delivering solid risk-adjusted revenues in a highly volatile macroeconomic environment,” and ramping up its activity in the green bond market, in a statement.
Mr. Gunderson declined to comment.
His decision to leave the bank adds to a period of rapid turnover in Laurentian’s most senior ranks. Last fall, the bank ousted its chief executive officer, Rania Llewellyn, after only three years in charge and partway through a turnaround plan. Board chair Michael Mueller also resigned, and the bank named Mr. Provost as its new chief executive officer.
In the weeks before Ms. Llewellyn was let go, operations head Yves Denomme, personal banking head Karine Abgrall-Teslyk and chief technology officer Beel Yaqub also departed. The bank cut about 10 per cent of the staff from Laurentian Bank Securities as part of a restructuring last summer.
Several of those roles were held by executives based in Toronto, and as they have departed, the bank’s core leadership roles have been shifting back to Montreal, its traditional headquarters.
In 4½ years at Laurentian, Mr. Gunderson reported to three chief executive officers: François Desjardins, who was abruptly ousted amid an aborted overhaul of the bank’s digital systems and branch network, then Ms. Llewellyn and Mr. Provost.
Under Mr. Provost’s leadership, Laurentian Bank is working on a new strategic plan that it intends to unveil this spring, after the bank has underperformed for years and a strategic review conducted under Ms. Llewellyn last year failed to attract a suitable buyer.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of job cuts at Laurentian Bank Securities.
James Bradshaw