Rory Cullinan has resigned as head of RBS' investment bank after a series of messages he posted on social media app Snapchat were published in the Sun newspaper in the UK, according to the FT.
Cullinan was handed the role as head of the investment bank only last month. He was to oversee a major downscaling of the RBS CIB unit, which may have seen a 78% decrease in its 18,000 jobs.
The FT reports that Cullinan disagreed with senior management over strategy, which led to his resignation. However, Cullinan's 'disagreements' were illustrated by a series of photo updates on Snapchat referring to "boring meeting xx", “Not a fan of board meetings xx”, and “Another friggin meeting”. These Snapchat images were posted to Cullinan's daughter who then posted the images on Instagram. These images were then picked up and reprinted by the Sun newspaper.
The fast growing social media app Snapchat is widely popular with millienials who consider it an easy and quick way to communicate with friends. Many users of the app, which sees messages deleted after 10 seconds, appreciate the temporary nature of the service. Users of Snapchat have been quoted in the press saying that it is "a great way to send your friends pictures of less than salubrious activities such as using illigal drugs, because 'future employers will never see the message". Chinese ecommerce firm Alibaba recently tendered a $200 million investment in Snapchat that would value the ephemeral photo messaging service at $15 billion.
Chris Marks and Mark Bailie will now act as joint CEOs of the RBS corporate and institutional banking unit.