Morning Coffee: Citi’s senior outsiders are scrutinising the existing talent in their teams. Goldman Sachs’ 27 year old MD gets another huge promotion
Citigroup’s reorganization is an ongoing project, and after the announcement of the 2024 results, focus has moved on to the next stage. Cutting out the dead wood and simplifying the management structure is one thing, but you also have to decide who is going to manage the key business units in the future. For example, there’s currently a vacancy in the investment bank for a Global Head of M&A, which definitely needs to be filled if Citi is to take advantage of the deal boom that everyone expects.
Vis Raghavan is not necessarily planning to fill that seat by recruiting another one of his former JPMorgan colleagues, or even an external candidate at all. Instead, Raghavan is saying in interviews that, “There is a lot of talent internally … We would be open to all ideas but there is such a deep bench there that I just want to evaluate what I have.” And he’s not the only top Citi executive who is looking inside the bank to fill key roles.
The technology division, for example, is going through its owntop level restructuring under Tim Ryan, a strategic hire from PwC last year. Ryan has brought in one former colleague (Julien Courbe). But the other names on the all-staff memo which went round on Monday describing the new tech leadership are mostly Citi insiders. Ryan said he spent the last six months “tak[ing] stock of the tech team's weaknesses and strengths”.
It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. External candidates are expensive; the person you might really want for a job already has one, and is likely to want a substantial premium to move from their existing comfortable and efficient team to work twice as hard on a fixer-upper. Banks can’t always afford the lengthy process of wooing and hiring a star from
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