A former investment banker has been named as the new chief financial officer of GE Commercial Finance in Europe, a unit within General Electric with $20bn (€15.6bn) in assets.

Peter Franklin, who worked at HSBC and Chase Manhattan before joining the US conglomerate in 1992, will be finance director for a division with 2,000 employees and has funded close to $11bn in transactions in Europe since it was established in 2004.