Former HSBC Holdings Plc senior executive Brendan McDonagh — who spent four years at the bank in Buffalo — has re-emerged as the new executive chairman of a prominent Bermuda bank after retiring from HSBC in 2010.

The Bank of N. T. Butterfield & Son Ltd. announced that McDonagh will be nominated as a director at the Hamiltonbased bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting on May 1 and, if elected, will be appointed executive chairman. But as of Jan. 23, he will be hired as a strategic adviser to the board until the election, giving him time to familiarize himself with the bank.

He will succeed current Chairman Robert Mulderig, who is retiring at the meeting as part of an intended orderly board transition disclosed to shareholders last year.

McDonagh will work with Butterfield’s board and management, led by President and CEO Bradford Kopp, to pursue the bank’s strategic goals of enhancing sustained profitability, improving coordination of resources across jurisdictions and strengthening the core business of community banking and wealth management. Kopp is a former senior executive at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s Citizens Financial Group, whose RBS Citizens Bank operates in Buffalo.

Butterfield is Bermuda’s first and largest independent bank, providing a full range of community banking services in Bermuda, Barbados and the Cayman Islands, including retail and corporate banking, as well as treasury activities.

The publicly traded company is also a specialist provider of international financial services, offering private banking, asset management and personal trust services from its offices in Bermuda, the Caymans, Guernsey and the United Kingdom. And it provides personal trust and company services in Switzerland and the Bahamas.

Like many, the bank was hammered by bad debts, but restructured, sold its problem assets and returned to profitability after a $420 million recapitalization effort in 2010 that included Wall Street’s Carlyle Group. The bank has $9.2 billion in assets and $7.9 billion in deposits, and posted $31.4 million in profits through the first nine months of last year.

“From a shareholder’s perspective, Carlyle is extremely pleased with Butterfield’s choice for its future executive chairman,” said Olivier Sarkozy, managing director and head of the global financial services group at Carlyle. “Brendan has the experience and market knowledge needed to lead the continued turnaround.”

McDonagh, a veteran banker with extensive international experience in consumer finance, retail and commercial banking, and wealth management, was a group managing director of HSBC and CEO of HSBC North America when he left in July 2010 after spending his entire career at the British banking giant.

jepstein@buffnews.comnull