Morning Coffee: The ex-JPMorgan banker making Citi MDs feel inadequate. Investment firms are cutting heads too
This is a true story – I won’t say which bank it happened at, but I saw it with my own eyes.
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“I want you to know”, the new head of investment banking told the town hall meeting, “that I have really big ambitions for this franchise. I’ve looked at our business and identified where we need to make changes. The first thing I’m going to do is to go out and hire some really good people in key positions”. The top management team, all of whom were on stage with him, tried to keep smiling as they considered the implications of that statement.
This little vignette has played out, in only slightly different form, in a great number of banks over the years.
Whenever a banker gets a brand-new boss who has a great reputation somewhere else, there’s always mixed emotions. That’s particularly the case if the new boss has big ambitions and something to prove. On one hand, it can be exhilarating – if you feel that you’ve been held back by working in a subpar franchise, then you might relish the prospect of a more aggressive approach, a return to the big leagues and potentially a step change in the revenue and bonus environment. But there’s also fear. Because you might feel there’s a risk that the new boss thinks you’re part of the reason that the original franchise was so subpar.
And although he might never have put it quite as blatantly as that, this seems to be the energy that the Wall Street Journal says Vis Raghavan is giving off at Citigroup. Raghavan is hiring former JPMorgan colleagues like Achintya Mangla into key Citi roles, and Citi incumbents are being reshuffled aside to make room for those he’s identified as having the right stuff. Kevin Cox has been put in charge
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