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Citigroup is stepping up its poaching of senior dealmakers from JPMorgan, signalling the ambitions of its new banking chief Viswas Raghavan after restrictions on hiring from his old bank recently expired.
Citi hired Raghavan as head of banking in February 2024 to bolster its position in investment banking, taking him from JPMorgan, where he had led the dealmaking division.
Raghavan has hired at least five senior bankers from JPMorgan as he begins to build out his team, including recruiting his former colleague Achintya Mangla in a new position as Citi’s head of financing for investment banking.
New York-based Citi said in an internal memo sent on Tuesday that it had hired JPMorgan’s two senior bankers responsible for its international equity capital markets business.
Aloke Gupte and Alex Watkins would leave JPMorgan, with Gupte set to become global co-head of equity capital markets based in London, while Watkins would lead technology financing from San Francisco, the memo said.
The pair join others to have made the jump, including Drago Rajkovic, who was appointed last month to be Citi’s co-head of mergers and acquisitions, and Sidharth Punshi, who is now leading Citi’s financial sponsors and alternative assets group across Emea.
Not all of Raghavan’s hires have come from JPMorgan. The bank has also hired James Manson-Bahr from Morgan Stanley and Ed Sankey from HSBC, who are both joining its equity capital markets team in senior roles in London.
The hiring spree comes as Citi is seeking to boost returns at its investment bank, notably with a push in leveraged finance. Its investment banking fees rose 13 per cent in the second quarter on a year before, with the bank advising on high-profile deals, including Nippon Steel’s $15bn acquisition of US Steel.
The inflow of bankers from JPMorgan is also part of a broader tussle for talent between the banks, with its Wall Street rival poaching private equity bankers Anthony Diamandakis and Theodoros Giatrakos from Citi.
JPMorgan declined to comment. Citi declined to comment beyond confirming the new hires, which were first reported by Bloomberg.
Raghavan faces a tough task in trying to build Citi’s investment banking business into a rival to JPMorgan. In second-quarter earnings this week JPMorgan’s $2.5bn in investment banking fees were more than double Citi’s.
Additional reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York
