CIBC First­Caribbean yes­ter­day wel­comed its new CEO, Gary Brown, for his first of­fi­cial day in of­fice, fol­low­ing his ap­point­ment with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2016.

Pri­or to this role, he was Glob­al Head of Cor­po­rate Bank­ing with the bank's par­ent com­pa­ny, CIBC. In that ca­pac­i­ty, Mr Brown had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cor­po­rate and in­sti­tu­tion­al bank­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at CIBC, in­clud­ing lend­ing to large cor­po­rates, re­al es­tate fi­nance, glob­al bank­ing, in­ter­na­tion­al lend­ing and cer­tain non-core port­fo­lio ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he served as a mem­ber of the Whole­sale Bank­ing Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee and In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee, and CIBC's Op­er­at­ing Com­mit­tee. Brown re­mains a mem­ber of the par­ent bank's op­er­at­ing com­mit­tee in his role as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of CIBC First­Caribbean. From 2004 to 2013, he was Pres­i­dent and CEO of CIBC World Mar­kets Corp., the bank's US bro­ker-deal­er and re­spon­si­ble as US re­gion head for all busi­ness and gov­er­nance func­tions un­der a US re­gion­al man­age­ment struc­ture.

Brown be­gan his bank­ing ca­reer in 1976 with The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, be­com­ing a lend­ing of­fi­cer in the Com­mod­i­ty Fi­nance di­vi­sion. From 1980 to 1999, he held a num­ber of se­nior busi­ness and risk man­age­ment po­si­tions with UBS AG, in­clud­ing New York Branch Man­ag­er and Head of the Struc­tured Fi­nance di­vi­sion, one of six op­er­at­ing di­vi­sions of UBS in the Amer­i­c­as.

In 1998, he was ap­point­ed Chief Cred­it Of­fi­cer – Amer­i­c­as. Im­me­di­ate­ly pri­or to join­ing CIBC in 2001, he served as Pres­i­dent and Di­rec­tor for K2 Dig­i­tal, Inc., an In­ter­net pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­ny.

The new CEO said his in­ten­tion to build on the strong re­cov­ery which the bank has been see­ing over the past two quar­ters, with its high­est net in­come in five years be­ing record­ed in the third quar­ter of 2015. In a mes­sage to em­ploy­ees across the bank, he not­ed that his fo­cus will be on the ac­cel­er­a­tion of growth across the bank's re­gion­al foot­print through an even stronger fo­cus on the cus­tomer, adding: "We are a ser­vice busi­ness and serv­ing our cus­tomers well is the on­ly way we can dis­tin­guish our­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion and achieve suc­cess. I per­son­al­ly in­tend to stay fo­cused by mak­ing con­tact with at least one cus­tomer every sin­gle day � ei­ther in per­son, in client meet­ings or by tele­phone."

He urged all em­ploy­ees to do the same. "By un­der­stand­ing this we will en­sure that we nev­er lose sight of why we are here � to help our cus­tomers re­al­ize their fi­nan­cial po­ten­tial and mak­ing sure that every one of them has a great sto­ry to tell about their ex­pe­ri­ence with CIBC First­Caribbean."

Mr. Brown suc­ceeds Rik Parkhill, who demit­ted of­fice at the end of De­cem­ber af­ter a four-year tenure.

CIBC First­Caribbean is the largest, re­gion­al­ly-list­ed bank in the Eng­lish and Dutch speak­ing Caribbean serv­ing over 500,000 ac­counts in 17 mar­kets, through 2,900 staff, across 100 branch­es and of­fices.

The bank of­fers a full range of mar­ket-lead­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices in: cor­po­rate and in­vest­ment bank­ing, trea­sury sales and trad­ing, re­tail bank­ing, wealth man­age­ment, Small Busi­ness and Cred­it Cards.

CIBC First­Caribbean is a mem­ber of the CIBC Group. CIBC is a lead­ing North Amer­i­can fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion serv­ing clients in Cana­da and around the world. Through three dis­tinct busi­ness lines, Re­tail and Busi­ness Bank­ing, Wealth Man­age­ment and Whole­sale Bank­ing, CIBC pro­vides a full range of prod­ucts and ser­vices to al­most 11 mil­lion in­di­vid­ual, small busi­ness and com­mer­cial bank­ing clients and meets the fi­nan­cial needs of cor­po­rate and in­sti­tu­tion­al clients.