Vis Raghavan's JPMorgan shopping list has many more names on it
If you work for JPMorgan and you have a wish to work for Citi, now's your chance. If you work for JPMorgan and you want to work for Citi and you previously worked or studied with Vis Raghavan, even better.
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Vis Raghavan has been running Citi's investment bank since mid-2024, a role for which he is paid circa $23m. He previously spent nearly a quarter of a century at JPMorgan, where he was a big figure in EMEA and both liked and not.
At Citi, Raghavan has set about hiring all sorts of his former colleagues. They include: Achintya Mangla, who joined last September to run Citi's financing business; Sid Punshi, who joined to run the financial sponsors and alternative assets group in December; Drago Rajkovic, who joined in June as Citi's co-head of M&A; Alok Gupte and Alex Watkins, whose arrival was announced last week; and Bernal Vargas, who was hired yesterday as head of ECM for North America at Citi.
These are not thought to be the only JPMorgan people that Raghavan has his eye upon. It's claimed that his JPMorgan shopping list also still includes the likes of Amanda Sharman, JPMorgan's head of EMEA equity capital markets execution; Virginie de Grivel Nigam, the bank's newly promoted head of Execution and head of equity-linked for EMEA ECM (whom Sharman reports to); plus Nicholas Skaff, who runs JPMorgan's private markets business. Ismail Iraqi, the former head of JPMorgan's EMEA equity-linked unit, whom Raghavan is also thought to have had his eye upon, recently left JPMorgan to work for the Moroccan government.
Raghavan is able to step up his recruitment of former JPMorgan pals following the apparent lapsing of his non-compete and non-solicitation agreements. Sources told us this expired earlier this year. Financial News said it actually expired in June. If so, many more moves could be coming soon.
Raghavan hasn't only hired been hiring from JPMorgan: he's also recruited David Friedland from Goldman Sachs and Ed Sankey from HSBC, but JPMorgan is clearly a preference.
Why does Raghavan like his ex-JPMorgan colleagues so much? It might simply be because JPMorgan is top in EMEA for investment banking revenues, whereas Dealogic says Citi ranks 5th this year, implying that JPMorgan has the better bankers by far. There are also, however, that Raghavan is disgruntled after not making it onto JPMorgan's operating committee when Daniel Pinto retired and is seeking a sort of revenge.
JPMorgan, in turn has been hiring from Citi: Anthony Diamandakis, Citi's former finest financial sponsors banker is joining JPM after being sidelined by Raghavan; Theo Giatrakos, a Citi MD who worked with Diamandakis is off to JPMorgan too. Charles Hop de Chillaz, a former MD in Citi's power team, is also making the move.
Citi bankers aren't always enamoured of their new colleagues. "He's got the keys to the castle and an enormous pay packet," said one. "He's using it to hire his mates from JPMorgan and Citi assumes they must all be great because they're JPM people, but that's not necessarily the case."
All will become apparent in a few years, when Citi rises to the top of the league tables, or not.
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