A bit of a jolt: Reiss to leave M&T.

Max Reiss, the former local television reporter who served as Governor Ned Lamont’s spokesperson for three years, has announced he is leaving M&T Bank. Reiss joined M&T as a community affairs director last summer, weeks before its catastrophic Labor Day weekend conversion of People’s United Bank’s technology into the Buffalo-based bank’s computer system. M&T purchased the Bridgeport-based People’s United for $8.3 billion.

M&T’s blunders left thousands of Connecticut customers without access to their funds. Customer profiles were provided to strangers who then had access to accounts not their own. Millions in checks were mistakenly dishonored by M&T. The Lamont administration shrugged. Lamont himself hosted an October 5th cordial meeting M&T CEO Rene Jones, who received $6.8 million in compensation in 2021. Lamont offered only muted criticism of the banker, who he referred to by his first name in a post-meeting tweet, as thousands of customer and frontline bank employees endured the consequences of bank executives’s blunders.

Reiss is expected to join a publicly traded company that state law guarantees a profitable rate of return, Daily Ructions has learned. The company so many join eventually, whether in or out of government.

Published December 16, 2022.