EXECUTIVE CHANGES
James Baumgartner has been appointed president and CEO of Moneris Solutions Corp., a joint venture merchant credit and debit card company created last year by Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal. He will be responsible for growing the new company's business in both Canada and the United States, and to position Moneris as the leading merchant services and card processing provider in North America. Baumgartner comes from J.P. Morgan Chase, where he was president of its Commercial Payments Solutions business. He has also held executive positions at US Bancorp and Ernst & Young.
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Sally Larson Sargent has been appointed senior vice president of the Personal Trust Group for the private banking unit of Harris Trust and Savings Bank. She succeeds Richard Fink, who became group executive of Central Services for the private banking division. Sargent was vice president of the estate Administration Group for the Chicago-based bank, and previously held an executive position at Harris Bankcorp.
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Ghislaine Austin has been appointed chief investment officer and managing director for the Philadelphia and Delaware wealth management operation of First Investment Advisors, a subsidiary of First Union Capital Management Group. She has been with the company since 1995, and was previously director of its Connecticut and New York region. Prior to joining First Union, Austin held positions at Summit Bank and Connecticut Bank and Trust.
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James Beams has been named director of the new Custom Research division of Meridien Research. The new division will focus on topics not normally covered by Meridien financial research, including competitive and peer-group analysis of vendors and financial institution users, detailed market analyses of specific technologies and analysis on how the strategic use of technology can be used to address specific business issues. Beams comes to Meridien from Action Systems, where he was director of Marketing, Strategic Developments and Alliances. He also had a stint as managing director, Retail Financial services, at TowerGroup.
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Richard J. Bell, director of eBanking at TowerGroup, has left the company. No reason was given for his departure. Bell plans on remaining active and having direct involvement in financial industry research, and is exploring several options that will keep him focused on Internet banking and the e-revolution.