As 2024 begins, SRP looks back at the most relevant people moves stories in 2023 highlighting new hires and exits at the main issuers of structured products across markets. Today we focus on the comings and goings at Citi.

Arrivals

In January, Citi appointed Flavio Figueiredo (right) as global head of corporate sales & solutions within the bank’s markets division in New York. Figueiredo is tasked with driving coordinated coverage of corporate and public sector clients across all markets products. The role is an expansion of his prior position of global head of rates & currencies corporate sales and solutions.

Steve Roti, head of strategic equity solutions, Ron Ruffini and Yoven Moorooven, co-heads of commodities corporate sales and structuring, report to Figueiredo, in addition to their pre-existing reporting lines.

Lionel Phillips-Franjou (below right) was appointed as director, Apac head of complex structuring, multi-asset group. Based in Hong Kong SAR, he reports to Mario Serafino, managing director, Apac head of multi asset group, equity derivatives sales and solutions for financial intermediaries since October 2022.

Phillips-Franjou is responsible for designing, promoting, and implementing structuring solutions for Citi’s clients in Apac, with a focus on Citigroup First Investment Management. He joined Citi from Société Générale in September 2022 where he had been heading the cross-structuring group, Apac ex-Japan, based in Hong Kong SAR since January 2021. 

In March, Citi appointed Rajat Madhok as global head of Citi commercial bank credit risk. Prior to this appointment, Madhok was Asia Pacific head of Citi Commercial Bank – a role which he took up in 2019.

Madhok’s global appointment followed on from several Asia-based senior bankers who moved on to take global/US-based roles at Citi including Anand Selva, CEO of personal banking and wealth management; Gonzalo Luchetti, head of US personal banking; and Valentin Valderrabano, global chief operating officer for Citi Global Wealth. Madhok joined Citi in India in 1996 where he held a variety of roles across corporate banking and commercial banking. In 2011, he was appointed Citi commercial bank head for India. 

Claudia Koh (right) joined Citibank's international personal bank (IPB) as head of equities and equity structured products in June.

In this role, Koh is leading Citi’s equity offerings on its e-brokerage platform and equity structured notes in Singapore. She reports to Edmond Ng, managing director, head of wealth products and specialist sales, Singapore at IPB. Koh replaced Karthik Chandrasekaran who moved to Julius Baer as executive director, non-resident Indian investment specialist, in December 2022.

Most recently, Koh was managing director and head of structured products, Asia, at UBP until June 2022. She joined the Swiss private bank as executive director in May 2018. Her role at UBP was taken over by Karrie Fung in July 2022, who joined from BNP Paribas' global markets.

Prior to that, Koh spent nine years at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore until May 2018 with her last role being director, structured product specialist, within the bank’s product strategy group.

Effective from 1 September 2023, Gunjan Kalra (right) became Apac head of commercial bank at Citi, reporting to Tasnim Ghiawadwala, global head of commercial bank, and Peter Babej, Apac CEO at Citi. 

Before taking up her new role, Kalra was managing director, Apac head of corporate sales & solutions at Citi’s markets division where she led the delivery of markets products to corporate and commercial banking clients in the region, covering 11 markets.

Kalra has spent 21 years at Citi where she started in the investment banking division in New York before moving to the commercial banking unit in Singapore in October 2018. She continues to be based in Singapore.

Departures

Gidon Kessel (below right), Citi’s head of wealth management (WM) for the UK, left the bank in April to take up the position of executive director, head of deposit and WM at UOB Thailand. 

Kessel was Citi’s head of WM for UK for one year after relocating from South Korea when the US bank closed down its retail business along with 12 other Asian markets. In Seoul, he served as the division head for the WM business, managing deposits, investments, advisory and insurance departments from April 2019 to April 2022. 

In a career that spans 25 years, Kessel started at Citibank as a management associate in Sydney in 1998. He moved to London covering Emea at Citibank International Personal Bank (IPB) in 2001 and was later promoted to vice president, structured products specialist, regional treasury for Emea. In the next seven years, Kessel worked in Sydney, Singapore and Greece at Citibank.

After that, Kessel joined ANZ in Singapore in 2014 as director, leading the regional structured products and foreign exchange (FX) coverage for retail and private bank business. He left the bank in 2016 upon the sale of the Australian bank's Asian consumer franchise to DBS.

He then joined UOB where he was head of treasury products, managing structured products, fixed income, FX and equity products. Three years later, Kessel returned to Citibank where he took up his previous role in South Korea in April 2019 before moving to London in 2021.

Francesco Taglietti (right) left Citi in June to join the equity portfolio analytics team at global alternative investment management firm Millennium in New York.

Taglietti spent his last two years at Citi as head of equity derivatives data & risk analytics in London. He joined Citi in 2021 after three years at J.P. Morgan as executive director - equity exotics trading, also in London.

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Taglietti wan executive director in equity derivatives trading at Goldman Sachs where he spent eight years in several trading roles.

Another departure was seen in July when Matt Watson (right), head of issuance for equity products at Citi in London, parted ways with the bank to become global head of structured issuance for equities at Bank of America.

Watson left after more than 25 years at Citi where he held a number of senior roles after becoming a managing director in 2017. Prior to his latest role as head of issuance for equity products, he oversaw one of the pillars launched by the bank in 2019 covering institutional and retail clients. Watson oversaw the issuance of structured notes and special purpose vehicles globally.

Previously, Watson was head of the bank's multi-asset group (MAG) for Emea since 2017. In that role, he had regional responsibility of the division behind Citi's cross-asset structuring and product development in addition to his existing responsibilities as global head of issuance solutions.

Watson had been an integral part of Citi's Emea MAG team since its inception in 2011.

Bhaavit Agrawal, global head of rates & currencies structured notes and markets issuance, serves as Watson’s replacement in his role as global head of markets issuance. Agrawal is also in charge of the MTN desk.

Citi is still looking to fill the vacancy of Asia head of markets after Julia Raiskin (right) officially moved to the buy-side as Asia Pacific CEO of Millennium in November following her 15 years at the bank.

At Citi, Raiskin was responsible for developing product delivery strategies, leading senior regulatory relationships and establishing risk management discipline across the region in her last position that she assumed in March 2022. She was previously head of equities, Asia.  

Prior to joining Citi, Raiskin was head of European corporate FX sales for J.P. Morgan. She also worked for Morgan Stanley on the FX and commodity origination team after starting her career in FX trading at Lehman Brothers in London.

Main image: Bluraz/Adobe Stock.