February saw the first mega bank M&A deal in a decade when BB&T announced its $28.2 billion acquisition of SunTrust Bank to create a combined entity of $66 billion.

The merger, naturally, resulted in some shuffling of key executive roles. BB&T CEO Kelly King will serve as the CEO of the new, still-unnamed entity. More importantly, since the technology was at the heart of this deal, and as Bank Innovation previously reported that SunTrust’s technology stack is the superior of the two, it only makes sense the chief information officer will be SunTrust’s Scott Case rather than BB&T’s Barbara Duck.

Also Read: BB&T-SunTrust Faces Daunting Tech Integration After $66 Billion Merger

Aside from the BB&T and SunTrust deal, there have been significant rearrangements of executives across the financial services industry. Here are the three most noteworthy ones, according to Bank Innovation editorial.

Vocalink CEO Will Head Mastercard’s New Payment Platform 

Starting next month, Paul Stoddart, CEO of payments company Vocalink, will be president of Mastercard’s new payment platform.

The London-based Vocalink was acquired by Mastercard in 2017. Vocalink specializes in bank account-based payments. Mastercard acquired Vocalink to expand its payments network, and provide an increased amount of customer security against fraudsters through its fraud management analytics tools.

Now, Mastercard wants to utilize these tools in its realtime payment initiatives since realtime money movement also requires realtime security and fraud detection.
Stoddart will oversee this initiative. He will also head the development and strategic integration of Mastercard’s real-time payments capabilities beyond its card-based services, including Vocalink account-based payments, the Homesend joint venture, and Mastercard Send.

David Yates, who is currently leading the initiative, will take on an “advisory role” focused on cross-border payments, according to the announcement last week.
Prior to Vocalink, Stoddart worked at Barclaycard and RBS Worldpay.

Union Bank hires its first Head of Business Data: Una Fox

It is not uncommon for banks and other FIs to look outside the industry for recruiting technology-savvy digital executives. California-based Union Bank has turned to the entertainment industry, for instance. Most recently, the bank hired Una Fox, former vice president of digital marketing and data technology at The Walt Disney Company as its new head of data business and insights.

Before Fox, Union Bank appointed Julie Demarigny, a veteran in the digital entertainment industry with key positions at Warner Bros. and Sony Music, as its head of digital banking last fall.

Fox, who joined the Union Bank team less than three weeks ago, oversees departments including Customer and Marketing Intelligence; Revenue, Sales and Performance Reporting; Operations, Data Governance, and Custodianship.

The heart of her role will be to utilize the available data to grow the bank and its savings-only platform PurePoint Financial’s revenue opportunity as well as improving customer experience.

Read how Fox plans on achieving this here, on Bank Innovation. 

Visa Bags Square’s Head of Payments Mary Kay Bowman

Square’s head of payments Mary Kay Bowman is now Visa’s new head of seller solutions.

In this new role, she will lead the company’s strategy for acceptance products and solutions, design, development and delivery of new services and solutions on both the sell and consumer side of things.

“This is a critical role, as the point of sale is undergoing dramatic change as it shifts from traditional payment acceptance to digital, cross-channel payment experiences,” according to the announcement.

And indeed, Bowman seems more than equipped for the task. Prior to Square, Bowman was director of global payments at e-commerce giant Amazon.

Honorable Mention: Facebook hires a team of Blockchain Experts?

Earlier this month, social media giant Facebook was said to have hired four of the five academics behind London-based blockchain startup Chainspace’s founding academic white paper.

But Facebook, although it confirmed the hire, said it has not acquired the company’s technology, leaving a lot of room for interpreting its stance on blockchain technology. Last year, Facebook set up a blockchain unit headed by PayPal’s David Marcus. Marcus, who served as PayPal’s president in the base, was also a Coinbase board member.

According to reports, Chainspace will no longer exist as a standalone company.

Join us at Bank Innovation Ignite 2019, March 11-12 at the Hyatt Olive 8 in Seattle. Register here.