Citigroup has hired JPMorgan Chase's Viswas Raghavan (left) as its head of banking. Filippo Gori (top right) and Doug Petno (bottom right) have been named co-heads of investment banking and are splitting Raghavan's former duties at JPMorgan.
Viswas Raghavan is expected to join Citi this summer as executive vice chair and the head of banking, according to a memo sent Monday by CEO Jane Fraser. The announcement comes a little over four weeks after Raghavan was named the sole leader of global investment banking at JPMorgan, as part of that company's recent organizational and management restructuring.
In his new role as Citi's head of banking, Raghavan will oversee Citi's investment, corporate and commercial banking businesses. As vice chairman, he will be involved in shaping and driving Citi's overall strategy and assisting Fraser with "key strategic initiatives," she wrote in the memo.
Raghavan is set to join Citi's executive management team and will report directly to Fraser. He succeeds Peter Babej, who has been Citi's interim head of banking since September 2023 when the $2.4 trillion-asset company launched a major organizational and managerial restructuring.
"Vis is the right person to take over at this pivotal moment for our banking franchise," Fraser wrote in the memo to Citi employees. "He is a strategic leader who brings a strong track record of delivering results across a global banking business," she added.
Babej will stay on to help with the transition and then retire, as previously announced, Fraser said. Citi's banking division generated $4.6 billion of revenue in 2023, down 15% year over year, the company disclosed in its fourth-quarter earnings report.
Raghavan is the latest high-profile banking executive to join Citi in the past year. Last spring, Andy Sieg left his role as president of Bank of America's wealth management division to become Citi's head of global wealth management, another one of Citi's five primary business lines.
In a note Monday, analyst Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo Securities said that Raghavan's hiring "reflects additional effort to restructure" at Citi. The company, which has struggled to meet its financial targets and produce returns on par with its big-bank peers, is in the middle of a multiyear effort to simplify itself, become more efficient and drive higher shareholder value.
"To us, he could be attracted to Citi given its large global footprint, sole ownership of a [line of business] and easier comps," wrote Mayo, referring to Citi's target of a return on tangible common equity better than recent near-zero returns.
Jane Fraser says this year will be "critical" for the megabank, which is engaged in a massive, multiyear restructuring that involves cutting 20,000 jobs by the end of 2026.
To fill Raghavan's role, Filippo Gori and Doug Petno will serve as co-heads of investment banking at JPMorgan, according to a memo on Monday from Jennifer Piepszak and Troy Rohrbaugh, who are jointly leading the megabank's corporate and investment banking unit.
Gori, 49, most recently served as the head of JPMorgan's Asia Pacific Banking division and CEO of the region. Along with his new role as co-head of investment banking, Gori will be CEO of the company's Europe, Middle East and Africa region, a role that Raghavan has filled since 2017.
Filling Gori's post as CEO of Asia Pacific will be Sjoerd Leenart, according to a separate memo from Piepszak, Rohrbaugh and Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of asset and wealth management.
Leenart, 55, has been the global head of corporate banking since 2017 and previously served as regional head for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, and also held leadership roles in debt capital markets, sales and derivatives marketing, the memo said.
Petno, 59, has been the CEO of JPMorgan's commercial bank since 2012. As part of the changes announced in January, Petno oversees an expanded commercial banking business. JPMorgan consolidated two of its four lines of business — commercial banking and corporate and investment banking — into a single division now called the commercial and investment bank.
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