Citi hired a Morgan Stanley MD to head EMEA ECM cash origination

20 June 2025

2 minute read

Citi has made a major move in EMEA equity capital markets (ECM) and poached a long-serving managing director (MD) from Morgan Stanley.

The US bank has hired Jamie Manson-Bahr Morgan Stanley's head of equity syndicate for EMEA as its head of UK, Europe and MEA ECM cash origination.

Mason Bahr will join in September and report to Ed Sankey, the US bank's recently announced head of Europe, UK and MEA ECM.

Manson-Bahr spent 18 years at Morgan Stanley and seems like a significant hire for Citi. The bank confirmed his arrival.

Some Citi MDs are understood to be questioning the choice of Manson-Bahr, though. "He doesn't appear to have origination experience," said one.

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AUTHORSarah Butcher

Global Editor

TS
TS100
14 August 2025
Reality is ECM bankers don’t originate. The coverage or advisory bankers originate (advisory as in corporate finance / M&A advisory). ECM is just about investor distribution. So if you are syndicate banker with good connectivity with investors, there’s more value than ECM origination bankers who are just waiting for their M&A peers to drop them the news that the PE firm decided to exit via IPO instead of trade sale. The point is ECM is reactive and execution in nature instead of origination. They still add value as a product but they don’t need very expensive people to run a process / execution as the workstreams are quite thin and often diluted with equity sales, research and M&A stack who continue to work on IPOs as well. In most smaller banks there are no ECM bankers. Just corporate finance advisory and a handful of syndicate / distribution guys to manage investors and equity sales guys who themselves are hardly in existence these days. I can see why Ed Sankey would want to bring in someone with UK investor experience. Think that was a gap in Citi’s syndicate desk particularly after they lost almost all their UK equity sales guys.
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