Global Head for Public Sector Coverage
Most bankers react when their clients come to them and explain that the services they need have changed. But it takes a banker with remarkable foresight to identify those changes in advance and proactively create the capacity to give clients what they need.
That’s what Julie Monaco, the global head for public sector coverage at Citigroup, did.
She realized that hundreds of the more than 750 public sector clients that her team advises around the globe would have to radically alter their operations in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And she worked to figure out what type of assistance they would need to seek, drawing from some key observations.
Early in the pandemic, Monaco recognized that some governments were more resilient than others. What the resilient ones had in common is that they had at least partly digitized their information systems, taken steps to make their debt obligations sustainable, and had a focus on environmental, social and governance issues. She correctly inferred that after the initial economic shocks wore off, there would be increased demand for assistance in all three of those areas from governments whose pandemic response had fallen short.
Monaco successfully petitioned her managers to let her create and staff a Sovereign Advisory and Solutions function, ensuring Citi could respond when, as Monaco had predicted, clients came looking for assistance in those three core areas. In the past year, her team has helped clients with tens of billions of dollars in debt restructurings, freeing up resources to battle the pandemic, and has conducted dozens of individualized strategy sessions to help clients with digitization.
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At the same time, Monaco assembled a group of 25 managing director-level executives at Citi to provide pro bono strategic advisory services to the Global Vaccine Alliance, often referred to as GAVI. The alliance is in charge of COVAX, the international effort to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to the developing world.
Citigroup Chief Executive Jane Fraser sees the effort as “Citi’s contribution to the global pandemic response,” which ultimately will help GAVI distribute COVID vaccines to all nations in a fair way.
“This work will have an impact far beyond the one company, industry, or country, and Citi is honored to dedicate leaders like Julie to the challenge,” Fraser said.
