Citi's M&A bankers are thriving, DCM bankers are flailing, developers are being displaced
It's US banks' results week, and first up today are JPMorgan and Citi. The two banks are disparate beasts.
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Citi's results reveal another fine quarter for its M&A bankers, whose revenues increased 52% year-on-year in Q2 compared to JPMorgan's paltry 8% rise in M&A revenues. Citi is doing something right: Dealogic says Citi ranked fourth globally for M&A in the first half of 2025, compared to seventh last year.
In Citi's leaky debt capital markets (DCM) business, though, the times were less fine. DCM revenues at the bank fell by 12% in Q2, even while they rose by a similar proportion at JPMorgan. DCM is usually Citi's strong point. Last year, Citi's DCM revenues were nearly three times higher than its revenues in M&A in Q2. This year, they were roughly equal. Dealogic says Citi ranked third for global DCM in the first half, down from 2nd in 2024.
Where JPMorgan and Citi might be more similar is in terms of technology jobs. JPMorgan has been rolling out AI developer tools. Citi said today that it's been doing the same: it's implemented Gen AI tools and automated 740,000 code reviews, saving 100,000 hours of developer time in the process.
While Gen AI tools sound great for the efficiency of Citi's developer team, they don't sound so great for Citi's developer jobs. - The bank said severance charges related to the "realignment of the technology workforce" drove costs higher in Q2, implying technology jobs there have been cut. This might simply apply to the 3,500 tech jobs Citi is cutting in China, but Chinese technologists aren't known for their large severance payments, so developer may be going elsewhere too.
Away from technology, Citi says it accrued "higher revenue related compensation" in the second quarter, implying its bonuses are tracking up. Citi's M&A bankers will surely be among the beneficiaries. So will its macro traders, whose revenues rose 27% year-on-year in Q2. Its equities traders, who were doing well last year, are now falling behind: their revenues rose only 6% in Q2; JPMorgan's increase was more than double that.
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