New England-based R. Acosta to replace trust department veteran Ira Brower. Reading, Pa.-based Sovereign Bank plans to make Rosalin Acosta head of its wealth-management unit. She stands to replace Ira Brower, who will retire later this year.

Business-, government-banking

Acosta will be responsible for business development and the delivery of wealth-management and private-banking services.

Boston-based Acosta, for now still director of the Sovereign's government-banking group, has been with the bank since 2000. Before that she was at Fleet Bank (now part of Bank of America), where she led a middle-market lending group in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Brower led Sovereign's wealth business since joining the bank in 1999. Previously he was head of the trust department at Manchester Trust, which Sovereign acquired along with its corporate parent Peoples Bancorp that year. -FWR

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