Citi is gently nudging people aside as Vis Raghavan hires his comrades from JPMorgan
It's not unusual for senior bankers with new jobs to hire their friends and former colleagues. To this extent, it was always inevitable that Vis Raghavan would hire his own people at Citi. As he does, though, Citi is shunting its own people aside instead of dispensing with them entirely.
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Raghavan has been head of global banking at Citi for three months. Last week, following months of speculation, he finally disclosed the arrival of Achintya Mangla, his former JPMorgan colleague of over two decades. Today, Jens Welter & Anthony Diamandakis, head of Citi's UK and European investment bank, sent a memo saying that Citi has hired another of Raghavan's long term ex-JPMorgan colleagues - Sid Punshi - who's arriving as head of the UK, Europe and MEA Alternative Assets Group.
Mangla arrived in a big new job created especially for him. Punshi, however, will be occupying a role that already had a Citi incumbent. That incumbent was Theo Giatrakos, who was promoted to lead the alternative assets group in 2021 and who's spent nearly 14 years at Citi. Writing today, Welter and Diamandakis said they have "asked" Giatrakos to "continue and dedicate even more time in his coverage role of key franchise sponsor relationships in the region and help drive additional initiatives across our global asset managers business." Presumably he's agreed.
As Raghavan settles into his hiring, other Citi insiders might want to contemplate lateral moves of their own. For example, there were suggestions earlier this year that Raghavan might also like to recruit Aloke Gupte, JPMorgan's co-head of equity capital markets for EMEA and APAC. Gupte's hypothetical arrival might displace people like Udhay Furtado and Kenneth Chow in Asia, or Valery Barrier and Suneel Hargunani in the UK.
More broadly, there have been suggestions that Raghavan might also set about hiring: Virginie de Grivel Nigam, JPMorgan's head of UK and Ireland ECM; Nic Skaff, JPMorgan's head of private capital markets; Amanda Sharman, an executive director in EMEA equity capital markets execution; or Ismail Iraqi, JPMorgan's head of EMEA equity linked ECM. Raghavan is also considered partial to Ina De and Klaus Hessberger, vice chairs of investment banking, and to Guillermo Baygual, JPMorgan's former co-head of European M&A. Baygual, who has just been made global co-head of infrastructure and strategic investors group.
There's no guarantee that anyone on this list will arrive at Citi soon. However, Raghavan is clearly building his empire and Mangla is likely to assist him. Citi equity capital markets (ECM) staff in particular might be inclined to wonder what they would do instead.
Speaking yesterday, Citi CFO Mark Mason said Raghavan has been, "very thoughtful about making sure that we have the right talent in the right sectors."
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