New York-based Signature Bank has appointed a new six-strong private client banking team – all from HSBC - as well as adding three further private client staff member.

Joseph Alexander and John Kourkoutis were named group director and senior vice president of the new team, which will be based in the firm’s private client banking office in Long Island City, Queens, NY.

Alexander brings over 30 years of banking experience to Signature Bank. He was latterly branch manager and vice president at HSBC at the Long Island City location and has also spent 18 years at JP Morgan Chase, 15 of which were spent as branch manager and vice president.

Kourkoutis' banking career spans more than two decades. During his 13 years at HSBC Bank USA/Republic National Bank, he was vice president and business banking market manager for Queens and the Bronx. Before that, he was vice president and branch manager in Rego Park.

In total, Alexander and Kourkoutis have worked together for 15 years.

Joining the team are Sonia Lugo and Stephen Morisi as associate group directors and Sherry Slatten and Ravi Persaud as senior client associates. Lugo was latterly a small business relationship manager at the HSBC Rego Park Branch for nine years. Morisi spent the past six years as a business banking relationship manager in Long Island City at HSBC. Slatten was latterly branch service manager at the same location as Alexander, Morisi and Persaud for the past six years. Persaud also joins from HSBC, where he was a client experience associate for six years.

In addition to the new team, Signature Bank also named Edward Docherty as group director and vice president, and both Michael Narciso and John Sibiski as associate group directors.

Docherty joins from North Fork Bank/Capital One, where he most recently was vice president of commercial real estate and senior commercial mortgage loan underwriter.

Narciso also joins from North Fork Bank/Capital One, where he spent 16 years as branch manager at several different locations in Manhattan. He will join Richard Murasso's team, a group director and senior vice president.

Sibiski, formerly a vice president and branch manager at HSBC's branch on East Bay Avenue, the Bronx, will work from Signature Bank's Hunts Point office with the group director and senior vice president, Joseph Vessecchia.

Signature Bank also announced the recent opening of new office at 2 Penn Plaza, its twenty-fifth private client banking office and its ninth location in Manhattan.