Brent Hazzard, Citizens Bank

Boston, MA According to Citizens Bank, Brent Hazzard has been named head of structured finance at Citizens Commercial Banking. Hazzard joins Citizens from GE Capital where he had served as a leader in both GE’s restructuring and distressed debt businesses. Additionally, he was a North American sales leader for GE’s mid-market asset based lending business.

Citizens’ Structured Finance Group is focused on establishing, building and maintaining relationships with senior leaders at large and mid-tier investment banks, distressed-focus private equity funds and other intermediaries.

to source senior secured financing opportunities greater than $20 million. The team’s experience with lead-left financings would support mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations, debtor-in-possession (DIP), plan-of-reorganization (POR) and out-of-court (OOC) transactions. 

Hazzard is on the International Board of Trustees of the Turnaround Management Association and is a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute.

A graduate of the University of Connecticut, he earned his MBA from the University of Hartford.

He is on the adjunct faculty for The University of Connecticut’s School of Business, teaching MBA-level courses on mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and sales leadership.

“Brent is a very experienced banker who delivers value-added ideas and terrific service to clients,” said Bob Rubino, Executive Vice President at Citizens Commercial Banking. “We are very happy to have him join the Citizens team as we focus on providing the great ideas and execution capabilities that our clients need for every stage in the life cycle of their businesses.”

“It’s an exciting time at Citizens and I am very happy to join the team,” said Hazzard. “Citizens bankers have been very effective at bringing great ideas to their clients and helping them to achieve their strategic and financial goals.”

Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, with $140.1 billion in assets as of March 31, 2016. Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, Citizens offers a broad range of retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, large corporations and institutions. In Consumer Banking, Citizens helps its retail customers “bank better” with mobile and online banking, a 24/7 customer contact center and the convenience of approximately 3,200 ATMs and approximately 1,200 Citizens Bank branches in 11 states in the New England, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions. Citizens also provides mortgage lending, auto lending, student lending and commercial banking services in select markets nationwide. In Commercial Banking, Citizens offers corporate, institutional and not-for-profit clients a full range of wholesale banking products and services including lending and deposits, capital markets, treasury services, foreign exchange and interest hedging, leasing and asset finance, specialty finance and trade finance.