Laurentian Bank of Canada said Chief Executive Officer Rania Llewellyn will leave immediately, to be replaced by personal and commercial banking chief Eric Provost. The bank's chairman resigned.
The announcement brings a sudden and surprising end to the tenure of Llewellyn, the
Provost's priority will be to "rebuild trust" with customers and address the impact of a mainframe outage that occurred last week, according to a statement from the bank. The IT failure, which
"Eric is the right executive to lead the bank at this critical point in its evolution," said Michael Boychuk, who was appointed chair of the board as previous chairman Michael Mueller quit. "We have experienced challenges recently and the board is confident that Eric will successfully focus the organization on our customer experience and operational effectiveness."
The shares have fallen more than 15% since the Sept. 14 announcement that the strategic review had ended without a deal.
Provost will implement a three-part plan to fully resolve any outstanding issues related to the outage, enhance communications with customers and launch a review of the technical issues.
Provost had been promoted to an expanded role last month by Llewellyn, adding personal banking to his responsibilities in a management shakeup that also saw Laurentian adopt a smaller executive team.
Llewellyn, a former Bank of Nova Scotia executive, was CEO for
