Citi hires two for Asian equity sales

Citi is beefing up its Asian equity sales team with two new hires. James Wu, who was previously with UBS, will join in August as the bank's new head of Taiwan equity sales and Nimit Jani is joining the Asian sales team in London with a particular remit to cover Citi's Indian specialist sales to UK institutions. Jani will also continue to sell Asian equities in general to other UK clients, which will be similar to the role he has had for the past five years with Credit Suisse, ABN AMRO and Daiwa.

Wu joins Citi at a time when improving cross-strait relations with China have boosted interest in Taiwan equities, making it one of the top performing markets in Asia this year. Even after a slight correction over the past week and a half, the Taiex index was up 40% as of last Friday.

Wu has been head of Taiwan equity sales at UBS since 2002 and before that spent two years in North Asia sales with Goldman Sachs. He also has two years of consulting experience from PriceWaterhouse Coopers. According to Citi, Wu is highly rated by the bank's top-tier clients. He will report to Danny Chiang, head of Greater China equity.

Meanwhile, Jani is coming on board at a busy time for Citi in India. The US investment bank has arranged six equity capital markets offerings on behalf of Indian issuers or their shareholders over the past six weeks, including a $125 million block trade in Tata Consultancy Services, a $218 million sell-down of Larsen & Toubro's legacy stake in UltraTech Cement last week, and a $95 million sell-down in Essar Oil by an undisclosed institutional investor.

In his new sales role, Jani will be expected to find UK buyers for such deals. Jani will report to John McIntyre, head of Asia-Pacific equity sales, and to Robin Newman, head of Asia-Pacific equity sales in Europe.