ANALYSIS-Citi's banking head drives turnaround with more executives, deals, cooperation

By Tatiana Bautzer

NEW YORK, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Viswas Raghavan's hiring spree and push for more internal cooperation are helping Citigroup's C.N investment banking business climb the Wall Street rankings, according to sources, analysts and public data.

Since he joined from JPMorgan Chase JPM.N last year, the head of Citi's banking group has added more than a dozen star bankers from rivals and is requiring executives to collaborate across business lines to generate more deals and other opportunities, the people said.

Improving the performance of Citi's investment banking business - currently ranked fifth overall on Wall Street - is a keystone in CEO Jane Fraser's turnaround strategy for the global banking giant.

Two recruiting sources said Citigroup is offering multimillion-dollar pay packages to attract star bankers from rivals. Raghavan himself was paid $22.6 million last year in total compensation, including salary, bonus and stock awards.

"His decision to join Citi reflects our ability to attract the best talent to our firm and I look forward to seeing our Banking franchise flourish," Fraser said in a social media post on the day he joined.

Since joining Citi in June 2024, Raghavan, known as Vis, has recruited about 15 senior executives from competitors, most of them from JPMorgan, but also from Goldman Sachs GS.N, Morgan Stanley, Ares Management ARES.N and HSBC HSBA.L in recent months, Reuters previously reported.

The bank announced last week that Amit Nayyar will become co-head in tech investment banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Other big hires were two new co-heads of M&A, Guillermo Baygual and Drago Rajkovic, as well as Pankaj Goel, co-head for technology investment banking. All are joining Citi from JPMorgan.

"Investment banking is a relationship-intense business, so people make a difference," Barclays bank analyst Jason Goldberg said.

Raghavan has surprised some people at Citi by telling investment bankers to collaborate across divisions to generate more revenue, said two executives who declined to be identified. That type of cooperation is rare in the highly competitive world of investment banking, where client relationships - and the fees generated by them - are closely guarded.

Investment bankers meeting clients to discuss M&A or other transactions such as IPOs are expected to introduce clients to executives from other units, including wealth banking and executives at the services division, which caters to 5,000 large corporations worldwide. It also happens the other way around, with services executives making introductions to investment bankers.

Citi got fifth place in the global investment banking revenue ranking this year, with a 5% market share, 0.5 percentage point above last year, according to Dealogic.

The best results came from M&A bankers, which pushed Citi to fourth place in overall global rankings this year, up from seventh last year. Goldman Sachs GS.N, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley MS.N were ranked first through third, respectively, Dealogic data showed.

The banking division had the highest growth of all Citi businesses this quarter, up 23% from a year earlier.

While Citi had a role in seven of the 10 largest fee-paying deals this year, it still needs to report several more strong quarters to establish a solid growth trend, Goldberg said.

"M&A has become a huge priority," adding momentum to the gains in investment banking, said one of Citi's recent hires, who declined to be identified while discussing strategy at his new employer.

One of the key challenges, according to bank analysts, is to increase Citi's presence in deals led by private equity firms, where the bank is lagging.

The move to broaden Citi's client relationships among the different divisions fits in with Fraser's sweeping turnaround strategy set forth two years ago. She removed management layers, laid off thousands of employees and streamlined the bank's structure into five businesses.

"Citi has been losing market share in investment banking for 25 years," Wells Fargo bank analyst Mike Mayo said. "Now Raghavan has a clear mandate to increase market share and returns at the banking division."

The executive will face some challenges ahead. Although the share in M&A deals increased, Citi has kept stable market share in equity and debt capital market deals. The bank lost ground in loan revenue, coming in at seventh place in the ranking this year, down from sixth in 2024, according to Dealogic.

Mayo has been bullish on Citi stock for a while and said a conversation he recently had with Fraser made him believe the heads of businesses are now held accountable for increasing returns. Fraser set a target of 10% to 11% return on tangible equity to be met in 2026.

The lender is still working to fix regulatory punishments dating back to 2020 to improve its risk management and data governance. It was fined $136 million last year by regulators for failing to fix widespread and longstanding deficiencies in its data management.

SENIOR HIRES BY CITIGROUP'S BANKING DIVISION