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Mark Wiedman, a former top executive at BlackRock, is joining US bank PNC as its president, in a bet the regional lender can bulk up and better compete with industry behemoths such as JPMorgan Chase.
Earlier this year, Wiedman, 54, left BlackRock, where he led the global client business and was discussed as a potential future leader of the asset manager. He opted not to wait around for chief executive Larry Fink to eventually step down.
At PNC, Wiedman will work under former JPMorgan executive Bill Demchak, who has led the bank since 2013. The appointment marks Wiedman as a top candidate to one day succeed Demchak as CEO.
Wiedman said he was joining PNC at a time when the banking industry’s structure was rapidly changing, as more market share accrued to the bigger players.
“It’s a naturally consolidating industry and PNC is a natural consolidator, organically and potentially inorganically,” Wiedman, who has not previously worked in banking, told the Financial Times in a joint interview with Demchak.
Demchak was also on BlackRock’s board of directors from 2003 until 2020, when PNC sold a stake in the company worth $17bn.
Pittsburgh-based PNC is the ninth-biggest US bank by assets and sixth-largest by deposits, with about $430bn. It is among a cluster of so-called super-regional banks in the US that are far larger than local minnows but still have only a fraction of industry leader JPMorgan’s more than $2tn in deposits. Its footprint covers most of the US eastern seaboard and Midwest, and stretches to Texas and the south-west.
Demchak, 62, has previously called for US regulators to allow more mergers among the country’s 4,000-plus banks to promote greater competition for the likes of JPMorgan and Bank of America.
“We will gain share through organic growth, and through success in doing so, probably expose weakness in others that give us opportunities,” Demchak told the FT.
Most recently, PNC bought the US operations of Spanish bank BBVA for $11.6bn. Consolidation in America’s highly fragmented banking industry slowed considerably during Joe Biden’s administration, though there are hopes for a revival under President Donald Trump.
Wiedman joined BlackRock in 2004 and five years later negotiated the purchase of Barclays Global Investors, a deal widely seen as the most important in BlackRock’s history. He previously worked at the US Treasury and McKinsey.
