Ever since Vis Raghavan took over as Citigroup’s head of banking in June 2024, he has embarked on a series of hiring raids against JP Morgan, his former employer. But when it came to its most senior European hire, Citi turned to a different alumni network — Credit Suisse.
Last week, Citi revamped the leadership of its European mergers and acquisitions business, poaching Deutsche Bank’s Will Mansfield to run it.
The appointment surprised some. Mansfield had spent the last three years rising at Deutsche, becoming head of M&A for EMEA in May 2024.
He has spearheaded the rebuild of Deutsche’s M&A business by selling its advisory services to European companies as a welcome alternative to US banks, which he argued were failing to serve their needs because of their “cookie cutter” approach.
But Mansfield, who worked closely with Alison Harding-Jones, the architect of Deutsche’s new strategy, found older allegiances harder to resist. A former Citibanker, Harding-Jones was DB’s global head of M&A and then global head of origination and advisory.
At Citi Mansfield will be reunited with Jens Welter, with whom he worked at Credit Suisse for two decades.
The pair were Credit Suisse lifers until Welter joined Citi at the end of 2022 as it floundered around for a new strategy. Mansfield left for Deutsche in April 2023, shortly after Credit Suisse was swallowed by UBS.
Mansfield had been CS’s head of M&A for EMEA.
Welter was its co-head of global banking. At Citi, he was at first co-head of banking, capital markets and advisory EMEA, but in October 2024 became head of North America investment banking coverage. David Friedland was added as his co-head last July.
One headhunter said Welter had been “focused on getting Will” for some time. However, when the pair left Credit Suisse, Deutsche was rebuilding, hiring dozens of managing directors and reinvigorating its UK business with the acquisition of Numis, while Citi was in the throes of restructuring.
Harding-Jones’ retirement from Citi in March 2023 and arrival at Deutsche in January 2024 illustrate that.
Brimming with confidence
Two years on from Raghavan’s appointment, Citi’s fortunes have changed. After a root and branch clear-out of his management team and bringing in dozens of familiar loyalists, the former JP Morgan man has a spring in his step.
Speaking at Citi’s investor day on May 7, Raghavan boasted that Citi can hire “whoever we want” as it strives to catch up with rivals, in talent and market share.
Pointing to the progress the bank has made, Raghavan claimed “competitors are feeling it”, both in terms of the bank’s resurgence on big deals but also its heft in the recruitment market.
Raghavan said Citi had 100 fewer managing directors in investment banking than its biggest rivals, so there was more hiring to come.
Since the start of 2025, Raghavan said, Citi had hired more than 60 managing directors worldwide across banking’s three divisions — investment banking, corporate banking and commercial banking.
Raghavan wants to increase MD headcount by 15% over the next three years to get Citi’s investment banking market share to 6%, up from 4.7% at the end of 2025, according to Dealogic data.
The blistering pace of US M&A and equity capital markets activity, exemplified by the $86bn IPO of SpaceX on June 12, has handed lucrative mandates to US banks and gives them a war chest that dwarfs what European rivals can spend on talent.
The head of investment banking at another firm said: “US banks are printing money and they are investing it. And Citi is on another plane altogether because of the specific hiring mandate that Vis has.”
Sources say Citi is offering mouth-watering guaranteed pay packages. Two sources said it was offering three year guarantees, often doubling current salaries.
“Citi has a pretty compelling argument now and a clear narrative and the strength of the US platform at Citi would make cross-border EMEA and US M&A easier — you can see what attracted Mansfield,” says the head of investment banking at a rival.
Aiming for top three
Most of Citi’s recruitment splurge last year was in the US, but Raghavan’s plan to catch his former employer requires a global push, as he targets top three rankings across all regions by the end of 2029.
That includes the UK, which Raghavan regards as critical to his mission. Citi’s UK investment banking business is smaller than those of rivals after a steady drip of departures over the last three years.
Some of the recent hires are intended to plug gaps. For example Stuart Ord, who left Deutsche in May, will replace Citi’s highly rated Sian Evans, head of UK M&A, who has joined the Takeover Panel as a deputy director general.
Ord was previously head of M&A at Numis, which he joined from Barclays in 2015. He will join Citi in August.
This month Citi made a further marquee hire from JP Morgan — Chuka Umunna, the former UK shadow cabinet member, who will be a managing director in UK investment banking.
In May, Citi hired Joe Seifert as a vice-chair of UK investment banking. Seifert is another former JP Morgan alumnus but left in 2013 and has worked at and started various businesses since, including EET Hydrogen, where he was CEO.
Besides their JP Morgan connections, Umunna and Seifert both have close links to government and infrastructure.
EET Hydrogen is part of HyNet, one of the UK government’s two Track 1 clusters for industrial decarbonisation.
Umunna was most recently named JP Morgan’s global head of corporate governance and sustainable solutions, and led the firm’s new Security and Resiliency Initiative in the UK. As a Labour MP until 2019, his jobs included shadow secretary of state for business, iInnovation and skills. But both bankers have broad client experience and that is their attraction to Citi.
M&A the key
Having already given its capital markets businesses a new face with strings of hires and departures, Citi has now turned its attention to M&A, the product Raghavan regards as key to hitting his growth goals. “If you win mind share, wallet share will follow,” he said.
The appointment of Mansfield completes Citi’s new-look M&A team after the hiring of Guillermo Baygual and Drago Rajkovic from JP Morgan as global co-heads of M&A in September 2025.
Ahead of Mansfield’s forthcoming arrival in September, Citi has moved Barry Weir and Robin Rousseau, the current co-heads of European M&A, to new roles.
Weir will become a vice-chair of M&A focusing on natural resources clients, while Rousseau will be global chair of M&A.
“These appointments strategically position us to further elevate our strategic dialogue and M&A franchise with clients across UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa, leveraging the proven strengths of Barry, Robin, and William,” Baygual and Rajkovic said in a joint memo.
A bank’s M&A business is an expression of the quality of its relationships. To win a seat at a corporate CEO’s table requires country as well as industry expertise.
Citi has hired several UK-based industry specialists such as Arkadi Nachimowski, who is joining as co-head of chemicals investment banking from JP Morgan, where he held the same role.
Last month, Citi hired Vlad Ivanov from JPM to co-head infrastructure investment banking for the UK, Europe and the Middle East.
In April, the firm poached James Potts from Barclays to head its shareholder advisory and activism defence group for EMEA, Japan, Australia and Asia South.
At the same time it hired Klaus Hessberger, another JP Morgan veteran, though he had been at Lazard since July 2025.
Hessberger, based in London, will co-head Citi’s financial and strategic investors group (FSI), which has replaced its global asset managers group (GAM).
When it created FSI, Citi broke out global infrastructure coverage as a standalone group led by Todd Guenther.
Deals, big and small
Raghavan said at the investor day that he wanted Citi to be “the pre-eminent banking partner for clients with cross-border needs”.
He insists that to get there requires aligning investment banking, corporate banking and commercial banking.
Among his obvious priorities — increasing scale in growth sectors such as technology and healthcare, and boosting market share with financial sponsors — Raghavan also named growing the mid-market as a priority, since it is a “precious incubator for a future pipeline of clients”.
Such an approach is crucial in the UK. Citi has 20 corporate broking clients in the FTSE 100 and another 12 in the FTSE 350.
To meet its top three target it needs to cover the whole waterfront in the UK. Last year it hired Jacques Callaghan from HSBC as a managing director in UK investment banking. His experience lies particularly with private and private equity-owned companies.
The UK faces a particular challenge in that more public companies are being taken private than listed.
To address this, Citi has strengthened its sell side M&A business by hiring Ed Joudrey last October. Joudrey joined from J Safra Sarasin but before that he built out Bank of America’s sell side M&A practice.
Recent mandates underline the breadth of Citi’s offering. Last month, it was financial adviser and corporate broker to GlaxoSmithKline on its $10.6bn acquisition of US cancer drug developer Nuvalent, as well as drinks giant Diageo on the $1.8bn sale of Indian cricket franchise Royal Challengers.
It has also been front and centre on in-bound M&A, advising US ingredients company McCormick — once a client of its commercial bank — on its $45bn merger with the food business of Anglo-Dutch company Unilever. Citi led $16bn of committed financing.
This transaction fits Raghavan’s investor day rallying call for Citi to become the go-to bank for cross-border deals. It also advised FTSE 250 ingredients company Tate & Lyle on its £2.7bn acquisition by Ingredion of the US.
Doubling down
The sheer scale of Citi’s hiring push and its race for scale evoke memories of what used to be called the ‘Citi swarm’ — the armies of coverage bankers it could deploy from different parts of the organisation.
That was followed by a retrenchment, but this time Raghavan is demanding accountability.
What these hires have in common is that they support Citi’s coverage model. Thickening its ranks of senior bankers gives them more time and capacity to focus on a select number of clients and deliver the firm.
This is meant to improve capital efficiency and ensure Citi wins the most lucrative mandates. It is putting its M&A business front and centre. “To win in the UK, you need to win in M&A,” said one banker.
Raghavan pointed to recent market share gains in financial sponsors, where it had its best ranking for a decade last year, as proof that its new “talent-driven” model is working, while underlining that there is much more to come.
To balance the hyperbole, it’s important to remember that Citi is still ranked only fifth for investment banking fees both globally and in north America, behind its big four US rivals, according to Dealogic’s preliminary first half rankings.
Last year it was fifth in the UK with a fee share of 4.9%, while JP Morgan was top with 9.5%. Raghavan is not throttling back until he catches up.
“We are at a pivot point. To deliver our ambition, we need to continue investing in talent,” said Raghavan, acknowledging that the progress so far was “not the destination”.
By demanding more, Raghavan has raised expectations. Over the next three years, Citi’s competitors will not be the only ones feeling the pressure.