Sanwa Fills Top Job at NewWealth Management Unit

A 21-year financial services veteran arrived this week at Sanwa Bank California to lead its newly formed wealth-management division.

Becky C. Shelton, 47, took the divisional reins Monday. She came from U.S. Bancorp, where she was regional manager of private financial services, responsible for Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming.

The Sanwa division, formed in January during a bankwide reorganization, includes investment management, retail sales of investment products, and trust.

The restructuring came as banks are scrambling to retain the assets of customers bombarded with a range of financial services providers. Many banks have combined asset management, brokerage, and trust into one business unit to focus on relationship-building.

Ms. Shelton's goals include making it easier for high-net-worth clients to do business with the bank, by offering them "more comprehensive financial services," she said. She also plans to integrate the sales and marketing of investment products, she said.

Howard Gould, the Sanwa vice chairman who heads community and retail banking, said the biggest advantage of forming an integrated wealth management unit is uniformity.

"We know we have not had a comprehensive sales management approach to all the wealth management opportunities we had," he said.

The wealth-management division manages $3 billion of assets, including $800 million of assets in the Eureka Funds, the bank's no-load proprietary fund family. The $8.6 billion-asset Los Angeles-based banking company is a unit of Sanwa Bank Ltd. of Osaka, Japan.

Ms. Shelton also oversees the combination of three sales forces, as well as implementing a more unified compensation scheme, Mr. Gould said. The integration should be complete by yearend, he added.

Before joining U.S. Bancorp, Ms. Shelton worked over 11 years for Union Bank of California in jobs including head of marketing for trust, investments, and private banking.

When she is not working, Ms. Shelton enjoys golfing, skiing, and cycling. In a few weeks she's off to Italy for an eight-day, 260-mile bike tour.

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