From the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Customers Bancorp has reached an agreement with ousted Chief Financial Officer Carla Leibold that will pay her $2.5 million in severance. The payment will be made in equal installments during the company’s regular payroll schedule for a two-year period.
On April 10, West Reading, Pennsylvania-based Customers (NYSE: CUBI) announced it had terminated Leibold with cause. While the bank said she was dismissed for violating company policy, it noted that Leibold disputed that characterization.
On April 25, Customers issued an amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission characterizing her departure as a “separation by mutual agreement,” Banking Dive reported.
Customers has not indicated in SEC filings what Leibold allegedly did to violate company policy. In disclosing the agreement to the SEC, the company reiterated that Leibold “is not aware of any facts that constitute or might constitute violations of the company’s legal or regulatory obligations.”
In announcing the severance, Customers said Leibold and the company each granted a general release with respect to claims relating to events up to the effective date of the agreement. Leibold forfeited all of her unvested equity awards, which included 25,000 stock options, 20,685 performance stock units and 29,981 restricted stock units. The supplemental executive retirement plan and the split dollar life insurance agreement have been terminated, and Leibold is not entitled to any benefit from them.
Customers and Leibold will continue to be bound by the nondisclosure, nonsolicitation, noncompete and indemnification provisions of her previous employment agreement.
Leibold joined Customers in 2013 as chief accounting officer and controller and was promoted to CFO in 2018. Prior to joining Customers, Leibold was principal accounting officer for Farmer Mac, where she was controller from 2010 to 2013 and director of accounting and financial reporting from 2007 to 2010. She was an executive at Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac before joining Farmer Mac.
On March 12, less than a month before her separation from Customers, Leibold sold almost 36,000 of her shares in the company at a price of $53.15 each, according to SEC documents. The sale totaled about $1.9 million.
The $22 billion-asset Customers promoted 39-year-old Philip Watkins, who was CFO of subsidiary Customers Bank since January, to replace Leibold with the parent company. Watkins, who is based in New York, was previously head of real estate and digital lending.
Prior to joining Customers, he was CFO for Megalith Financial Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: MFAC), a New York-based, publicly traded company formed for the purpose of acquiring or merging with one or more fintech or financial services companies. Megalith’s CEO was Customers Bank CEO Sam Sidhu, who stepped down from that role in 2020 to join Customers.