City of London Group names leadership team for new banking venture

Adrian Golumbina has more than 20 years’ experience in finance and has held the role of finance director in companies across financial services, contract hire/leasing and engineering. Most recently, he was part of the finance leadership team and has worked as finance director in three divisions at Network Rail.

Glover is a former managing director of commercial banking at Alliance & Leicester/ Santander. He joined Nationwide in 2009 as director, heading its commercial division and running a £22bn lending portfolio. He was its corporate affairs director from 2014 to 2016.

Under the agreement COLG is acquiring a 73% equity interest in Echo Financial Services, a recently established company with no material assets or liabilities. The remaining 27% equity interest will be held by Oakley (15%); Golumbina (10%) and Glover (2%).

Michael Goldstein, CEO of City of London Group, said: “I am delighted that we now have a top-quality delivery team in place, led by Jason Oakley, to build a first-class challenger bank offering a real choice in commercial, SME, bridging, and development finance.

“There is a strong desire to break the banking oligopoly and this is further strengthened by advances in technology, making a ‘bricks and mortar’ network of branches less significant as a barrier to entry. We are all very excited about the prospects of this business.”