Dive Brief:

• Royal Bank of Canada named Matthew Stopnik its global head of investment banking, according to an internal memo seen Monday by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
• Promoting Stopnik, who had served since 2018 as co-head of U.S. investment banking at RBC, stands as perhaps an indicator of the country’s importance to the bank’s growth strategy.
• The move comes as part of a restructuring that will merge regional investment-banking units into a global model and create three groups within that.

Dive Insight:

Alongside Stopnik, RBC named Trevor Gardner to lead global investment-banking coverage; Ben Mandell to serve as global head of mergers and acquisitions; and Jim Wolfe as head of global investment-banking capital markets, according to Monday’s memo.

Wolfe had been Stopnik’s fellow co-head of U.S. investment banking. Mandell had served as head of Canadian M&A. And Gardner had been co-head of Canadian investment banking alongside Carrie Cook, who left RBC last month to become BMO’s global head of investment and corporate banking, according to the executives’ LinkedIn profiles.

The restructuring aims to help the bank increase “global coordination while still focusing on growing and extending our position in each market and celebrating the nuances and differences across our regions,” Derek Neldner, RBC CEO of capital markets, said in an emailed statement seen by Bloomberg. Stopnik will report directly to Neldner in his new role.

RBC has a 2.45% market share of investment banking fee revenue this year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Neldner said he wants to push that to 3%.

The bank already leads its home market with a 10% share.

“Maintaining this market-leading position is critical and core to our strategy,” Neldner said, according to Bloomberg.

But RBC ranks ninth in U.S. investment banking revenue, according to Dealogic. And the U.S. represents 56% of the global fee pool, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“We think that there is more market share we can pick up and find further ways to support our clients,” Neldner said, according to the Journal, adding that adopting a global model will help the bank advise clients “whose businesses obviously don’t stop at borders.”

RBC has doubled its investment-banking workforce in the U.S., compared with 2008. Now, it’s looking for those efforts to pay off.

To help with that, RBC named Vito Sperduto to lead its U.S. capital-markets business.

“Vito’s appointment reflects our increased focus on the US as our second home market, and the importance of the bank’s overall US strategy as a driver of growth,” Neldner said Monday.

Sperduto joined RBC in 2008 as managing director of U.S. M&A, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Stopnik joined RBC in 2015 after a 17-year stint at UBS.