Ken Lewis' role as CEO and chair of Bank of America Corp. has been split.Walter E. Massey became chairman while Lewis remains as president and CEO.

Financial services firm Primus Financial Holdings Ltd. launched in Hong Kong with $1 billion. It plans to raise more.

The management team is led by Huan Guocang, CEO of private equity firm Primus Pacific Partners; Robert Morse (pictured), formerly Citigroup Inc.'s Asia institutional clients group CEO and head of global investment banking; and Wing-Fai Ng, a managing partner with Primus Pacific Partners. Guocang and Morse are co-chairmen, while Ng is chief executive.

Guocang and Ng are also co-founders of Primus Pacific. The new firm offers insurance, banking, brokerage and wealth management services. Morse told Reuters Primus plans to open an office in New York to build out a fixed-income group and will also manage an alternative investment platform, focusing on distressed debt in the U.S. and emerging market private equity.

Barclays Capital appointed Jim Renwick as a managing director, head of U.K. equity capital markets and corporate brokering in its investment banking division, EMEA. He reports to London-based Richard Boath, head of global finance, EMEA, and to David Erickson, head of global ECM in New York.

Renwick hails from UBS, where he was vice chairman of investment banking, focusing on ECM. He began working at UBS in 1990 before leaving to join Bridgewell as head of ECM in 2006. He returned to UBS in late 2007 after having sold Bridgewell to Landsbanki.

Fifteen months after a multibillion-dollar trading scandal involving Jérôme Kerviel was uncovered, 12-year Société Générale SA chairman Daniel Bouton will resign on May 6, when a replacement will be named. Bouton offered to leave in January 2008, but was asked to remain. He later relinquished the CEO role to then-chief financial officer Frédéric Oudea. Bouton joined SG in 1991, became CEO in 1993 and was named chairman in 1997.

Chairman of Caisse Nationale des Caisses d'Epargne (CNCE) and CEO of Banque Fédérale des Banques Populaires (BFBP), François Pérol, asked Oddo & Cie managing director Laurent Mignon to become CEO of investment bank Natixis SA. Mignon accepted and will replace CEO Dominique Ferrero. CNCE and BFBP, which are merging, own most of Natixis.

Check The Deal Pipeline for updates on these Movers & shakers:

• Blackstone Group LP hired Citigroup's Jean-Manuel Richier as a senior managing director.
• Macquarie Capital Advisors brought in Antony Isaacs as head of ECM, Europe.
• Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Research tapped Thomas Wong as head of Asia-Pacific energy equity research.