People's United Bank announced that Dexter Freeman has joined its Commercial Banking team as Executive Vice President.  Based in Boston, Freeman will lead the bank's initiative to expand and deepen current and new relationships with corporate clients with over $500 million in revenues in concert with the bank's growth in complementary business and product lines for this segment.  

Freeman joins People's United from Sovereign/Santander Holdings USA where he was most recently Managing Director of Corporate Banking and played an instrumental role in forming the Large Corporate Lending group.  In this capacity, he was responsible for a $5 billion portfolio of commitments across the US with a team of 15 bankers extending from Boston to New York City.  Freeman led the team in growing the portfolio by over 80% in two years while expanding customer relationships with loans and leases, deposits, capital market products, global banking services, foreign exchange, interest rate protection products and a variety of trade services including supply chain finance.  He joined Sovereign in 2002 as a seasoned banker and assumed positions of increasing responsibility in Specialized Finance and Corporate Banking over the past 11 years.

"Dexter has a long track record of working closely with corporate clients to understand their needs and deliver a full range of solutions," said Jeff Tengel, Senior Executive Vice President, People's United. "He understands how to assist corporations in maximizing the value of their banking relationship with People's United by providing access to the full breadth of products, services and capabilities we offer."

Prior to his tenure at Sovereign, Freeman built a 23-year career at Fleet Boston Financial and its predecessor company, BankBoston. He worked in the bank's Boston, Los Angeles and a variety of international offices, arranging banking and lending services for middle market, leveraged, and multinational organizations based in the US and overseas with a focus on the health care and transportation industries. Freeman also participated in the 1995 start-up of BankBoston Securities, a Section 20 investment banking business and held NASD Series 7 and 63 licenses. He began his career as a loan officer trainee following his graduation from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME.