Veteran HSBC banker and Irishman Brendan McDonagh has officially been named the executive chairman of Butterfield where he will lead the bank’s continued turnaround.Mr McDonagh, along with Olivier Sarkozy, were also elected to the Butterfield board of directors at the bank’s AGM on Tuesday by a majority vote.The bank’s previous (non-executive) chairman Robert Mulderig retired at the close of the AGM along with vice chairman Robert Steinhoff.In addition, Butterfield said, director James Burr’s term expired and he did not stand for re-election.Mr Sarkozy, half-brother of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, replaces Mr Burr as one of the Carlyle Group’s two nominees on Butterfield’s board.Butterfield said in a statement last night that Mr McDonagh will work closely with Butterfield’s board and management team “to continue to implement the bank’s strategic objectives”.Brad Kopp will continue as Butterfield’s president and CEO.Mr McDonagh is a career banker with extensive international experience in consumer finance, retail and commercial banking and wealth management.He spent his entire career at HSBC, beginning in London in 1979 and ending in the US, where as head of HSBC Holdings PLC’s North American arm, he won credit for turning around the global finance giant’s operation in the US and Canada, which was hobbled by a troubled consumer lending business it bought before the recession.Mr McDonagh has held increasingly senior positions within HSBC in Brunei, Hong Kong, Oman, Japan, the Channel Islands and the UK.He transferred to the US in 2002 to lead HSBC’s American retail and commercial banking operations. He was appointed COO of HSBC Bank USA in 2004, COO of HSBC Finance Corporation in 2006, CEO of HSBC Finance Corporation, and COO of HSBC North America in February 2007.He then went on to become CEO of HSBC North America Holdings and Group managing director of HSBC Holdings plc in 2008.Mr McDonagh made the decision to retire from HSBC in 2010.“As executive chairman, I look forward to working with senior management to continue to rebuild value in the Butterfield franchise for the benefit of all stakeholders,” Mr McDonagh said. “I am very enthusiastic about playing my part in helping Butterfield achieve its potential.”Mr Sarkozy is managing director and head of the Carlyle Group’s Global Financial Services Group, focusing on investing in management buyouts, growth capital opportunities and strategic minority investments in financial services.He is based in New York City. Since joining Carlyle, Mr Sarkozy has led the firm’s investments in such transactions as Bank United, Sandler O’Neil, Central Pacific and Rush Card among others. Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr Sarkozy was Global co-Head of the Financial Institutions Group at UBS Investment Bank where he worked on many of the largest mergers in the US financial industry, totalling over $100 billion, as well as the largest recapitalisation in US history.Carlyle Global Financial Services Partners LP is a shareholder of Butterfield.And Carlyle Investment Management, an affiliated company of the Carlyle Group, provides balance sheet management advisory services to Butterfield for an annual fee of $4 million for a three-year period.Carlyle invested $150 million in Butterfield in return for new equity priced at $1.21 per share. At the same time, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) also invested $150 million.The liquidity injection helped Butterfield to stabilise and de-risk its balance sheet after years of heavy losses owing to soured investments linked to the US housing market.(See Carlyle IPO story Page 27)